Should it be seven rounds ‘left TO PLAY’ or seven rounds ‘TO PLAY left’?

We’ve in our hands the Saturday, April 20 edition of the massive tabloid from Nairobi that commands a sizeable readership in Bongo, whose Pages 12-13 carry the final part of a book serialisation and therein, we read:

“Soft music wafted from powerful speakers. The girls in A PAIR OF JEAN TROUSERS or skirts with deep slits that showed their thighs…”

This is the first time we’re coming across “jean trousers” for we’re familiar with “jeans trousers.” Both cases are incorrect, because we only have JEANS, which refers to hard-wearing trousers made of denim or other cotton fabric. And any other wear made from such material would be referred to as denim this or that, such as denim shorts or denim jacket, not jeans shorts or jeans jacket as you’re likely to hear many East African English users say.

Here’s our rewrite: “Soft music wafted from powerful speakers. The girls in JEANS or skirts with deep slits…”

Elsewhere in the story, the writer says: “The Commander, looking stylish in made-to-fit TROUSER and coat, raised his hands together in the air.” The word “trouser” is used at least twice in the piece, meaning the writer is confident he knows what he’s talking about. But, he’s not correct. We may only talk of trousers, a pair of trousers or several pairs of trousers. They’re also called PANTS.

Back to Dar where we pick up a copy of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, April 20, whose Page 5 has this story, ‘Rukwa to experience water rationing due to power shortage.’ Then, the scribbler writes in Para 1:

“Residents of Sumbawanga Municipality, Rukwa Region, have made A GOOD use of water as the region expects substantial water rationing...”

You say “a good” use of water? Nope; simply say “GOOD use of water…”

In Para 5, our scribbling colleague purports to quote a senior water supply official as saying: “The current situation is not pleasing, water production has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY by 45 per cent in our sources…”

We’ve a case of tautology here. Why, when you’ve a figure showing how much water production has dropped—by 45 per cent—you don’t need to qualify that with the adverb “significantly.” Leave it to the reader to judge whether or not 45 per cent is a significant drop.

Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of Friday, April 19 has a full page story from Dodoma with the headline, ‘Poor rural roads holding back women’s economies.’ In this one, the scribbler sets out to quote what an official has said and writes:

“It is high time FOR the force Account compliance in the construction sector TO BE evaluated after seven years of its implementation…”

The adverb “high time” (which literally means the latest possible time), must be explained by a past tense. Like we say, it’s high time we WENT and not it’s high time TO GO. Which is to say, a rewrite of the above quote should read:

“It is high time the force Account compliance in the construction sector WAS evaluated after seven years of its implementation…”

On Page 20, there’s a sports story entitled, ‘Stephene Aziz Ki retakes lead in tight NBC PL top goal scorer race,’ and in Para 2, this is what the scribbler wrote:

“With just seven rounds of games left TO PLAY Young Africans SC attacking midfielder Stephene Aziz Ki now leads the way in the race for the Premier League top scorer, overtaking his closest challenger Feisal Salum Abdallah ‘Fei Toto’ of Azam FC.”

Hello! How about dropping the capped words, “to play”? That would bring no harm for in any case games are for playing, aren’t they? However, the main issue here is that the grammatical flow is awkward, nay, flawed.

We aver that the scribbler should’ve reorganised the wording sequence to read thus: “With just seven games TO PLAY LEFT, Young Africans FC…Aziz Ki now leads…”

Ah, this treacherous language called English!