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Site Announcements / Playlist Update (May 25 - 31, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 28, 2024, 07:06:53 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MAY 25 - 31, 2024 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “The wealth of our vocabulary”




2. Getting to Know English Better: “Using appositives for texture and depth in prose”

         
 
                               

3. Students’ Sounding Board: “What happens when people don’t know enough to know they don’t know?"




4. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “Why it’s easier to speak fluently in English than to write well in English”




5. Students’ Sounding Board: “Does 'have to' mean the same thing as the modal auxiliary verb 'must'?"




6. Your Thoughts Exactly: “The Two Hemispheres of Me” by Antonio Calipjo Go, Forum Contributor




7. Readings in Language: “Verbal diagnostician par excellence comes up with a grammar guidebook”




8. Going Deeper Into Language: “A Thousand and One English Poems”




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “21 enduring rules and truisms in business and personal relations”




10. Time Out From English Grammar Retrospective: “The thief who stole 106 priceless timepieces in audacious museum heist”




11. The Forum Lounge: “Book publishing's broken blurb system 'a plague on the industry'”  




12. Readings in Language: “News headlines that do serious violence to the English language"

 


13. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “A eulogy for my father, Eduardo Buenaventura Olaguer




14. The Forum Lounge: “The roller coaster ride of my life" by APA.Victory (pseud.)




15. Readings in Language “A history of the world in five typefaces"


GUTENBERG'S BASTARDA



2
Essays by Joe Carillo / The wealth of our vocabulary
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 28, 2024, 03:51:58 PM »
I understand from the Global Language Monitor (GLM) that as of December 30, 2006, at precisely 10:34 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, the English language hit the 991,833-word mark. The California-based language watchdog says that it has been using a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), to measure the wealth of English words as currently found in the print and electronic media as well as on the Internet and in blogs. It has been tracking English since 2003 despite dismissive criticism from such eminent language authorities as the Oxford English Dictionary, which stood pat at this time on its official count of 615,000 entries for English.*
 
Now, no matter what the exact figures are, English has such an astoundingly large vocabulary to pack into one’s brain, and I really think that unless we are aspiring to become Spelling Bee or Scrabble champions, we don’t need to get to know even a fifth or much less of that huge cavalcade of English words. After all, some language experts say, only about 200,000 of those words are in common usage, and all that a typical native-English-speaking college graduate needs to be functionally literate in English is about 20,000-25,000 words.

This self-appointed language watchdog has aggressively used a proprietary algorithm that it calls
the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to measure the ever-growing wealth of English words

And when we ponder these figures, we mustn’t forget that William Shakespeare had gotten by so magnificently with a vocabulary of only 18,000 to 25,000 words, of which 1,700—such as “anchovy,” “besmirch,” “impede,” and “shudder”—are thought to have been Shakespeare’s own coinage. We must consider, too, that the King James Bible, using only 12,143 different English words, has done quite an impressive job evangelizing a lot of English-literate heathens on this planet. And for an even better perspective, here’s another intriguing language statistic: Taki-Taki, an English-based Creole spoken in coastal Suriname in South America, is said to consist of only 340 basic words, yet allows its speakers to get on quite well with their day-to-day affairs.

Perhaps we should also take the opportunity to look at how the world’s other major languages are faring in the face of this explosive growth of English. I understand that German has held to second place with a vocabulary of about 185,000 common words, followed by French with something like 100,000. Chinese, of course, remains the world’s most widely spoken language, but since it uses ideograms and not the alphabet, I’m afraid we can’t put it into our comparative picture. But it definitely would be remiss if we didn’t take up the vocabulary performance of Tagalog, the base language of Filipino, our national language.

From what I can gather at this time, Tagalog has some 17,000 root-words, and it’s possible that its number of intelligible words is between 50,000 and 60,000. The Tagalog-English Dictionary published in 1986 by Fr. Leo James English, a Manila-based Australian Roman Catholic priest, lists 16,000 of Tagalog’s main words, while his former project assistant, Vito Santos, along with co-author Luningning Santos, later came up with the Vicassan’s Pilipino-English Dictionary in 1988, listing 20,000 Tagalog words. 

So to be functionally literate in both Filipino and English, the typical Filipino college graduate needs a basic vocabulary of 16,000-20,000 Tagalog words and something like, say, 25,000-35,000 English words, for a combined Filipino-English vocabulary of 41,000-55,000 words. For simplicity’s sake, let’s round that off to 50,000.

Now, that’s not such a frightening vocabulary quota for the Filipino as a native Tagalog speaker and nonnative English learner. Just achieving its English component, in fact, would already make him or her more proficient than the average American, whose English vocabulary reportedly runs to only about 14,000 words. And as I used to often point out in my English-improvement seminars, we can actually get by with much fewer and simpler words and yet make ourselves much more communicative. Yes, a wide English vocabulary definitely is nice to have, but in the end, what matters more is developing our ability to know and adroitly tap the words that are already inside the heads of our fluent domestic Filipino-and-English-speaking target audiences.
---------------
*Global Language Monitor founder and Paul JJ Payack, who calls himself a word analyst and not a lexicographer, estimated in 2006 that the number of English words would breach the 1-millionth mark by November of that year based on a complex algorithm he had been using for years to track the growth of words and phrases. However, a noted lexicographer and dictionary editor disparaged Payack’s estimate as “a silly thing” and “complete rubbish.” (Read “A Million Words? He’s Counting On It,” CBSNews.com, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-million-words-hes-counting-on-it/).

This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times and subsequently became Chapter 155 of my book  Give Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 and published by the Manila Times Publishing Corp.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
The wealth of our vocabulary                                                                         

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.

RELATED EARLIER READING IN THE FORUM:
No matter what we and the language experts might call him—word maven, English logophile, “The WordMan,” “a fraud,” or “self-aggrandizing scammer”—Paul J.J. Payack has kicked up a worldwide linguistic storm trumpeting the supposed eminent arrival of the one-millionth English word. The Harvard-educated, California-based president of the Global Language Monitor has literally taken North American media for a fun, exhilarating ride—some linguists say he has been astutely conning them—by making them indiscriminately report his pronouncements about the race of new English words to the 1-millionth mark. "How to Generate a Linguistic Tsunami by Really Trying," June 13, 2009
3
Lounge / Govt media workers get social security coverage under SSS KaSSSangga program
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 25, 2024, 06:34:09 AM »
MAY 24, 2024 -- The Social Security System (SSS) announced today that nearly 600 cameramen, production assistants, reporters, and newscasters working at the state-run television station People’s Television Network (PTV) will now be eligible for social security coverage and protection under the KaSSSangga Collect Program.

SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Rolando Ledesma Macasaet (3rd from left) and PTV General Manager Analisa V. Puod (4th from left) signed an agreement on May 16 that provides SSS benefits to job order (JO) workers in the government television network. Other signatories to the agreement are (from left) Maria Rita S. Aguja, SSS Senior Vice President for National Capital Region (NCR) Operations Group; Voltaire P. Agas, SSS Executive Vice President for Branch Operations Sector; Jasmine B. Barrios, PTV Administrative Division Head; and Felomena T. Arroyo PTV Administrative Officer III.

Macasaet commended General Manager Puod and other PTV officials for registering its JO workers as members of SSS, which ensured their welfare.
 
“We laud the initiative of PTV to help their JO workers secure their future and prepare for their retirement by becoming SSS members. We thanked PTV for allowing their JO workers to get the social security protection they deserve,” Macasaet said.
 
Puod thanked SSS for the partnership that will help their JO workers who have been with the network for over a decade save for their retirement.
 
Macasaet called on other government agencies and local government units to follow the example set by PTV’s leadership. “We encourage you to take the necessary steps to secure the future of each of your fellow government workers, especially your JO workers, through SSS membership. Let's work together to ensure the welfare of our workers,” he said.
 
Aguja, who also chairs the Task Force on KaSSSangga Collect Program, said that PTV JO workers would be registered as self-employed SSS members under the program. Government JO workers are not covered by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) due to their employment status.
 
“Under the agreement, PTV will serve as an authorized coverage and collection partner of SSS. This means that PTV can now collect and remit the monthly contributions of its JO workers through a salary-deduction scheme, making the process more convenient and efficient for the workers,” Aguja explained.
 
As SSS self-employed members, JO workers will gain access to a comprehensive range of social security benefits. These include sickness, maternity, disability, retirement, funeral, and death benefits. They can also apply for SSS loan programs such as salary and calamity, providing them with financial security in various life situations.
 
“On top of SSS benefits, they will also get additional coverage from the Employees’ Compensation Program (ECP) for work-related sickness, disability or death,” she added.

Aguja said that regular PTV employees can also continue paying their SSS contributions as voluntary members under the program.
 
As of March 2024, more than 430,000 JO and contract of service workers in 3,197 local government units (LGUs), national government agencies, state universities and colleges (SUCs), and local water districts now have social security coverage through the KaSSSangga Collect Program.
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Site Announcements / Playlist Update (May 18 - 24, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 22, 2024, 02:04:18 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MAY 18 - 24, 2024 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “At a loss for words”




2. Use and Misuse: “A recurrent misuse of 'between' when setting a range”


SO WHY SHOULD WE EVER BE CAUGHT
SAYING “BETWEEN 8:00 A.M. TO 4:00 P.M.”?                                   


3. You Asked Me This Question: “'Bring' or 'take' and 'come' or 'go'?”




4. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “The rightful place for a headline modifier”


IMAGE CREDIT: X.COM


5. Students’ Sounding Board: “When is sentence inversion a matter of grammar or style?”




6. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Critique of the Catholic clergy’s English by a former university professor”




7. Going Deeper Into Language: “33 modern English essays”




8. Advice and Dissent: “194 cutting-edge readings about recent scientific news”


“DOUBLE TULIPS 2016” BY KATINKA MATSON, EDGE.ORG

9. Language Humor at its Finest:“A Cavalcade of Palindromes”




10. Time Out From English Grammar Retrospective: “Renaissance painter goes all the way glorifying women's hair to debunk a prevailing religious notion”




11. The Forum Lounge: “Book publishing's broken blurb system 'a plague on the industry'”  




12. Readings in Language: “Style as pleasurable mastery rather than minefield of grievous errors” by Steven Pinker




13. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: "Close encounters with enigmatic English syntax”




14. A Forum Lounge Pictorial: "Manila at the turn of the 20th Century”




15. Time Has Indeed Gone By: "Charles Aznavour sings a classic!"





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Essays by Joe Carillo / At a loss for words
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 22, 2024, 10:10:36 AM »
A great disappointment in our country’s politics is that it doesn’t impose a requisite depth of knowledge, experience, and wisdom from those who consider themselves worthy of election to public office. For so many years now, we have chosen to lead us not just a few men and women whose only claim to ascendancy over us is popularity not from achievement but from media exposure, and whose strongest virtue is distracting us from the harsh realities of life, making us laugh, or simply being electronically seen or heard from day to day reading the news, spouting some half-baked opinion, or hawking consumer items for precious extra media mileage. Like chronic sleepwalkers, we have been substituting media-induced perception for reality, glitz and noise for intellect and moral rectitude, and the phantom figures of pollsters-for-hire and audience-ratings meters for the true worth of individuals.


                                   IMAGE CREDIT: PHOTO BY ALFREDHOOK3 IN THE PROPROFS.COM WEBSITE

The point has been reached, in fact, where we no longer demand that those aspiring for high public office at least define themselves, tell us their political ideal, mission, or vision, or assure us that they have a clear idea of what they are doing in the first place. Gone indeed are the days when people who sought elective office could at least talk to us convincingly straight from their own minds and hearts, without the benefit of script or idiot board. Most of the electorate has become so painfully blasé and inept that those touted by self-serving statistics as surefire bets could forever be at a loss for words, yet still get themselves elected handily.

The tragedy of it all is that this is happening at this very time that we need mature, intelligent, and enlightened leadership to turn the nation around. More than ever before, we need men and women not only of action but of words—words to tell us in the most precise terms why this country hasn’t moved forward that much, words to spell out concretely the crucial things to be done or undone to get us out of the hole we are in, and words to inspire us to close ranks and propel this archipelago to the greatness that has eluded it for more than half a millennium now.

We need thinking leaders with the priceless gift of language, not necessarily stentorian, but leaders who can define, articulate, and pursue the national agenda intelligently and purposively, with words that ring true whether spoken off the cuff or clothed with the rhetoric that important state occasions demand. For these big tasks, our country can ill afford any more individuals with very scant vocabulary—whether in Filipino, English, or any other language—and much less those with no experience whatsoever in governance and public affairs. To do so would be like appointing someone who can’t even compute and had not even run a sari-sari store or much less a sizeable manufacturing firm like San Miguel Corporation, or allowing a tricycle driver without flight training and only a smattering of English to pilot a Boeing 747 over the Pacific Ocean from Manila to Los Angeles.

How perilous it is that for the sake of political expediency, this country’s electorate is repeatedly prodded every election season to gloss over the importance of intelligence and good grasp of language in the art of leadership! All the more disturbing that our supposedly more intelligent political leaders and opinion-makers could tell us without mincing words that popularity and perceived honesty is a fair tradeoff for ineptitude. When are we going to learn that the most powerful determinant of intellect is the breadth and depth of one’s vocabulary, and that the higher one’s responsibility, the wider and deeper the vocabulary needed to be effective on the job? One could not even name things in context—much less frame a decent sentence or meaningfully analyze or conclude about anything—if one didn’t have at least a decent grasp and understanding of the totally new activity or enterprise one ventures into.

In his 1993 collection of essays, The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, the well-regarded American economist and writer clearly captured the importance of vocabulary in good thinking in these words:

“A vocabulary increases and sharpens our observation, as sharp observation in turn leads us to increase our vocabulary. The student of nature who is learning to recognize bushes and trees finds his observation increasingly sharpened as he is told how to identify respectively an oak, maple, elm, beech, pine, spruce, or hemlock. The name both fastens down the results of observation and tells him what distinguishing traits to look for. As a result of his knowledge, a countryman very seldom calls a specific tree simply a tree. The professional forester or nurseryman habitually makes even finer distinctions, such as that between red oaks, black oaks, and white oaks, or between Norway maples, Schwedler maples, and sugar maples.”

Had the nation’s electorate been more keenly aware of this important requisite of leadership, our country could have avoided repeatedly making the terrible mistake of electing not just a few ineffectual or paltry aspirants to crucial national positions during the past several decades.

This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times and subsequently became Chapter 152 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 and published by the Manila Times Publishing Corp.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
At a loss for words

(Next: The wealth of our vocabulary)        May 30, 2024                                                                                         

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
6
Education and Teaching / PHINMA Education launches 5.5K-peso scholarship program
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 17, 2024, 05:42:10 PM »
May 17, 2024—PHINMA Education, one of the biggest private higher education networks in Southeast Asia, has launched the Hawak Kamay (HK) 5.5 Scholarship Program to improve access to quality college education. In its most inclusive program yet, qualified students will only pay Php5,500 per semester (exclusive of books and uniforms) for both Education and Business programs offered across eight schools in the PHINMA Education network. Additionally, HK5.5 is available for the Criminology program at PHINMA University of Pangasinan.

This scholarship redefines accessibility not only by eliminating barriers, such as entrance exams and maintaining grades but also by providing unprecedented levels of financial support to its students. Importantly, the student’s fee of P5,500 per semester will remain unchanged throughout the student’s college journey to maintain affordability despite inflation. The launch of HK5.5 coincides with PHINMA Education’s 20th year anniversary to be celebrated by nine schools in the Philippines and one in Indonesia.


Christopher Tan, Country Head of PHINMA Education Philippines, said: “At PHINMA Education, our commitment goes beyond mere accessibility; we are dedicated to guiding students every step of their journey, from enrollment to employment. Our goal is not only to provide quality education but to also help the more vulnerable students in the country believe that they can change the course of their lives. The pandemic may be over, but serious economic hardships remain. Inflation has gone up, driven by increases in food and transportation costs. Especially during crises, schools have the responsibility to keep education accessible. We need to constantly find ways to reduce our costs so that we can reduce our fees.”

For two decades, PHINMA Education has provided hope through learning. With the new HK5.5, the network solidifies its commitment to social transformation by continuing the mission of making lives better through education.

The application for HK5.5 and other HK scholarship offerings for SY24-25 is ongoing. Students across the nation are encouraged to apply through this link: https://bit.ly/phinmaedhk55scholarship
-------------------
PHINMA Education Holdings, Inc. (PEHI) under the conglomerate PHINMA Corporation, started investing in the education services sector in 2004 through the acquisition of PHINMA Araullo University in Nueva Ecija. It has since expanded its presence across the country with its network of schools namely: PHINMA Cagayan de Oro College, PHINMA University of Pangasinan, PHINMA University of Iloilo, Southwestern University PHINMA in Cebu City, PHINMA Saint Jude College in Manila and Quezon City, PHINMA Rizal College of Laguna, and PHINMA Union College of Laguna. It also aims to expand across Southeast Asia beginning with Horizon University in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia. For more information, please visit: https://www.phinma.edu.ph.
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Site Announcements / Playlist Update (May 11 - 17, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 15, 2024, 10:23:14 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MAY 11 - 17, 2024 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “The perils of sweeping generalizations”

[


2. Use and Misuse: “Pitfalls in constructing negative used to sentences”

                                         
THE AMERICAN ENGLISH PRESCRIPTION FOR “USED TO” USAGE                                     


3. You Asked Me This Question: “The problem with overellipted sentence constructions”




4. Students’ Sounding Board: “How to identify what’s wrong in a sentence construction test”




5. Students’ Sounding Board: “‘All’ can actually mean ‘totality,’ ‘everything,’ or even ‘nothing’”




6. Getting to Know English: “Revisiting the 'who'/'whom' grammar conundrum”




7. Education and Teaching: “Taylor Swift studies surging in North America akin to the 1990s Madonna-ology ”


   


8. Advocacies: “Deliberately and intentionally miseducating the Filipino,” a critique by Forum Contributor Antonio Calipjo Go of a 2015 DECS textbook




9. Language Humor At Its Finest: “Memorable quotes from famous celebrities of yesteryears”




10. Time Out From English Grammar: “Measuring up to the human body’s perfection in architectural terms”




11. You Asked Me This Question: “How do litotes and the double negative differ?”  




12. Essay by Jose Carillo (A Retrospective): Verbal fallacies nearer home”




13. Your Thoughts Exactly: "A Prayer to St. Jude," Retrospective Essay by Angel Casillan, Forum Contributor




14. Going Deeper Into Language: "Subordinate clauses don't always play second fiddle to main clauses”



 
15. The Forum Lounge: “'Pun-ography' is wordplay to make you smile”





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Essays by Joe Carillo / The perils of sweeping generalizations
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 15, 2024, 02:58:27 PM »
A common pitfall in writing is to mistake possibility or simple probability for certainty. Either from faulty grammar or faulty thinking, writers can unknowingly make sweeping generalizations—statements that assert too much on too little evidence. They thus overstate their case and undermine the very argument they are making.

Consider this opening statement of a recent advice column: “Your greatest weakness is the one that you are unaware of. Because you do not know that it exists, you become vulnerable to the one who spots it.” By using the superlative “greatest” without qualification, this statement makes an assertion that can’t be possibly proven. Being unaware of a weakness doesn’t necessarily make it one’s greatest weakness; more likely, one’s greatest weakness would be the weakness that one actually suffers from and is fully aware of. The premise thus proves logically indefensible. 

                                                  IMAGE CREDIT: PROWRITINGAID.COM

Here’s a simple grammar fix that can straighten the logic of such sweeping generalizations—qualify their premise as a possibility instead of an absolute certainty. See how the modal “could” efficiently eliminates the sweeping generalization from the statement above: “Your greatest weakness could be the one that you are unaware of. Because you do not know that it exists, you become vulnerable to the one who spots it.” Depending on the degree of possibility or conditionality, of course, the modals “can,” “may,” and “might” can also be used to qualify such statements.

Logic is likewise violated when conditional statements are made to appear like absolute truths. Take this lead sentence of a recent newspaper feature story: “Did you know that the country’s top chefs get their ingredients from Farmers Market in the Araneta Center in Cubao?” Although the story cites six Metro Manila-based chefs as getting their ingredients from the same market, this statement turns out to be a sweeping generalization because (1) it makes the unwarranted general claim that the country’s top chefs get their ingredients from that market, and (2) it makes the gratuitous implication that the five chefs mentioned in the story are the country’s top chefs, although they are cited only as examples of Metro Manila chefs sourcing their ingredients from the same market.

Such breaches of logic can be avoided by properly qualifying words or phrases that imply totality. See how much more credible the statement above becomes when we use “many” to qualify “the country’s top chiefs”: “Did you know that many of the country’s top chefs get their ingredients from Farmers Market in the Araneta Center in Cubao?” But even this statement may still be too sweeping, for it can be argued that “five well-known Metro Manila chefs” is not synonymous to “many of the country’s top chiefs.” Here’s a more accurate restatement that probably stands a better chance of silencing all objectors: “Did you know that many of Metro Manila’s top chiefs get their ingredients from Farmers Market in the Araneta Center in Cubao?”

In face-to-face interactions, making sweeping generalizations may not be so harmful because our listeners will usually prompt us and give us the opportunity to qualify our statements until their intended meaning gets clear enough. When we make sweeping generalizations in writing, however, we risk being totally misunderstood or being deemed unreliable because the opportunity to qualify our ideas is no longer available.

We thus need to be very precise in stating our premises, arguments, and conclusions. In particular, we should be extra cautious with words that imply absoluteness or totality, such as “always,” “never,” “everyone,” “everybody,” “completely,” “totally,” and “constantly.” As the old saying goes, there’s always an exception to the rule, so we should make it a point never to make absolute statements without properly qualifying them.

When proving a point, we must also beware the all-too-common temptation to use “all” for “some” or “most,” “none” for “few” or “hardly anyone” or “hardly anybody,” “always” for “usually” or “frequently,” “surely” for “probably” or “perhaps,” and “never” for “rarely” or “seldom.” One single imprecise qualifier can throw our statements out of kilter. For instance, even allowing for literary license, the following lead statement in a recent personality feature (the subject’s identity has been changed) obviously oversteps the bounds of its argument: “All her life [italics mine], Jennifer del Mar wanted to be a schoolteacher to help her poor parents make ends meet.”

By using “all her life” as a qualifier, the statement risks inviting disbelief. The subject could not have wanted to be a schoolteacher “all her life”; at most, she must have started wanting to become one when she was already in grade school or high school. The statement gets a better temporal perspective with this more realistic qualifying phrase: “Even as a child, Jennifer del Mar already dreamed to be a schoolteacher so she could help her poor parents make ends meet.”

This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times and subsequently became Chapter 136 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 and published by the Manila Times Publishing Corp.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
The perils of sweeping generalizations

(Next: At a loss for words)        May 23, 2024                                                                                         

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
9
Site Announcements / Playlist Update (May 4 - 10, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 08, 2024, 03:40:22 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MAY 4 - 10, 2024 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Getting To Know English Better: “Using nondiscriminatory English – Part 2”




2. Use and Misuse: “What are substantive and attributive clauses?”

                                         
                                     
3. You Asked Me This Question: “Is it advisable to drop ‘that’ from reported speech?”




4. Getting To Know English: “How many types of adverbial clauses are there in English?”




5. Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “Dealing with various levels of intransitivity”




6. Students’ Sounding Board: “An assortment of bewildering questions about English usage”




7. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Some tangled tropes that annoy me,” essay by Forum Member Isabel Escoda




8. Going Deeper Into Language: “The need to know the English idioms”




9. Language Humor At Its Finest: “24 boggling imponderables to think through”




10. Advice and Dissent Retrospective:  “A compelling alternative to Shakespeare's true identity was that he was a woman




11. Readings in Language: “Tagalog among top 5 most widely spoken non-English languages in the U.S. today”  




12. Time Out From English Grammar: “Two memorable and truly inspiring commencement speeches”




13. A Forum Lounge Open Dialogue (A Retrospective): “Religions and the basis for faith”




14. Time Out From English Grammar: “Focusing on three things all at once is courting information overload”



 
15. Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “English in a used jar”





10
Getting to Know English / Using nondiscriminatory English – Part 2
« Last post by Joe Carillo on May 07, 2024, 11:52:37 PM »
Now let’s focus on the success of contemporary English in avoiding asymmetrical treatment of people on account of their age, ethnicity and social standing. To begin with, it is no longer socially and politically correct to label people past middle age as “the old,” “the aged,” or “septuagenarians”; they are more properly referred to now as “older people,” “seniors,” or “senior citizens.” In the same token, to call people in the lower age bracket as “youths,” “juveniles,” “adolescents,” “greenhorns,” or “neophytes” would be insensitive; the socially acceptable generic terms today are “young persons” and “young people.” Then, when referring to ethnic group members in negative situations, it is now unthinkable for the mainstream mass media to run a discriminatory headline like this: “Lithuanian [Polynesian, Armenian, Dane, Filipino, etc.] Nabbed in Miami Multinational Drug Bust.” The era of gratuitously stereotyping ethnic people for shock effect is long over.

                               
                                             
Here in the Philippines, however, we are still prone to using dangerously unfair English-language stereotypes, particularly when referring to the disadvantaged sectors of our society. Take this recent headline of a leading national newspaper: “Old building collapses; 10 looters feared dead.”
         
The story reported: “Nasipit Mayor Enrico Corvera said most of the victims were scavengers looking for metals inside the dilapidated and concrete-walled building...when it collapsed at around 2 p.m. yesterday.” The headline categorically labeled those who died in the accident as “looters,” while the mayor simply identified them as “scavengers.”

A “looter,” by definition, is someone who “plunders or sacks in war,” or who “robs especially on a large scale and usually by violence or corruption”; a “scavenger,” on the other hand, is plainly “a garbage collector” or “a junk collector.” “Looting” is a criminal offense while “scavenging” is not, however lowly the occupation may appear, and no amount of headline-letter-count constraints can justify glossing over that difference in meaning. Because of the writer’s semantic ignorance, the victims have not only been killed owing to their poverty but were slandered even in death.

Avoiding unfairly focusing on irrelevant or discriminatory characteristics of people when describing them in negative situations. It’s obviously difficult for people to forego or curb the tendency to use derogatory language privately against their opponents or pet peeves. Human nature seems to be permanently wired for that. But to use blatantly discriminatory language in polite society or in the mass media is an altogether different matter. We have to avoid it not only in the interest of good taste and political correctness but also to avoid committing slander or libel.

Take this discriminatory reporting still prevalent in Philippine journalism: “Singer X was adjudged the ‘Female Vocalist of the Year’ award despite her diminutive size, being only 54 cm. on bare feet.” (What does her height got to do with her singing voice?) Or this spiel by a TV sports commentator: “The two runners performed in the 20K marathon like geriatrics just out of the hospital.” (In one fell swoop, this discriminatory remark slanders both the runners and ailing aged people in general.) And then this recent diatribe by a magazine columnist: “And when [Politician X], ever so slowly (and perhaps painfully), raised his arthritic right arm to emphasize a point, as we were taught to do in Ateneo elocution class, it was obvious to me that his target audience was the Living Dead.” (Deliciously wicked, that dig at “the Living Dead,” but the terribly unkind reference to Politician X’s pain in raising his supposedly arthritic right arm borders on the libelous, I think.)

Having taken a quick look at the progress English has made so far in fighting discriminatory language, we will now examine its hard-core grammar limitation that we already know so well, but which we must take pains to learn how to handle better: English has no gender-neutral pronoun for the third person singular, a quirk that forces it to use the generic masculine forms “he,” “him,” and “his” to refer to both men and women. We thus usually end up with discriminatory language that makes women invisible, like this: “The typical Filipino voter is a laborer who works in a factory, or a farmer who subsists in marginal farming. He has a wife who usually augments the family income with piecework or retail selling. Sometimes these roles are simply reversed.”

For gender equality, and also considering the fact that Filipino women slightly outnumber the men, it would be prudent for that statement to refer to the “Filipino” in the generic plural: “Majority of Filipinos are laborers who work in a factory, or farmers who subsist in marginal farming. They have spouses who usually augment the family income through piecework or retail selling.”

In sum, by being more discerning in our choice of words, we can truly make ourselves confidently and pleasantly nondiscriminatory in our English.

This is the continuation of my 1,631-word  essay with the original title “Using nondiscriminatory language” that formed Chapter 135 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 and published by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this part of the essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Using nondiscriminatory English – Part 2

(Next: The perils of sweeping generalizations)        May 16, 2024
                                                                                              
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
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