Sent in by e-mail by Isabel E., Hong Kong-based writer (March 10, 2011):Hi Joe—I’ve been in Cebu then Dumaguete for the past few weeks and have been seeing either the
Philippine Daily Inquirer or
Philippine Star, both of them written and edited so sloppily they must make you grind your teeth. I managed to copy a couple of priceless items from various reporters and columnists, which you’ve surely seen.
Last month, describing Noynoy’s [Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s] being under the weather, someone wrote (italicizations mine) “… the president had
a case of heavy colds. He
caught the colds during the…”
A column quoted US economist Nouriel Roubini as follows: “…he forecasts food shortage that
will hurtle prices to calamitous heights. . . " I guess he never saw stuff hurtling downwards from the sky!
Another columnist, writing about EDSA: “unfortunately
as the years come to past, we continue to witness
higher forms of corruption…”
By the way, have you tackled the weird Pinoy use of the noun “anomaly,” which is so ubiquitous? I may have missed it. Cheers!
My reply to Isabel:Thanks for calling my attention to those faulty-English gems from columnists writing for the Philippine major daily newspapers. As you will notice, though, I thought it prudent to excise the names of the columnists and their columns from the material you quoted. For grammar instruction purposes, I think it should suffice that the grammatical sins are identified but not the sinners.
I must say for the record that being a newspaper columnist myself, I have made it a policy in My Media English Watch not to critique the English of fellow newspaper columnists—no matter how faulty their English grammar and usage might be sometimes. This is as much a matter of courtesy to them as senior journalists as well as a tacit acknowledgment that most of them enjoy the privilege—and suffer the editorial pitfall—of not being subjected to line-by-line copyediting before their pieces go to print. What you read is therefore often exactly what they’ve written in manuscript form, warts and all.
For good measure, I traced the quotes you provided back to their source columns in the newspapers concerned.
Here’s the entire passage for the first quote you provided (italicizations mine):
Despite obviously still nursing a case of heavy colds, the President proceeded to join the event after being under the weather for the past two days.
Malacañang officials disclosed P-Noy caught the colds a few days after his visit in Jolo, Sulu on Feb.11 when he inspected the government relief operations for the flood victims in the province.
Yes, you’re absolutely right, Isabel. The use of the plural “colds” in the phrase “a case of heavy colds” as well as in “caught the colds” is bad English; it should be “a case of heavy cold” and “caught the cold,” with “cold” in the singular form. I know that it has become habitual for some Filipinos—and not a few native English speakers as well—to use expressions with the plural form “colds,” but the fact is that the noun “colds” is not even recognized as a proper word by most of the reputable English-language dictionaries. Both grammatically and idiomatically, the widely accepted usage is “cold,” singular, and I think it will be foolhardy for anyone to persist in using the plural “colds” once he or she gets to know—and verifies to his or her satisfaction--that it’s not correct usage.
As to this passage from the column that quoted a US economist:
Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the US financial crisis, forecasts a global food shortage that will hurtle prices to calamitous heights starting this year. Actually alarm bells started ringing in the last quarter of 2010.
Because the columnist used the phrase “will hurtle prices to calamitous heights,” you said that he probably “never saw stuff hurtling downwards from the sky!” I take this to mean that you find the usage of the verb “hurtle” in the upward sense grammatically faulty. I don’t think so; it might sound iffy to some ears, but I think that usage is acceptable. The verb “hurtle” in the intransitive sense means “to move rapidly or forcefully,” and in the transitive sense, “hurl or fling,” but in neither sense is a direction of the movement specified. I personally would have used the more precise verb “hurl” for that phrase, but there’s really nothing wrong with using “hurtle” and specifying either an upward or a downward movement for it. In my opinion, the phrase “will hurtle prices to calamitous heights” is defensible both grammatically and semantically.
Now let’s take up that third columnist’s statement about EDSA:
Ten years after, we continue to have glorious hope that one day our nation will become a better one. Unfortunately, as the years come to past, we continue to witness higher forms of corruption almost equaling what Marcos did to the country.
Yes, Isabel, I agree with you that the phrase “as the years come to past” is unidiomatic and grammatically suspect if not outright faulty. This is actually the first time I’m seeing that phrase. The grammatically correct and idiomatic phrasing is “as the years come to pass”; in fact, “as the years pass by” and “as the years go by” are more commonly used. I’m sure that the columnist meant to write “as the years come to pass” but somehow ended up with “as the years come to past” in her draft manuscript. A good copyeditor could have given short shrift to that awkward phrasing, though, replacing the “come to past” with “come to pass” without even batting an eyelash.
As to that columnist’s use of the phrase “higher forms of corruption,” the use of the words “higher forms” to describe “corruption” does seem to somehow ennoble this contemptible crime. The adjective phrase “worse forms” would have captured the negative sense of that phrase better. So here's how that passage would look and sound with these grammatical improvements:
Ten years after, we continue to have glorious hope that one day our nation will become a better one. Unfortunately, as the years come to pass, we continue to witness worse forms of corruption almost equaling what Marcos did to the country.
Finally, regarding what you say is the weird use of the noun “anomaly” by Pinoys, I’ll look into it. I promise to comment on its usage some other time.
