Lyn Thomas-Ogbuji

At Leisure

A malapropism is a saying (an “ism”) that uses a word or phrase where it does not belong: where it is inappropriate. “Malapropism” comes from French: “mal” (poorly or badly) “apropos” (relevant). Most often the incorrect word is misused because it sounds like a different word that was intended, hence the confusion.

1. Meat For Geese?
I like the English proverb, “What is meet for the goose is meet for the gander,” but each time I quoted it in a publication, a reviewer or an editor changed it to “What is meat for the goose is meat for the gander.” The third time an editor changed it for me I wrote to him, pointing out that his version was a serious malapropism, for the goose and  its male counterpart are granivores (seed eaters) and so do not eat meat!

The cause of the US confusion of “meat” for “meet” became obvious when that editor replied, quoting the US version of that proverb: “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” This wrong version occurs in US dictionaries and encyclopediae, including Wikipedia! (Americans like to appear original when they modify an English saying. For instance, where the British say, “I was between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Americans alter it to “I was between a rock and a hard place.”)

So, in the US version of the proverb in question, “meat” came to replace “meet” because meat is used in sauce! But sauce, too, is a malapropism in that proverb, for goose and gander do not eat sauce! Bottom line: The correct English word to use in that proverb is “meet” (which means fair, just, or right).

2. Singular or Plural?
Some English words exist only in the plural form: we study physics and mathematics (but not physic or mathematic!); similarly, we engage in athletics and not athletic. The person who directs athletics is an Athletics Director, and not an Athletic Director. “Athletic” is an adjective indicating: fit, trim, and muscular! (We have commented on this kind of error elsewhere in these blog posts, pointing out that a man is six feet tall and not six foot tall, just as a ten-dollar book costs ten dollars.)

3. Out Of This World!
One US expression that we usually don’t recognize as a malapropism is “astronaut.” It is derived from the ancient Greek word, Argonaut (literally Sailor of the Argo Sea, in reference to the fable of “Jason and the Argonauts.”) Thus, “astronaut” implies someone who sails the “sea” between the stars. But the world has seen no such person yet! The farthest anyone has gone is to the moon; no one has ever gone past the gravitational zone of the earth, let alone beyond the neighborhood of our local star, the sun. So, nobody has ever gone between stars! The Russian equivalent, “cosmonaut,” is in the same category since it implies someone who navigates the cosmos—the universe!

The pompous American and Russian words for travelers to near-earth orbits were coined during the Cold War, when each side was trying to pump itself up as a “superpower!” (It is reminiscent of that comical scene in the Charlie Chaplin movie, The Great Dictator, where “Il Duce” and his guest, “Der Fuhrer,” each furiously ratcheted up his stool in order to look down at the other!)

4. Why Not Consult a Dictionary?
What do we make of statements like:
• “Your point is mute”? (A person may be mute, but a point can only be moot.)
• “I didn’t go, do to bad weather”? (due, not do)
• “I can’t phantom what devil made him do that”? (The word needed there is fathom.)
• “I employ you to send me your comments”? (The correct word is implore.)
• “He does not mix words”? (mince, not mix)
• “We may loose this game”? (lose, not loose)
• An introduction of a TV panel as an “Ombudswoman for Medicaid”? (Since ombudsman is not an English word but Swedish, this is like calling a female German a “Gerwoman”!)

Clearly, some of the more common malapropisms can be avoided if we cultivate a habit of consulting a dictionary (or encyclopedia or thesaurus, or the like) whenever in doubt—especially these days when those reference sources are freely available on the internet.

12/06/15 Topic for December, 2015, PARTS OF SPEECH (REVISITED)

CONFUSION OVER PARTS OF SPEECH

Everybody knows the difference between nouns and adjectives, right? Wrong….

Electric Bill or Electricity Bill?
An electric bill is one that shocks you, and it may not be for electricity consumed. A $1000.00 water bill would be considered “electric,” even if you are Bill Gates. The bill that comes from your power utility is your electricity bill; it is not electric if it is for $1.50.

Athletic or Athletics?
The man that controls and regulates sports in your high school: Is he your “Athletic Director” or your “Athletics Director”? It depends. If he is muscle-bound and presses 100 lbs., he may qualify to be called “athletic” (which means the same as “sportive”); but if he is a 250-lb couch potato that oversees sporting activities from the cushy comfort of an air-conditioned office, the best he can be is an Athletics Director. A school may have a physics or mathematics or athletics teacher (in each case a noun). Those nouns are always used in the plural, never in the singular, so that a “physic” or “mathematic” or “athletic” teacher makes no sense.

Are you “six foot tall” or “six feet tall”?
The foot in “six-foot man” is really an adjective. It is called an adjectival noun because, while it is a noun, it functions as an adjective in that construction (qualifying man). It is like saying someone is a house painter: “house” is an adjectival noun here, qualifying painter.

So, “I am six foot tall” makes no sense really: it uses an adjective (foot) where it should use a plural noun (feet). A six-foot man is six feet (plural noun) tall; a woman who measures five feet and six inches in height is a “five-foot-and-six-inch woman”; and a child that weighs fifty pounds is a fifty-pound child. Similarly, a twenty-dollar lunch costs twenty dollars (plural noun). We seem to get confused only when it comes to height! Nobody can be “6 (or 5, etc.) foot tall,” Such a unit of height does not exist. If your height is six feet, then: You are a six footer, a six foot person, or a person six feet tall. Just keep in mind “noun versus adjective” and you shouldn’t get it wrong.

Transitive & Intransitive Verbs
Do you Lie down or Lay down? It depends on what is lying or being laid. Americans seem to tip-toe around the verb to lay because of its sexually loaded nuance. But as children we learned the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John prayer: “…Before I lay me down to sleep / I give my soul to Christ to keep”.

Yes, LIE is an intransitive verb: Present Tense, “I lie down,” and Past Tense, “I lay down” ― but LAY is a transitive verb because it takes an object. Thus, a child who is ready to sleep will first lay her book down and then lie down (or lay herself down).

So, “I will lay down on the couch” is confusing, unless you are a hen laying eggs.
Prepositions
Some prepositions are used exclusively or preferentially with some verbs in certain contexts. Thus you “wait for” somebody (if you are biding time for that somebody to be ready to do something); but you “wait on” somebody if you are a waiter in a restaurant or an attendant in a shop, for instance.

We have seen the case of “off” and “on” in a previous post at this blog site. Each is a complete preposition: “I put the book on the table,” or “I won $5 off him in a bet.” In this context “off-of” is meaningless (as in “Take your hands off-of me”).

Getting on and getting wiser

(aka “Greying and growing”)

USE OF THE APOSTROPHE

There’s spreading confusion about the proper use of the apostrophe (’) in written English. I have encountered a few questionable uses of the apostrophe two of which are quite wrong, and others that are not generally accepted as correct:

to pluralize a noun, for contraction, and to indicate the genitive (possessive) case:

(1) To Pluralize:
“The 1970’s were years of unrest” is not generally accepted. The better entry here is 1970s, not 1970’s.
(2) For Genitive (Possessive) Case:
“The cat lifted it’s tail” is incorrect. Pronouns in the possessive case do not use an apostrophe. The correct possessive pronoun is “its,” not “it’s.”

Related to this example is the confusion of ‘your’ (possessive case) with “you’re” (contraction of “you are”).

“You’re hair is nice” is incorrect: the correct possessive pronoun is “Your,” not “You’re.”

(3) To Indicate Omissions:
This is the commonest use of the apostrophe: to indicate that letters or words were dropped to make things shorter:

• “Don’t talk” is correct. (Few people makes mistakes in this use of the apostrophe.)
• “You’re smart” is correct; it is a contraction of “you are smart.”
• “Your smart” is incorrect. This is the kind of misuse that is becoming rampant.

Since all of the foregoing errors reflect the influence of spoken English on its written form, one can only conclude that composition/essay (the art of setting your ideas down in writing) is no longer well taught in the USA.

Anything to Contribute?

The list above isn’t exhaustive by any means. Perhaps you can send us examples you have encountered.

Glad to be alive

August 30, 2015

You may have noticed that your bank loan statements and reports now talk about the balance on your “principle.” That is bad English: they mean balance on your principal. It is dismaying because bank staff at the level where statements are composed are supposed to be all college graduates, indeed people with advanced degrees. Similarly, the head of your child’s school is the Principal, not the “Principle.” Their error arises because we tend to let our speech control our writing, and an American tends to pronounce “principle” and “Principal” exactly the same. In other words, our failure to enunciate in our speech causes spelling errors.

Both principle and principal derive from the Latin word “princeps,” which means “head” or “main” (in the sense of a “head,” or a “main” idea). So the “principal” in banking is the “main money” you borrowed, as opposed to the interest that you did not borrow (but which accrues anyway!); on the other hand, “principle” means “core idea,” or “main idea” For instance, the principle behind democracy is individual freedom. A principle is always an IDEA, not a person or material object. Thus, there is no such thing as your “principle balance,” or the “principle” of your high school.

The same enunciation problem makes us say we “peddle” our bicycle. We do not “peddle” a bike; we pedal it. “Peddle” and “pedal” come from the same Latin root, in this case pes, which means “foot.” (The genitive case is pedis, which means “of the foot.”) Again, failure to enunciate clearly in speech makes us pronounce both verbs as “peddle.” To “peddle” a thing really means to try quite persistently to sell it to people! That usage probably started because door-to-door sales people went about their business on foot.

To enunciate is to lay proper emphasis in speech to those parts of a word that distinguish it from other similar words. It requires efficient (sometimes forceful) use of the muscles of the mouth. The opposite of enunciation is mumbling or slurring. Inadequate enunciation is what makes many native speakers of English mis-pronounce certain words in such a manner as to induce improper spelling. For instance, there is no country called “Senegaul” or “Nepaul” (it is “Nepal” and “Senegal,” with the mouth opened wide at the “–al” ending. Similarly, just as your friend is your pal (and not your “paul”), the name of the most famous Spanish tennis player today is “Rafael Nadal” (not “Nadaul”); and the easternmost region of India (the place with the fierce, man-eating tigers) is called “Ben-gal” and not “Ben-gaul.” Similarly, slack enunciation makes us say “Ah” (for “I”), “Mah” (for “My”), “Or” (for “Our”), and “war” (for “were”).

A related error concerns the use of “then” when one means “than.” A surprising number of people now write sentences like “A is better then B,” when they mean “A is better than B.” Again, if you do not enunciate well you will come to mix up “then” and “than.”

Fortunately, these slack versions are still mostly limited to spoken English; they have not yet carried over into written English. But one must expect them to creep into written communication as our educational levels get more and more degraded. I have just finished reading a self-published novel written by a physician (with a dozen or more years of education in English!), which was written in such a terrible style of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, that I began to think that self-published books should not be sold by mainline bookstores. (Unfortunately, I bought that book from Amazon.com.) Books published by mainstream publishers first go through literary agents who ensure the manuscript is up to snuff, that it was adequately proof-read, and that it receives proper review and editing before it goes to the publisher. A self-published book, on the other hand, may not have been scrutinized by anyone beyond the writer himself/herself. That’s how freewheeling errors spread.

Nevertheless, I must declare that I thoroughly enjoyed reading that book, with its poor vocabulary and mangled grammar and syntax in virtually every sentence. The reason I found it entertaining and informative is that the story line was good: about the ethnic background of the author, who lived his professional adult life in the USA, though he was born elsewhere. I must say the book would have been immensely enhanced if care had been taken with the manuscript through the ministrations of reviewers and editors.

US speakers of English have a tendency not to sound the letter “t” in some situations, such as when it is preceded or followed by an “r.” We tend to say “burrer” for “butter,” and “warrer” for “water.” The first time I heard an evangelist on TV say his God was “immorral,” I was flabbergasted until I realized he meant “immortal.” The British have no such tendency: they sound the letter ‘t’ as a hard consonant.

MELLOW & GREY : Life’s been great, but the sun is at 30-deg elevation; twilight looms large!

And now, back to business….

Today’s topic is  about punctuating sentence:

The strongest punctuation mark is the period or “full stop” (which is perhaps on par with the exclamation mark and the question mark). The next is the semi-colon; and finally comes the comma. By ‘strong’ here we mean influence on the cadence of your reading, especially your pauses and intonation in oration. When do you use which one?

I’ve read classic books in which an author wrote very long paragraphs (sometimes running to a dozen lines or longer), broken into segments with just commas. Many equally masterful writers would throw several semi-colons into such passages, so as to group the segments into batches that seem to flow better. I have also read good writers who cut such passages into very short sentences with periods and periods and periods. It is to some extent a matter of your preferred style. What one should avoid is pouring on a glut of words without adequate punctuation except perhaps the occasional use of conjunctions (‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘however,’ etc.). A reader tires of such writing, or begins to stumble, easily.

The Comma for Clarification
One magazine ad for a diabetes medicine was worded as follows: Diabetes destroys nerves which may cause pain.” A casual reading of that sentence could lead to a conclusion that is the direct opposite of what the ad intended. To understand the sentence we must determine the antecedent of “which.” (The antecedent of a word in a sentence is a preceding word or phrase to which it refers. If I say “I read a book and I enjoyed it,” the antecedent of “it” is “book.”)

So, in that ad, what is the antecedent of “which”? In other words, what is causing the pain? If nerves cause pain, then diabetes is doing a good deed by destroying them to stop pain! But we know that is not true: destruction of nerves is what causes pain. So, diabetes is doing a bad deed by destroying nerves and thus causing pain. What the advertisers meant to say is best rendered with a comma after “nerves.” (“Diabetes destroys nerves, which may cause pain” is the correct sentence.) Thus, a comma after “nerves” inverts the meaning of the sentence.

The stakes in the use of the comma can be much higher than mere nerve pain. Consider the serial comma. It is a comma in a special role: it comes before the final member in a list of denoted items. For instance, in the sentence, (1) “Divide a chocolate bar equally between Mary, Paul, and John” that last comma is the serial comma. Its use is seriously declining in the USA, and most writers now omit it altogether.

Suppose a zillionaire bequeaths his estate “to be divided equally between my three sons Tom, Dick and Harry.” It used to be argued that such a man was instigating a probate battle in his family because, if Tom retained a clever lawyer, he could obtain half of the state, leaving the other half to Dick and Harry. (That is equal division between two the parties delineated by the comma.) These days, however, each son might get a third of the estate, with or without a serial comma after Dick. But, yes, a fortune could depend on that second comma! Lawyers excel in tweaking out (and exploiting) minutiae like that. If you have a clever daughter and give her a chocolate bar to share equally with her brother and sister, be sure to use a serial comma!

The Hyphen
Take the hyphen, too, which is all but extinct now. It is hard to make any sense of the following sentence: “We buy demand and supply statistics to predict sales.” Now insert two hyphens (one on either side of the word “and”) and the meaning comes into focus.

The Parentheses
In an earlier essay on this site (The Period and he Parenthesis, May 2015) we saw that a pair of parentheses functions in such a manner that, if you threw away the pair and everything inside it, the sentence that remains would retain its integrity without needing any adjustment. That clarification resolved the question of whether a period should be placed before or after the closing parenthesis: A sentence that begins after the opening parentheses should end inside, with the period placed before the closing parenthesis; conversely, one that begins before the opening parenthesis should end outside, i.e. after the closing parenthesis.

Marks for “Heads-Up”
It is a pity that English does not employ an inverted question mark to start off a sentence that is in the interrogative mood as Spanish does (or an inverted exclamation mark for the imperative mood) to give the reader a ‘heads-up’ that what follows calls for an adjustment of intonation. I find I sometimes must get to the end of a long sentence before I realize I have read it with the wrong inflexion.

The colon ( : )
This punctuation mark serves so many different purposes in written English that it is hard to explain all of them exhaustively. As a good approximation, Wikipedia says the colon “is used to explain or start an enumeration” (of a category); it also has other uses, but let us concentrate on its main use (as stated by Wikipedia).

The colon is included here because of my experience with “experts” (editors & reviewers) who have stated rather incorrect or incomplete views on what must follow a colon. In its role of enumerating/elaborating examples, a colon may be followed by: a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or a full paragraph. (Note the use of the colon in the preceding sentence.)

If what follows your colon is a list, it is less confusing if the items on that list are consistently in the same format — all of them being single words or phrases, or clauses, or sentences — (rather than mixtures of the different categories).

Bullets
The practice of delineating a list with “bullets” is relatively new (corresponding roughly with the emergence and supremacy of the PC as a tool for composition of writings); but it can be more tidy and helpful. As with a colon, it is useful to ensure that the items of individual bullets are in the same format. For instance, if the first bullet is a single word, subsequent bullets may be single words or short phases, but not complete sentences.

Beyond that, how to end the item on each bullet (with a comma, semi colon, or period) follows the normal rules of punctuation. If it is a sentence, it has to end with a period; if a word, with a comma; and if a phrase or a clause, with a semi colon — especially if that phrase/clause is long or complex enough to require other punctuation marks within it.

Life’s Lessons Learned

In the first article at this blog site we made the point that “The American gusto for improvisation fosters innovation….” So far we have discussed a few “undesirable” innovations which we think may be attributed to US influence. However, there are also American changes (by which we can only mean changes during this age of American supremacy) that, one thinks, have rather facilitated ease of expression in English. A useful language is a living creation and so it must evolve with time. In contrast, the Latin sentence structure, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that I studied in high school were unchanged from Cicero and Virgil thousands of years before my time; being fossilized in that manner may be one reason Latin is dead!

As we celebrate our independence this July it is fitting at this point to “celebrate” some of those beneficial changes in English that may be due to US influence. I expect some readers can point out more such changes (and if we disagree with them we can at least debate the point!). So, please weigh in with your comments. Just remember that our focus is on written (not colloquial) English.

We saw an example of this kind of positive change under a blog in this series entitled A FEMALE MAN. The example in question is the use of a plural pronoun (‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘their’) to refer to a singular subject/object, as a neater alternative to employing the clumsier phrase: “he or she” (or, as the case may be, “him or her”). Thus, we now say “If anyone disagrees let them speak their mind,” instead of the more correct but rather repetitive construction: “If anyone disagrees, let him or her speak his or her mind.”

PLACING A PREPOSITION
In my high school days you were not permitted to end a sentence with a preposition. In those days, you could not say “This is the house I was born in”; you had to say “This is the house in which I was born.” It took the singular authority of Sir Winston Churchill to make the tidier version (“…house I was born in…”) acceptable; now we all use it. Another useful simplification made acceptable by Churchill is “This is me…” instead of “This is I….” Those two examples are mentioned by the renowned linguist Charles Berlitz in his book, NATIVE TONGUES. (BTW, Berlitz holds the interesting view that as a language matures and spreads its reach, it also acquires simpler structure and becomes less likely to differ in form as you go from one place to another. The emergence of local variations is of course what produces dialects, which may in turn become distinct languages eventually.)

SPLIT INFINITIVES
A similar “No-no” that existed in my day but not anymore is splitting the infinitive. The last sentence in the mission statement of Star Trek is: “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” However, in the generation before Star Trek, that sentence would have been considered ungrammatical. Why? Because “boldly” appears between the two parts of one verb that is in the infinitive tense: “to go.” In other words, that Star Trek mission statement split the infinitive. The accepted formulation then would have been: (1) “Boldly to go…” or (2) “To go boldly.” Note that in this particular example all three versions of that sentence are equally concise. In some cases, however, the proper sentence structure becomes less tidy if we cannot split the infinitive. Let’s see one such case.

Consider the sentence: “It is important to review all available evidence before you judge.” The infinitive here is “to review,” and because it is a transitive verb it has an object (which happens to be not just one word but an entire phrase: ‘all available evidence”). If we must emphasize the need for carefulness in considering the evidence, we can now say: “It is wise to carefully consider all available evidence….” But in my youth that infinitive (to consider) could not be split, and the proper construction was (1) “It is wise carefully to consider all available evidence…” (with the adverb before the infinitive), or (2) “It is wise to consider all available evidence carefully …”(with the adverb coming long after the infinitive).

The lesson here is: Splitting the infinitive can make a sentence more concise and compact.

THE ADVERB
I keep referring to my high school days because my formal education in non-scientific topics ended there. All the English language communication skills I ever learned was learned there. I did take a few college courses in English language and literature, but they really only repeated and reinforced my high school curriculum, which was sound.

My high school literature teacher was not a strong believer in adverbs. He considered them perhaps the most redundant of the eight parts of speech. And, though I like adverbs, my adult experience tends to vindicate that teacher of mine. In connection with my scientific writing I found that technical editors did not like adverbs: They thought adverbs ‘colored’ and skewed things and thus rendered scientific narratives somewhat less objective; and the general editors who have handled my non-scientific books do not like “qualifiers” in general (a category that includes adverbs) and always want to minimize the use of them.

Still, we know that adverbs serve a useful function: an adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. A good many adverbs (one might say the majority of them) are derived by affixing “ly” after an adjective (kindly from kind, etc.). Therefore, we tend to consider a word an adverb if it ends in “ly.” But one cannot rely on such inference because there are some words adjectives that end in “ly”. I used to think that likely, timely, leisurely, cowardly, (dis)orderly, etc. were always adjectives. So, while nearly all Americans say “It is likely true…” I used to say “It is probably true….” I now accept sentences like: “You will timely submit reports to us”; “Walk orderly behind the teacher”; “Walk leisurely to school” (with timely,” “orderly,” and “leisurely,” etc. used as adverbs. Thus I can now say “The cowardly lion spoke cowardly to the Wizard of Oz,” (using “cowardly as both adjective and adverb in the same sentence). I am learning, and I’m also beginning to see why the use of adverbs is waning.

Of course one mustn’t think that those stiff old rules were always obeyed rigidly by every writer. Some classic authors of past centuries sometimes ignored some of the straight-jacket rules of grammar and syntax: They had acquired enough authority to assert their independence of mind. What has changed in recent times is that the rules are now being disobeyed by many serious and knowledgeable writers, rather than by just a few masters.