Jose Carillo's English Forum
English Grammar and Usage Problems => Use and Misuse => Topic started by: maxsims on May 25, 2009, 06:08:28 PM
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Joe,
From "The Ten Most Annoying etc..."
Nonnative English speakers....?
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Joe,
From "The Ten Most Annoying etc..."
Nonnative English speakers....?
Yes, the term "nonnative English speakers" does throw off not a few people, but it's a perfectly legitimate term that has gained currency in recent years, particularly in English as Second Language (ESL) teaching. It simply means people who speak English as a second or third language.
Just to give you an idea of how current the term is, there were 11,000 entries in Google for "nonnative English speakers" as of midnight just now. I'm rather comfortable using the term because I ran an English-language services company for almost five years until 2005, serving a largely institutional clientele in South Korea.
As to the absence of the usual hyphen between "non" and "native," it can also be unsettling but this is the way American English spells the term these days. For one, Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary spells it without the hyphen.
I'm sure you are not hitting me personally for using--and condoning--the word "nonnative" and that you mean well in your aversion to that word from a linguistics standpoint.
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My Funk & Wagnalls (admittedly a 1983 version) gives it no currency at all.
The trouble for us nonindians and nonaboriginals is that "nonnative", besides being a particularly ugly neologism, has a construction that leads us to place the emphasis on the first syllable, thereby further obscuring the word's meaning. Which, one would think, is why the hyphen was invented in the first place.
As the wise man once said, "If it ain't broke, etc."
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My Funk & Wagnalls (admittedly a 1983 version) gives it no currency at all.
The trouble for us nonindians and nonaboriginals is that "nonnative", besides being a particularly ugly neologism, has a construction that leads us to place the emphasis on the first syllable, thereby further obscuring the word's meaning. Which, one would think, is why the hyphen was invented in the first place.
As the wise man once said, "If it ain't broke, etc."
I can appreciate your discomfort--I hope it's not outright outrage--over some of the explosive changes that the English lexicon has undergone in recent years. In my case, though, not being a prescriptivist at heart, I can still sleep soundly despite them.
Max, if I may make a friendly suggestion, though: Perhaps it's time to retire your Funk and Wagnall's and use a more recent edition of any of the leading dictionaries today--if the largely descriptivist and American English-standard Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate doesn't suit you fine. I'm sure an up-to-date dictionary will give you a higher level of comfort with the hundreds of new words bursting off in the English lexicon--"noob," for instance, which the Global Language Monitor is so stridently bandying around as the 1,000,000th word in the English language. (Let's see if it gets admitted into the more respectable dictionaries, though--and if so, how soon.)
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Your suggestion is reasonable, but accepting the slow but insidious de-robing (note hyphen) of the English language is not on my agenda.
I can accept the reasoning behind the elimination of many hyphens - words like childish and preselection spring to mind - where attaching the prefix or suffix directly to the root word creates a perfectly logical (and eminently pronounceable) word.
But, when we teach our kids how to say hoop, loop, stoop, troop and coop, and then hit them with a mongrel such as cooperative, can we blame them for being a tad confused?
English is far from a phonetic language: why make it even less so?
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Your suggestion is reasonable, but accepting the slow but insidious de-robing (note hyphen) of the English language is not on my agenda.
I can accept the reasoning behind the elimination of many hyphens - words like childish and preselection spring to mind - where attaching the prefix or suffix directly to the root word creates a perfectly logical (and eminently pronounceable) word.
But, when we teach our kids how to say hoop, loop, stoop, troop and coop, and then hit them with a mongrel such as cooperative, can we blame them for being a tad confused?
English is far from a phonetic language: why make it even less so?
Yes, indeed, why take out the hyphen from traditionally hyphenated words? About six years ago, I was surprised by this development myself. The newspapers and magazines were then dropping those hyphens like dead flies. Were they misguided in doing so? To find out, I checked my digital Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary and this was what I found out: of the 2,495 "non-" words it listed, I would estimate nothing less than 85 percent of the entries spelled without a hyphen--from "nonaffiliated" to "nonadditive" to "nonaromatic" all the way to "nonzero." Gone even is the usual hyphen between the "non" and a word that starts with a vowel!
Why? The only answer I can think up is that it's the sign of the times. Sic transit gloria mundi! Or, more appropriately, sic transit gloria verbum!
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"...and Far from the Madding Gerund was their well-meaning but, alas, too-hurried attempt to transport their language mayhem from web to print so non-netizens and laypeople can share in the merriment."
You know what I'm about to ask, don't you....?
1. What the heck is a non-netizen?
2. Why is it not spelt nonnetizen....?
::)
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"...and Far from the Madding Gerund was their well-meaning but, alas, too-hurried attempt to transport their language mayhem from web to print so non-netizens and laypeople can share in the merriment."
You know what I'm about to ask, don't you....?
1. What the heck is a non-netizen?
2. Why is it not spelt nonnetizen....?
::)
“Netizen” is new English coinage for “an active participant in the online community of the Internet.” According to Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, the new word made it to the English language in 1994. That landmark year was, of course, when the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web to unify and integrate the Internet’s global information and communication structure.
As to why I spelled “non-netizen” with a hyphen, it’s because “netizen” is such a strange new word that it just might confound people even more if I prefixed it with “non” and didn’t supply the hyphen. With a hyphen, I think there’s a greater chance that people would see the parallel between “netizen” and the much more common word “citizen,” which, of course, was obviously the model for the creation of the new word. There would also be little danger that people might think that I’m foisting a nonsensical, nonexistent English word on them. In a few years, I’ll probably be comfortable enough to spell the negative form of the word as “nonnetizen” in the same way that I have become comfortable with older “non”-words spelled without the hyphen.
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Hi, Joe....
Just read the commendations for your new book.
Hmmm....One of them included:
"...On top of everything, he is up-to-date on current thinking about grammar, ably highlighting the distinction between formal and informal style and deftly tackling the issue of sexist language.”
Surely he meant to write up to date.....?
Or is this another one of those signs of the times? (Next thing we know, it will be signs-of-the-times!)
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Joe,
From "The Ten Most Annoying etc..."
Nonnative English speakers....?
Why would you fuss over that?
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And what about, "It's hotting up out here..." this is another Aaaaargh for me....BBC started it and it makes me, well, aaaargh!!!! ::)
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Just got my copy of "Give Your English the Winning Edge".
Aaaargh! Chapters 80-85 inclusive are printed upside down and back to front!
Are there no proofreaders in this country?
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Aaaargh! You must have gotten a spoiled copy from a bad printing batch! It's most likely a binding problem, though, rather than a proofreading one. All of my copies of GYEWE are perfectly OK for pages 80-85, and I'm positive that the others that passed my hands since the first printing in July 2009 were OK, too.
But a quality problem like this is really unpardonable, maxsims, so I'd like to apologize profusely for it. Could you possibly send the bad copy and your complaint to the address below and ask for a replacement?
Ms. Corazon Gonzales
Production Department
The Manila Times
371 A. Bonifacio Drive
Port Area, Manila 1018
I'm calling them by phone right after this to ask them to replace that bad copy immediately. Again, I'm very sorry that this had to happen to you of all people! If you can give me your address, I'll also send you a perfect copy with my compliments.
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Don't fret about it, Joe. I can live with it. After all, I spent a goodly amount of years reading leaded typeface upside down on the stone. But you may want to take a second look at the second par of the Preface.
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OK, I won't fret since you can live with the flaw. As to second paragraph of the book's preface, I must have already taken a thousand and one look at it since the first printing and I think it's as good as I can make it--unless, of course, you can pinpoint anything that can stand improvement.
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Call me pedantic, but I think that "primarily" attaches itself strongly to "written", instead of to "for people who...etc".
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While Joe is composing an answer to the above post, he may like to take a 1002nd look at the front cover of "Give Your English the Winning Edge".
Over the title is the kicker "This time, excellent English is now within your reach".
We are entitled to ask: "What happened last time?"
Logically, "this time" should be "now", but there already is a "now" in the sentence.
My guess is that this kicker was written by an advertising copywriter.
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Call me pedantic, but I think that "primarily" attaches itself strongly to "written", instead of to "for people who...etc".
To put things in proper perspective, the passage concerned is the second paragraph of the preface of my book, Give Your English the Winning Edge:
“It was primarily written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
In your little exercise of pedantry, maxsims, you say that “‘primarily’ attaches itself strongly to ‘written’, instead of to ‘for people who...etc.’” In that case, I presume that you would rather that “primarily” be positioned after “written,” as follows:
“It was written primarily for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
Here, the adverb “primarily” now specifically modifies the verb “written” alone. It’s a perfectly valid construction, but it so happens that it wasn’t my intention for “primarily” to modify only “written.” My intention was for “primarily” to modify the whole statement that follows it, in the same sense as the following construction of that sentence:
“Primarily, it was written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.”
I would have done it that way, making the adverb “primarily” lead off the whole sentence, but I was unhappy about that construction from a stylistic and articulation standpoint. This was because the preceding sentence also started with a modifying phrase, “As with the first book,” which serves as a transitional device linking the first paragraph of the preface to the second. For that purpose, of course, that modifying phrase absolutely must be positioned right at the beginning of that sentence and nowhere else.
Now, my writing and editing experience tells me that in an exposition, it’s unwise to start off two or more consecutive sentences with prepositional phrases, whether infinitive, prepositional, participial, or adverbial. This is because they tend to give expositions or narratives a choppy sound and a disjointed feel. To see what I mean, take a look at the following reconstruction of the second paragraph of my preface:
“As with the first book, this volume is meant to help nonnative English speakers demonstrably improve their written English without having to go back to the classroom. Primarily, it was written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions. Thus, after a quick survey of the problems most often encountered in the use of English, the book goes straight to the heart of the matter: how to construct clearer, livelier, and more readable sentences and how to keep the grammar, usage, and style of one’s writing aboveboard at all times.”
We now have all three consecutive sentences starting off with a prepositional phrase (“as with the first book”), an adverb (“primarily”), and another adverb (“thus”). To break that undesirable stylistic and structural pattern, I saw fit to reconstruct the second sentence by taking out the adverb “primarily” from up front and making it integral to the sentence. I positioned it right after the expletive “it was” to indicate the same sense that that sentence would have if the adverb were positioned as an adverbial modifier up front. Please reread that sentence now to get that sense; it may take some doing if you have strongly conditioned yourself to think that the sense should be otherwise, but that intended sense should eventually dawn on you if you open up your mind wide enough.
I realize that this has been a lengthy, highly involved explanation, but I hope that my own exercise of pedantry has satisfied your own exercise of it. Of course, I also hope that it has been instructive as well to Forum members about how the mind of pedants and advertising copywriters work.
While Joe is composing an answer to the above post, he may like to take a 1002nd look at the front cover of "Give Your English the Winning Edge".
Over the title is the kicker "This time, excellent English is now within your reach".
We are entitled to ask: "What happened last time?"
Logically, "this time" should be "now", but there already is a "now" in the sentence.
My guess is that this kicker was written by an advertising copywriter.
Regarding this kicker, “This time, excellent English is now within your reach,” you asked: “What happened last time?” You also suggested that logically, “this time” should be “now,” but there already is a “now” in the sentence, implying that “now” is redundant. And lastly, you guessed that the kicker was written by an advertising copywriter.
Well, maxsims, you probably already know that I came out with an earlier book, English Plain and Simple, before I came out with Give Your English the Winning Edge. Now that you ask me what happened that time when I came out with that first book, I will try to satisfy your curiosity by now taking the liberty of coining this belated, retroactive kicker for you: “Last time, good English came to be within your reach.” Focus very well on the word “good” so you won’t lose your way. Now, I ask you to segue to the present and to my other book, which now makes this claim apropos to that first claim: “This time, excellent English is now within your reach.” This is really how the advertising copywriter’s mind worked in me to come up with that kicker.
As for the grammar of that kicker, the adverbial phrase “this time” is meant to be “today”—the present time—modifying the entire statement “excellent English is now within your reach.” But why did I use “now” if I already used “this time” in the same sentence? It was to convey the idea of the continuing availability of excellent English (the book’s advertising promise) as well as to achieve creative repetition or stickiness. In that sense, maxsims, that kicker was indeed written by an advertising copywriter harnessing grammar for a specific marketing objective—the prescriptivist urge of grammar pedants notwithstanding!
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Regarding the kicker, I understand your logic, and it works well for people who are aware of the previous book and can recall its kicker. However, it is presumptious to put everyone into that category. I maintain the "rule" that such a statement, whether it segues from a previous statement or not, should make sense to the "cold" reader.
By the way, pviii of my copy of GYETWE has an orphan "levels". This error, which is a setting error and not a printing error, exists in all copies on display at the local National bookstore. Similarly, the otherwise-blank p18 has a superflluous title. And I am mystified by the line "p. cm." on pvi. These are errors that should have been detected by a competent spell/grammar checker AND by a competent proofreader.
I haven't read past p18 due to an enforced examination of the interior of the local hospital. If this hospital is typical, I can attest that Philippine hospitals must have the world's hardest mattresses and the world's prettiest nurses!
Back to "primarily". I believe the word would function better if positioned thus:
"It was written for, primarily, people who are finding...etc".
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The third paragraph of your posting is somewhat cryptic—due to a doubtful preposition usage, I really couldn’t figure out if you are referring to the hospital’s interiors or to yours—but I do hope that everything’s well with you, maxsims, and I mean it not in jest!
Anyway, I couldn’t reply to your grammar concerns earlier because I have been away from my workplace and my computer for a full 36 hours—the longest time that I hadn’t been able to attend to the Forum since it started in May this year. My wife, my two sons, and I are just back from a December reunion with my two sisters and brother and their respective families. With the interminable traffic from the Manila Centennial Airport to our hotel, the many side trips to see this or that place and to buy this or that piece of indigenous wardrobe, and the long, interminable talks about things past and present during practically every minute that we were together, the reunion just went on and on and on until jet lag finally overcame our balikbayan sister—she’s a medical doctor on vacation from the United States—and the rest of us seniors had to leave the hotel to get back to work and the younger generation to get back to school.
About the kicker for Give Your English the Winning Edge, I agree with you that as a general rule, such kickers “should make sense to the ‘cold’ reader” whether it segues from a previous statement or not. In marketing, however, we reckon with prospective book buyers in terms of whether they belong to the primary target audience or to the secondary or tertiary ones. I must point out that my first book, English Plain and Simple, was a bestseller in Philippine bookstores; so, from a marketing standpoint, we decided to primarily address those previous buyers rather than use a shotgun message for “cold” buyers in general. In effect, then, we assumed in formulating the book kicker that those previous readers already had “good English” by reading the first book, and that they would be interested in buying the new book by the same author to raise the level of their English to “excellent.” Indeed, the simple marketing logic here is that if we can just get those previous buyers to buy the new book, we can make the new book another bestseller. The new buyers from the “cold” segment will then just be gravy.
That, of course, is marketing logic as opposed to academic rules for English usage. It may ruffle the sensibilities of strict grammarians, but it’s the kind of language that sells most of the books that you find in bookstores. And remember: the front cover of a book is prime advertising space. You don’t clutter it with grammatically perfect but longwinded messages to please everyone. Just wow your primary target audience with a punchy message and you’ve got your marketing job done—and quickly and effectively at that.
Yes, as you point out, the first edition of Give Your English the Winning Edge is far from perfect. Since Gutenberg perfected the movable printing press, I guess this has been the destiny of most first editions—Neumann’s error function makes sure that nothing gets to be perfect in this universe. Indeed, the famous mathematician had actually postulated the existence of goblins whose job is to enforce the rule that “Nature abhors perfection” no matter if you deploy a thousand and one proofreaders. But please be assured that we are putting up a good fight to get those grammar goblins exorcised 99.99% for the second edition. Against all odds, we publishing mortals just have to keep on fighting for printing perfection!
As to your final point, maxsims, you suggest that “primarily” would function better if positioned as follows: “It was written for, primarily, people who are finding...etc.” Grammatically perhaps, but as you know, I’m not as hung up with comma usage as Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots & Leaves fame (or notoriety, depending on your grammar persuasion), with her “zero tolerance approach to punctuation.” I do believe that that sentence would look and read much better without those two commas setting off “primarily” from the rest of the sentence: “It was primarily written for people who are finding to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by higher academic studies, by the job market, and by the various professions.” So there.
Merry Christmas!
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"...an enforced examination of the interior of the local hospital..."
Hmmm....perfectly straightforward reference to the interior of the hospital, I would have thought.
“Nature abhors perfection”
Hmmm...when I was doing physics, it was "Nature abhors a vacuum". Mind you, there were many Neumanns in physics/maths, so perhaps it was another....perhaps the one who said, "Nature abhors a printer who is too cheap to employ a galley proofreader".... :)
I am now well, thank you.
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You're welcome, maxsims! I'm happy to know that you're well now.
I beg your pardon, but I'm still perplexed by this statement of yours: "...an enforced examination of the interior of the local hospital..."
If you meant that you were bedridden for sometime, the euphemistic statement I would have expected is this: "I had nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and the hospital walls."
This is why I had actually entertained the thought that you were in the country as a buying agent for a hospital chain in Australia, checking if that particular hospital you were referring to met the grade in terms of interior finishings and the pulchritude of its nursing staff. ::)
As to the Neumann I was referring to, it was John von Neumann, the Austro-Hungarian-born American mathematician who is regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century,making major contributions to set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, and computer science. A truly fascinating character, this Neumann! 8)
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"...I beg your pardon, but I'm still perplexed by this statement of yours: "...an enforced examination of the interior of the local hospital..."
If you meant that you were bedridden for sometime, the euphemistic statement I would have expected is this: "I had nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and the hospital walls."
This is why I had actually entertained the thought that you were in the country as a buying agent for a hospital chain in Australia, checking if that particular hospital you were referring to met the grade in terms of interior finishings and the pulchritude of its nursing staff..."
This illustrates how different races interpret English differently. An Australian, upon reading my text, would have known immediately that I had been taken ill, taken to the hospital and later discharged!
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How right you are, maxsims! So perhaps we should try harder to communicate in internationally recognizable English. :D At any rate, I hope you're now in the pink of health once again. Take care!
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Yes, Maxsims is right in the sense that in Britain, as in Australia, the people there would rather use the word "ill" rather than "sick" as in " I was taken ill with a bad stomach..." or "She became ill when she ate the uncooked oysters." People here only use the word sick when they refer to "vomit" or when a person says things that make the Brits "sick" with listening to their hooliganism ways. "Yes, she had been very ill until she died." I myself had to make some adjustments with these nuances and word-play since the Brits and the Americans are not exactly similar in many aspects. In Europe, too, the Europeans follow the British spelling,and not the American's. So, thirty years ago, I had to change and now it is a habit that's rather difficult to break unless I think twice to change the spelling of "humour" to humor , etc. I had to standardise my spelling (ways) in that regard. Also, even the "...ise" and "...ize".... :) ::)
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More than just from differences in English vocabulary and styling, Hill, I think the problem stems from differences in language register. In his original hospital-bed posting, maxsims was actually speaking deliberately in the kind of elliptical English meant to be understood only by kindred spirits. He was using an English that was meant to reveal some things and hide other details in roughly equal measure. This kind of language--this idiom or shibboleth, we might say--is actually exclusionary and cabalistic, and is neither British nor Australian English nor American English but some sort of euphemism or outright affectation. It's fun to do among fellow members of one's cabal, but in a public venue like this Forum, I make every effort not to speak that way to avoid sowing semantic confusion. Anyway, I think maxsims can be forgiven for doing so in that particular instance, for from my own experience, being bedridden in a hospital is actually not very hospitable to coming up with straight thoughts and straight talk. :D
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"...maxsims was actually speaking deliberately in the kind of elliptical English meant to be understood only by kindred spirits..."
I was....?
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"...Yes, Maxsims is right in the sense that in Britain, as in Australia, the people there would rather use the word "ill" rather than "sick"..."
Hill, I have never said, or implied, that Australians use "ill" rather than "sick". Please do not attribute that statement to me. For the record, I'd guess (and only guess) that "sick" is preponderant.
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Oops, sorry, Joe. My apologies. :) :-*
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You may call me Max! :D
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Don't tell me that "in spite" has become one word...?
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Nope, maxsims, its spelling is still the two-word "in spite." You must be referring to the mistaken spelling in the dialogue balloon of the cartoon in the homepage. It's an inadvertent mistake by my web programmer. Sorry about that! :-[ Unfortunately, it can only be corrected tonight as he's taken the afternoon off.
At any rate, as you must have already found out, that cartoon in the homepage is in reference to my critique of the wrong usage of the synonymous "despite" by one of the Metro Manila broadsheets. Here's what I said about the misuse in My Media English Watch (http://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=75bfe0ae0c4288e016ae9f5ca401e401&topic=495.msg1699#new) this week:
(a) Wrong form of preposition – The preposition “despite of” is in the wrong form. It should be “despite” only, without the “of.” The alternative form for that preposition that correctly uses “of” is “in spite of.” Both of them mean “in defiance or contempt of” or “without being prevented by,” and they are freely interchangeable.
Thanks for alerting me about the error!
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Chrissie Maher. OBE and founder of Plain English Campaign, could not take it anymore and said, “These sausage rolls have escaped from the technical production lines of the food industry to bring confusion and ruin the ‘ambience’ of our lunch breaks.”
One hopes that the above is not typical of THE Plain English Campaign, bearing, as it does, a strong similarity to the Australian Plain English Foundation's output.
It would appear that "any more" has become one word, and one is moved to ask "Why?".
Then, on reading the quoted sentence, one arrives at "bring confusion and ruin" and automatically associates the nound "ruin" with the verb "bring", only to discover that "ruin" is a verb whose object is "the ambience". (So spelt). Confusion indeed!
A simple "to" in front of "ruin" would have avoided it.
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I’ll look into the possible similarities between the prose outputs of the Britain-based Plain and English Campaign and the Australia-based Plain English Campaign. At the outset, though, I’d like to say that it would be perfectly all right with me if they are similar—or if they actually copied each other. After all, both are fighting for the same good English, aren’t they?
Yes, indeed, “any more” has now become the one word “anymore” in usage, and my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary makes this entry and detailed usage note about those two words:
anymore
Function:adverb
Date:14th century
1 : any longer <I was not moving anymore with my feet> — Anais Nin
2 : at the present time : NOW <hardly a day passes without rain anymore>
usage Although both anymore and any more are found in written use, in the 20th century anymore is the more common styling. Anymore is regularly used in negative <no one can be natural anymore — May Sarton>, interrogative <do you read much anymore?>, and conditional <if you do that anymore, I'll leave> contexts and in certain positive constructions <the Washingtonian is too sophisticated to believe anymore in solutions — Russell Baker>. In many regions of the United States the use of anymore in sense 2 is quite common in positive constructions, especially in speech <everybody's cool anymore — Bill White> <every time we leave the house anymore, I play a game called called “Stump the Housebreaker” — Erma Bombeck>. The positive use appears to have been of Midland origin, but it is now reported to be widespread in all speech areas of the United States except New England.
As to the grammar of Chrissie Maher’s statement, “These sausage rolls have escaped from the technical production lines of the food industry to bring confusion and ruin the ‘ambience’ of our lunch breaks,” I think the phrase “to bring confusion and ruin the ‘ambience’ of our lunch breaks” is grammatically OK both without or with the preposition ‘to” before ‘ruin’.” The use of the single “to” for the verbs “bring” and “ruin” as a compound verb phrase is perfectly good usage. However, as you pointed out, it would be much clearer if the two infinitive phrases “to bring confusion” and “to ruin the ‘ambience’ of our lunch breaks” are set in parallel, as in:
““These sausage rolls have escaped from the technical production lines of the food industry to bring confusion and to ruin the ‘ambience’ of our lunch breaks.”
It’s a matter of stylistic choice really.
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http://www.plainenglishfoundation.com/
Go to this site, see what is written under "What is Plain English?", and then tell me our language is in safe hands! >:(
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Thanks for giving me a link to the Plain English Foundation site, maxsims. I've looked over the site with great interest, but I left it with a very uneasy feeling. Australian English may be in safe hands under the aegis of that foundation, but I do think that plain English need not be that plain and that it need not be as sterile as the English of that website. English trainers need not be gorgeous or debonair, for God's sake, but they need not be all that plain and unexciting! They must at least be interesting and lively in disposition, and the advertising and promotions for them arresting and a joy to read. For who in his right mind would ever want to train under specialists "in plain English training, writing, editing, and public speaking and events"? I'd rather train under competent specialists in good, plain, and simple English--whether it's in the area of writing, editing, public speaking, and events! And why would anyone want to study under "a plain English trainer and an experienced ESL teacher"? I'd rather study under a reasonably good-featured trainer in plain English, even if he or she isn't as experienced as an altogether plain-looking teacher! And finally, maxsims, I admit that I'm a stickler for good English prose, but I don't think I'd ever like or enjoy being edited by "a plain English editor and writer"--even if he or she has sterling credentials and all the fancy titles from the fanciest universities in the world!
Perhaps the resource persons and trainers of the Plain English Foundation are really great shakes--I'll grant the foundation that--but I do think that the quest for plain English need not be carried to deadening, rock-bottom proportions--at least not to the level of the English of that website! ::)
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My sentiments exactly. And I notice you were too gentlemanly to comment on the many errors.
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Blatant sexual innuendoes
in headlines can get newspapers
into a lot of trouble!
If an innuendo is blatant, can it by definition still be considered an innuendo?
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Good, intriguing question!
Let’s see if “innuendo” will continue to hold water if it’s “blatant”:
Here’s the pertinent definition of “innuendo” according to my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:
innuendo
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -dos or -does
Etymology: Latin, by nodding, from innuere to nod to, make a sign to, from in- + nuere to nod; akin to Latin nutare to nod — more at NUMEN
Date: 1678
1 a : an oblique allusion : HINT, INSINUATION; especially : a veiled or equivocal reflection on character or reputation b : the use of such allusions <resorting to innuendo>
And here’s that dictionary’s definition for “blatant”:
blatant
Function: adjective
Etymology: perhaps from Latin blatire to chatter
Date: 1596
1 : noisy especially in a vulgar or offensive manner : CLAMOROUS
2 : completely obvious, conspicuous, or obtrusive especially in a crass or offensive manner : BRAZEN <blatant disregard for the rules>
synonyms see VOCIFEROUS
–blatantly adverb
We’ll notice that the main characteristic of an “innuendo” is the obliqueness or equivocalness of the allusion; the adjective “blatant,” on the other hand, denotes being “noisy especially in a vulgar or offensive manner” or “completely obvious, conspicuous, or obtrusive especially in a crass or offensive manner.” In short, the blatantness of the delivery of an “innuendo” doesn’t nullify the degree of its insinuation or obliqueness; it even intensifies it.
I would think then that whether the “innuendo” is delivered as a whisper to one’s ear, shouted with a megaphone from the rooftops, or written in a contrived way in headline of a newspaper story, its nature will remain unchanged so long as the allusion remains oblique or equivocal.
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Exactly. So it's not the sexual innuendoes that are blatant but the manner in which they are expressed. Quite a different thing.
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What kind of reasoning is that? If the manner the sexual innuendo is expressed is, in fact, "blatant," why can't someone say that it is "a blatant sexual innuendo"? Really now, where's the guy who says this coming from?