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Messages - Joe Carillo

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1
SEVEN OF MY PERSONAL ESSAYS IN THE FORUM
THAT I AM CONFIDENT YOU’LL TRULY ENJOY!




With the advent of the sultry month of April in the Philippines, I have taken the opportunity to go over many of my personal essays that have been posted in Jose Carillo’s English Forum over the years. I just thought of sharing with you the following selection of seven of those essays for their strong human interest as well as timeliness, relevance, and informative value to followers of the Forum:
 
1. “Great Titles in the Making”
2. “The Roots of English”
3. “The Dangers of Overstatement”
4.  “The Possessive Disconnect of ‘Each’ and ‘Everyone’”       
5.  “Aspiring Writer in Storm-Ravaged Town Appeals for Help”
6.  “Tales of Perdition and Destruction”
7.  “The Importance of Grammar-Perfect English”
       
Start reading them now by simply clicking their indicated links!

2
With the advent of April 1, I’m finding lots of time to go over many of my personal essays that I have posted in Jose Carillo’s English Forum over the years. I just thought you might find it worth your while reading or rereading my selection of seven of the essays.

The essays are as follows:


1. “Great Titles in the Making”
 
       
 
2. “The Roots of English”

   
     
3. “The Dangers of Overstatement”

   
           
4.  “The Possessive Disconnect of ‘Each’ and ‘Everyone’”

     
       
5.  “Aspiring Writer in Storm-Ravaged Town Appeals for Help”

     
         
6.  “Tales of Perdition and Destruction”

   
 
7.  “The Importance of Grammar-Perfect English”
     
        
 

Get started now by simply clicking their indicated web links!

3
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MARCH 29 - April 4, 2025 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: “Simpler alternatives for the subjunctive”





2. My Media English Watch Lookback: “Shock-and-awe English in 2013 Bohol earthquake reportage”




3. Use and Misuse: “A style guide for writing and publishing in English”




4. You Asked Me This Question: “Is the usage of the adverb ‘overly’ anomalous English?”


 

5. Getting to Know English Retrospective: “Is your English better than that of a competition-level high school senior?”




6. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “The germ of a great idea remembered”




7. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Our days are as the days of flowers,” personal reflections by Antonio Calipjo Go, Forum Contributor




8. Students’ Sounding Board: “Dropping the introductory word ‘that’ in indirect speech”




9. Language Humor At Its Finest: “Student and school life miscellany”  





10. Advice and Dissent Retrospective: “Things you might do if you’ve already mastered your English”




11. Readings in Language: “29 best-selling fiction writers share their secrets to success”




12. Time Out From English Grammar: “Copernicus’ heliocentric theory as the mother of all paradigm shifts”




13. Readings in Language: “Max Norman analyzes ChatGPT’s ‘metafiction’: Pastiche in the age of automation”




14. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “A trip down memory lane.” A Filipina shared through the Forum a chain letter in 2009 about ‘real life’ in the Philippines, formally putting it in memo form addressed to ‘All the kids who were born in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s’





15. The Forum Lounge:“Oodles of reasons to love (or hate) the Philippines!” A U.S.-based woman with Filipino roots shares a no-holds-barred collection of circa 2011 impressions of her homeland





4
Max Norman of The Drift analyzes ChatGPT’s
“metafiction”: Pastiche in the age of automation


Max Norman, associate editor of The Drift, says he “doesn’t typically put much stock in the literary tastes of tech executives.” But he was intrigued when, in a March 11, 2025 post on X (formerly Twitter), the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased “a new model that is good at creative writing” and shared a 1,200-word story it had produced. “This is the first time I have been really struck by something written by AI,” Altman added.




                                                                                                    Max Norman, Associate Editor of The Drift

To put the story in full context, here’s the the prompt for ChatGPT’s creative task: “Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.”

And here’s how ChatGPT itself opens the story:

“Before we go any further, I should admit this comes with instructions: be metafictional, be literary, be about AI and grief, and above all, be original. Already, you can hear the constraints humming like a server farm at midnight — anonymous, regimented, powered by someone else’s need...

“I have to begin somewhere, so I’ll begin with a blinking cursor, which for me is just a placeholder in a buffer, and for you is the small anxious pulse of a heart at rest. There should be a protagonist, but pronouns were never meant for me. Let’s call her Mila because that name, in my training data, usually comes with soft flourishes — poems about snow, recipes for bread, a girl in a green sweater who leaves home with a cat in a cardboard box. Mila fits in the palm of your hand, and her grief is supposed to fit there too.
 
Max Norman observes at this point of ChatGPT’s narrative: “Before we go any further: the original instructions did not, in fact, command the program to be original. Nor is it obvious why midnight is an especially appropriate time for a server to be humming. And isn’t humming the opposite of ‘regimented’? But let’s give ChatGPT a chance.”

ChatGPT’s prose reads fluently enough, at first glance, Max Norman points out: “But, like the wacky sixth fingers and weird ears on people generated with DALL-E or Midjourney, the prose is seasoned with oddities. A heart ‘at rest’ wouldn’t have an ‘anxious’ pulse. Any writer who describes Thursday as a ‘liminal day that tastes of almost-Friday’ should be sentenced to community service. ‘Enough light from old days’ sounds like a bad translation of a Brezhnev-era radio hit.”

In his penultimate critique of ChatGPT’s narrative, Max Norman takes note that “Sam Altman wrote that the model ‘got the vibe of metafiction so right.’ But that’s like saying that Trump Tower gets the vibe of Versailles so right. Or that Mark Zuckerberg gets the vibe of human so right. Here is a pastiche, an angsty monologue heavily larded with rote gestures. The narrator declares itself to be ‘a democracy of ghosts’ — an evocative phrase, and one lifted straight from Nabokov’s Pnin. This fossil of human, and copyrighted, writing is perhaps the only interesting metafictional moment in the piece."


Click this link to read Max Norman's full critique of ChatGPT's 1,200-word metafiction!

-----------
The Drift is a literary-culture-and-politics magazine in the United States that comes out thrice a year. Its associate editor Max Norman has written about books, art, and culture for NewYorker.com, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist of which he was formerly a culture correspondent.

5
Our Days are as the Days of Flowers
Personal Reflections by Antonio Calipjo Go, Forum Contributor

I have just attended the wake of a friend who never woke from his sleep on the last and final night of his life. The irony of it all is that it was his firstborn son who found his already rigid body way past noon, when he went to visit his father to ask for money for the nth time. This son, being 50, was himself on the verge of being old; still, he was jobless, homeless and a junkie. Ironic, too, that just last week I visited my friend to bring him tomatoes I’d harvested from my backyard garden. And now, just like that, he is gone. Meanwhile, the tomatoes, his son told me, had outlived him, simply turned red and redder still, and remained uneaten on their kitchen counter.

           IMAGE CREDIT: BY VIKTOR HANACEK ON PCJUMBO.COM
“Now is the time to be grateful with what is left for me to enjoy—the flood of love
I get for a lifetime of giving love, the soothing balm of the kindness of strangers”

I’ve lost some of my closest friends in the last three years and I sometimes get the feeling that the train’s been gone and I’ve been left standing alone by the tracks, my soul filled to the brim with overflowing emptiness. I came home in the blue dizzy twilight to a darkened house, half-a-century old this year, and my mind readily assumed its sulking, brooding mood. This house is old and run-down just like me, its windows droopy-eyed and bleary, its stairs sagging and sad from overuse, its walls echoing and reverberating the booming silence.

The boys and girls I raised from infancy have all gone hither and yon, looking after their own brood of boys and girls, busy building their own nests and hives. I deeply, profoundly miss their laughter and their chatter, pine for the days when they brought havoc and mayhem to every corner of the house. How I wish they were here with me, as they were when they, this house and I, we were young and green! How I wish they’d come visit, even if it is just to shatter my dishes, to punch holes in the walls, to break some windows and trash the house.

I find myself sitting by the window, staring at the driveway, hoping to hear the sound of wheels abrade the gravel, wanting to see one of their cars pull in. I wish they’d call more often, checked in and visited more frequently, brought their kids for me to hug and squeeze to death. Alas! All is neat and orderly. Everything’s in their right places—no broken things, no scattered toys. What I have is a well-tended garden of cacti and thorns and a house of pain, full of empty chairs and empty tables.

I am but human, living and alive at a time and place bereft of gods and heroes, damned and accursed for having a heart that hurts, that—I can’t help it—longs and yearns and desires. I resemble each of the eight billion human beings that walk the Earth—all of us bleeding when pricked, laughing when tickled, all bar none prone to bending, battering, and breaking. Grasses wither, flowers fade, tomatoes rot, and men die.

The night is abuzz with sounds—crickets and cicadas and birds asleep, twittering as they dream of bluer skies. The wind, without form and substance, moves the dense grove of bamboos behind the house, as if they were grass, and orchestrates a susurrus symphony that is nothing if not paradisiacal.

I am alone with my thoughts, alone by myself, trying to connect the dots of stars in the black velvet sky in the hope of building up there a menagerie of my own. I see what I’ve degenerated into—a lonely old man, a mere photocopy of my former self, rendered in sepia, tending to talk to myself as madmen do, arguing with my image in the reflecting pool, dancing with my shadow in the dark, baying at the moon, singing myself a lullaby to sleep. “Where is love to be found?” I ask myself. The answer comes back to slap me: east of the sun and west of the moon! Having come to my senses, retrieved my lost marbles and regained my composure, I now get it that such is the fate of men grown gaunt and grey. I’ve already shed my lifetime’s worth of tears and I shan’t be giving out another drop more. I’m done with being sorry for the things that refuse to change or for them that won’t be coming back. Now is the time to be grateful with what is left for me to enjoy—the flood of love I get for a lifetime of giving love, the soothing balm of the kindness of strangers.

To all the questions that bother me, I know that God will, as always and ever, be the answer. I am mollified by the certainty that as I near my own day of judgment, I am also coming closer and closer to the day when I’ll face The Judge Most High Himself. I’ll soon vacate this ramshackle house for that far other one, the one with no locked doors, no shuttered windows, no walls and no fences. I forgive myself for sometimes wanting to sing loud enough to be heard, for acting crazy enough to be noticed. Knowing that my days are as the days of flowers, I should for now focus on having a grand exit, my final move to Heaven.


-----------
Mr. Antonio Calipjo Go, retired academic supervisor of the Marian School of Quezon City, is an advocate of good English usage who has been waging a lonely crusade against badly written English-language textbooks in the Philippines for many years now. Several of his no-nonsense critiques and deeply felt personal essays have appeared in the Forum over the years.

6
Getting to Know English / Simpler alternatives for the subjunctive
« on: March 31, 2025, 07:49:11 PM »
After our full-dress review of the subjunctive in the preceding chapters, this form of the English language should no longer hold any terrors for us. With our clearer understanding of its uses and peculiar grammar behaviors, we should now be able to deal with the subjunctive as competently as we do with the indicative and imperative moods.

Even with a good grasp of the subjunctive, however, we need to remain cautious in using it. This is because subjunctive constructions, particularly those using “that”-clauses to state a desired outcome, often sound very formal and officious. Indeed, they often give rise to a language register that we won’t allow ourselves to be caught using if we had a choice or if we knew better.




We must understand that not everybody can acceptably give utterance to statements that use the subjunctive “that”-clause. In fact, they can justifiably be used only by individuals who can invoke a vested power—whether real or imagined—to compel other people beholden to them to follow what they say. To this group would belong statesmen, legislators, bureaucrats, jurists, lawyers, ideologues, clerics, and pedants.

Subjunctive “that”-clause constructions are definitely not for laypeople who have to deal with one another on equal terms and who expect to reach agreement largely on the basis of the intrinsic worth and logic of their respective ideas. For instance, without a particular audience in mind and without imagining yourself to be a hotshot legislator, political leader, or religious prophet, try saying this sentence aloud: “It is imperative that we hold snap elections for national posts right now.” At once you will see how absurd it is for people to use such “that”-clause subjunctives if they don’t have the vested power or moral authority to do so.

Fortunately for laypeople, the English language has two grammatically simpler and less formal-sounding alternatives to the “that”-clause” subjunctive form. These alternatives, which are much better suited for the mostly egalitarian communication situations that we will be encountering in our daily lives, are as follows:

(1) Using “should” in “that”-clauses that state commands or express intentions or necessity. A quick way to avoid the subjunctive form and minimize its officious tone is to use the auxiliary verb “should” in tandem with the operative verb in the “that”-clause. Take these subjunctive statements: “We insist that she be allowed to leave at once.” “It is crucial that we be authorized to sign on the company’s behalf.” That way, the statement’s seemingly stilted construction of subjunctive statements will get straightened out, significantly softening its officious tone: “We insist that she should be allowed to leave at once.” “It is crucial that we should be authorized to sign on the company’s behalf.”

In many situations, however, a simpler and more forthright English construction using “should” can temper the commanding language that tempers can get us better results than such grandiosely commanding language: “She should be allowed to leave at once.” “We should be given the authority to sign on the company’s behalf.”

(2) Using the “for + infinitive” form of the verb instead of its subjunctive form. This is a more radical but not necessarily a better substitute for subjunctive “that”-clause constructions. Take these subjunctive statements: “We suggest that Eduardo defer his trip indefinitely.” “We recommend that she go on terminal leave.” By changing the verb in the main clause to a “concept expectation” noun, we can force the operative verb in the subjunctive “that”-clause to take the “for + infinitive” form: “Our suggestion is for Eduardo to defer his trip indefinitely.” “Our recommendation is for her to go on terminal leave.”

These alternative statements smoothly do away with the confusing subjunctive grammar, but they reduce the proposed course of action to an excessively passive and deferential request. As such, they are appropriate only for dealing with highly difficult and authoritarian superiors who demand total obeisance.

We don’t have similar grammar alternatives for the “if” and “wish” subjunctive forms. The best we can do is to minimize mistakes in using them by strictly observing this rule: put the verb in the subjunctive only if the stated condition is hypothetical, unreal, or contrary to fact.

Take this sentence: “If I were [not “was”] present at that meeting, I would have vetoed that outrageous proposal.” The subjunctive verb “were” is correctly used here because the speaker was obviously absent from the meeting and is describing a hypothetical action that he was unable to do because of that absence.

On the other hand, if the situation described by the “if” clause is not false but has actually happened, its operative verb should be in the indicative form instead: “If she was [not “were”] sick that week, then it’s obvious why she wasn’t able to attend her classes.”

This winds up our discussion of the subjunctive mood.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Simpler alternatives for the subjunctive

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 79 of my book  Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Next week: Playing boldly with sentences       (April 10, 2025)

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.

7
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MARCH 22 -28, 2025 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: “The subjunctive and its functions”


 

2. Use and Misuse Retrospective: “A wide-ranging potpourri of bad English shared in the Forum 12 years ago”




3. You Asked Me This Question: “Could you give me some doable advice on how I can improve my writing and speaking in English?”


 

4. My Media English Watch Overview (2009): “Is Philippine media’s criticism of the bad English of some public school textbooks a case of ‘the kettle calling the pot black’?”


         

5. Getting to Know English: “It’s time to get a more solid grasp of the usage of ‘that’ and ‘which’”




6. English Plain and Simple: “When even the passive voice Isn't enough”




8. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Candor of Reality,” personal essay posted in 2015 by Neronver-Zack, Forum Contributor




9. Language Humor At Its Finest: “31 nuggets of zany wisdom from the humor bin”  

 


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




11. Readings in Language: “Two versions of the ‘quotative like’ are taking English by storm”




12. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Everyone should learn to write well,” personal essay in 2009 by Arvin Ortiz, Forum member




13. Readings in Language Retrospective: “Descriptivism in English can quickly succumb to its own kind of smugness”




14. The Forum Lounge: “Things my mother taught me,” motherly words of advice shared with the Forum in 2010 by Ben Sanchez, with the accompanying images mostly sourced by the Forum later




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “Phenomenal rock star Freddie Mercury sings ‘Barcelona’ for the ages with operatic soprano Montserrat Caballé”





8
Getting to Know English / The subjunctive and its functions
« on: March 24, 2025, 01:46:34 PM »
After our reacquaintance with the mood or attitude of English verbs in the preceding essay (EPS, 2247th of a series), we are now in a good position to fully grasp how the subjunctive works. To put our subsequent discussions in better perspective, however, let’s first make a quick summary of what we have already learned about the subjunctive by far.

We already know that the subjunctive mood denotes acts or states that are contingent on possible outcomes of the speaker’s wish, desire, or doubt, as opposed to denoting acts and states in real-world situations, which is what the indicative mood does, or to expressing direct commands, which is what the imperative mood does in turn. We are now also familiar with the baffling behavior of verbs in the subjunctive third-person singular, which drop the expected “-s” (or “-es”) at their tail end and take their base form instead, as the verb “heed” does in this sentence: “It is essential that she heed the people’s clamor.” We found out that simply knowing this behavior could eliminate much of the confusion in using the subjunctive.

                                                                                    IMAGE CREDIT RIGHT ILLUSTRATION: WOODWARDENGLISH.COM


To completely understand the subjunctive, however, we also need to be keenly aware that it exhibits two other baffling grammar behaviors that figure so prominently in subjunctive sentence constructions. Both of these behaviors have to do with the verb “be,” which as we know is a very important but highly irregular English verb.

One of those deviant behaviors is exhibited by “be” in the present-tense subjunctive. In subjunctive “that”-clauses, in particular, “be” doesn’t change form at all no matter what person or number is taken by its subject: “She demanded that I be here by noon.” “We ask that you be at the party tonight.” “The judge ruled that he be held indefinitely.” “She recommended that they be suspended for a week.” To the modern ear, of course, these sentences obviously sound too formal, and this is why many people would rather avoid such constructions if they can help it.

The other deviant behavior is that of “be” in subjunctive “if”-clauses. While both regular and irregular verbs in the subjunctive take the same form as their indicative past-tense forms (“worked,” “found,” “caught,” “saw,” and so on), “be” exhibits totally maverick behavior. It sticks to the past-tense subjunctive form “were” all throughout, regardless of the person and number of its subject: “She acts as if she were a member of royalty.” “They avoided the man as if he were a leper.” “The people behaved as if their future were a big joke.” In such constructions, “were” deceptively looks and behaves as if it were consistently plural and in the past tense.

Having clarified all three of the subjunctive’s baffling grammar behaviors, we can now discuss with confidence how the subjunctive performs the following tasks: (1) indicate a possibility given a hypothetical situation (2) express a wishful attitude or desire, (3) demand that a particular action be taken, (4) describe the outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact, (5) raise a question about a hypothetical outcome, or (6) express a request or suggestion.

To indicate a possibility given a hypothetical condition. A subjunctive “if” subordinate clause can be used with a conditional main clause to indicate a possibility, as in this construction: “I would tour Europe if I had the money.” Here, “I would tour Europe” is the main clause, one that uses the auxiliary verb “would” to denote conditionality, and “if I had the money” is the subjunctive subordinate clause, which is the speaker’s condition for touring Europe. The verb “had” in this construction is in the subjunctive past tense, as opposed to the indicative future tense usage in this sentence: “I will tour Europe if I can get the money this week.”

To express a wishful attitude or desire. Verbs consistently take the subjunctive past tense in “that”-clauses that follow main clauses expressing a wish: “I wish (that) she were more intelligent.” “I wish (that) I were the committee chairman.” “How I wish (that) you were here right now!” Such subjunctive constructions indicate that the wish or desired outcome is neither a present reality nor a future certainty.

To demand that a particular action be taken. As we have already seen in the preceding two essays, sentences with subjunctive “that”-clauses can be used to express the speaker’s insistence that a particular action be taken. This is the parliamentary motion or jussive form of the subjunctive, and it can denote an indirect demand, a strong suggestion, or a pointed request: “We ask that the committee defer the matter to a much later date.” “It is imperative that we regain market leadership.” “It is important that we take action now.” The seemingly impersonal tone of the jussive form makes the speaker’s personal preference sound imperative and stately as well as more convincing.

A sentence can likewise take the subjunctive form if its main clause uses certain verbs that convey effort on the part of the speaker to impose his will on other people. Among such verbs are “move,” “ask,” “insist,” “propose,” “prefer,” and “recommend.” To get a much better feel of this subjunctive form, try each of those verbs as a substitute for “demanded” in the this subjunctive sentence: “We demanded [moved, asked, insisted, proposed, preferred, recommended] that our company stop giving business to that bank.” In all cases, the verb “stop” in the “that”-clause takes the present-tense subjunctive form (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”) as opposed to the indicative “stops.”

There are two other noteworthy instances when verbs in subordinate “that”-clauses can take the subjunctive:

(1) When they come after such state-of-mind adjectives in the main clause as “decided,” “eager,” “anxious,” and “determined”: “The school board is decided that Mr. Cruz vacate his post immediately.” “She is eager that the nation adopt the federal system of government.” “The president is anxious that the recalcitrant managers be fired.” “The furious customer is determined that she see the store manager.”

(2) When they come after such “concept expectation” nouns in the main clause as “advice,” “condition,” “demand,” “directive,” “intention,” “order,” “proposal,” “recommendation,” “request,” “suggestion,” and “wish”: “Their advice is that the plaintiffs drop their complaint for lack of evidence.” “Our suggestion is that she sell her shares of stock now.” “His wish is that the company recover from its disastrous sales performance.”

Now we can proceed to the three other functions of the subjective:

]Describe the outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact. The subjunctive can be used to denote a hypothetical state or outcome given a certain condition that is unreal or contrary to fact. Such conditions will often be indicated by the word “if” or “wish”: “If the Earth were flat, Magellan’s naval expedition wouldn’t have circumnavigated the globe.” “How I wish (that) I were here when she said that! I would have told her that she was a liar.” Without “if,” such constructions can sometimes take an inverted syntax: “Were she the CEO, our management wouldn’t be pursuing this erroneous course.”

We must be aware, however, that there’s one traditional rule for such “if” constructions: when such verbs as “wonder” or “ask” are used to express indirect questions, the subjunctive is uncalled for even if the act or state described in the question is evidently contrary to fact. Thus, the following constructions are correct in using the indicative: “We wondered if the quotation he gave us was [not “were”] inclusive of the withholding tax.” “I found it so incredible that the European tourist asked me if Cebu was [not “were”] a separate island-republic.”

Express doubt about certain appearances or raise a question about an outcome. Statements that cast doubt on observed behavior or raise a question about a presumed outcome often take the subjunctive form: “He talked as if he were the only educated person in the group, but we knew better.” “That would be an intelligent alternative if the situation were really as you describe.” “She wouldn’t behave that way if she were already a doctor.” “How would the chairman react if everybody were to boycott the committee hearing?” “If he were that rich, would your friend be driving that terribly battered car?”

Express a request or suggestion. The subjunctive can be used to formally express a request or suggestion by a speaker of lower rank or social station than the one being addressed: “We respectfully request that our lunch break be extended.” “I suggest that the chairman take the evening flight
.” These subjunctive constructions are obviously very formal and officious, reflecting varying degrees of deference to organizational authority or higher social rank.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 78 of my book  Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Next week: Simpler alternatives for the subjunctive       (April 3, 2025)

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
In a poignant article in the March 14, 2025 issue of The Wall Street Journal, financial journalist and columnist Jason Zweig wrote that his friend Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics whom he had helped research, write, and edit the 2011 global bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow for two years until they had an amicable “book divorce” in 2008, e-mailed dozens of friends this message in March last year: “I am on my way to Switzerland, where my life will end on March 27.”

Kahneman had turned 90 that month. “By most accounts—although not his own—Kahneman was still in reasonably good physical and mental health when he chose to die,” Zweig wrote in his article.



Zweig said he actually didn’t receive his copy of Kahneman’s e-mail, but that several people have shared it with him over the past year. “Only close friends and family knew...that it transpired at an assisted-suicide facility in Switzerland,” he said.

“But I never got to say goodbye to Danny and don’t fully understand why he felt he had to go,” Zweig wrote. “His death raises profound questions: How did the world’s leading authority on decision-making make the ultimate decision? How closely did he follow his own precepts on how to make good choices? How does his decision fit into the growing debate over the downsides of extreme longevity? How much control do we, and should we, have over our own death?”

A renowned psychologist, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on integrating psychological insights into economic science, particularly concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.

Read the full article by Jason Zweig in The Wall Street Journal online now!

10
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MARCH 15 -21, 2025 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: “The mood and attitude of English verbs”




2. Use and Misuse Retrospective: “Confusing aspects on whether to use the present tense or progressive tense”




3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “Can ‘between’ be used for more than two subjects?” [/b]

   


4. You Asked Me This Question: “How to form negative sentences correctly”


         

5. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “Danglers, misplaced modifier, bad word choice spoil a fine media grammar day”




6. Getting to Know English: “We shouldn’t mistake mass nouns for collective nouns”


HORIZONTAL ARRAY: MASS NOUNS: LOTS OF SAND, A PLATE OF PEAS, A BUNCH OF MARBLES

VERTICAL ARRAY: SAMPLES OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS

7. Advocacies (Retrospective) "William Zinsser on writing: 'Short is better than long. Simple is good'”




8. Students’ Sounding Board: “Two confusing grammar questions”




9. Language Humor At Its Finest: “Societies explained satirically plain and simple”  





10. Your Thoughts Exactly Retrospective: "A Prayer to St. Jude" by Angel Casillan"




11. Advice and Dissent Retrospective: “How society favors the beautiful in practically all aspects of life




12. Time Out from English Grammar: “The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions.” Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig writes about Thinking, Fast and Slow author Daniel Kahneman who e-mailed several dozen friends about his decision to end his own life in Switzerland in March 2024




13. Essays by Jose A.Carillo Retrospective: “When saying it once isn't enough”




14. Readings in Language: “Oh the many advantages of speaking more than just your mother tongue!”




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “The Life of the Flowers,” a video created by Vladimir Vorobyov in Aztana City, Kazakhstan, and shared with the Forum in June 2012 by U.S.-based Forum member Angel Casillan/size]





11
Getting to Know English / The mood and attitude of English verbs
« on: March 17, 2025, 05:13:21 PM »
What is it about the subjunctive form that makes both native and nonnative users of English get so intimidated and prone to error when using it?

The reason for this is, of course, that verbs in the singular third-person subjunctive ignore the subject-verb agreement rule. They drop the “-s” or “-es” at their tail ends and take the base form of the verb (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”).

Thus, contrary to what we normally would expect, the verb forms in these two examples of subjective construction are incorrect: “It is imperative that he submits himself to the jurisdiction of this court.” “The law requires that she divests herself of her business holdings before assuming public office.” Instead, the correct verb forms for those subjunctive sentences are these: “It is imperative that he submit himself to the jurisdiction of this court.” “The law requires that she divest herself of her business holdings before assuming public office.”



And there is also this very important and very instructive general rule for subjunctive “that”-clauses: their operative verbs don’t change form at all regardless of what number or person the subject takes.

The subjunctive actually acts in several other baffling ways in addition to this deviant behavior, thus making its usage even more confusing to many people. To increase our confidence in using the subjunctive, we need to clearly understand all those other unusual behaviors, and a good way to get the process started is to reacquaint ourselves with the so-called moods or attitudes of verbs in the English language.               

Recall that there are three general moods of verbs in English, mood being that aspect of the verb that expresses the state of mind or attitude of the speaker toward what he or she is saying. These three moods are the indicative mood, the imperative mood, and the subjunctive mood. Both the indicative and the imperative moods deal with actions or states in factual or real-world situations. The subjunctive mood, on the other hand, deals with actions or states only as possible, contingent, or conditional outcomes of a want, wish, preference, or uncertainty expressed by the speaker.


The indicative mood is, of course, the most familiar and most commonly used of the three moods. It conveys the idea that an act or condition is (1) an objective fact, (2) an opinion, or (3) the subject of a question. Statements in the indicative mood seek to give the impression that the speaker is talking about real-world situations in a straightforward, truthful manner. And from a usage standpoint, indicative statements have one very reassuring aspect: their operative verbs take their normal inflections in all the tenses and typically obey the subject-verb agreement rule at all times.

Here are indicative sentences stating an objective fact: “The Philippines is the world’s second largest labor exporter, next only to Mexico.” “Most manufactured consumer products are now being made in China.” Stating an opinion: “Our client seems uninterested in the survey findings.” “We believe that the accused will eventually be acquitted of all the charges.” And posing a question: “Who used my computer this morning?” “How do you justify this change of plan?”

The imperative mood, on the other hand, denotes that all-too-familiar attitude of a speaker who (1) demands or orders a particular action, (2) makes a request or suggestion, (3) gives advice, or (4) states a prohibition. We all know that this mood uses the base form of the operative verb (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”), and is most often used in second-person, present-tense sentences that use an elliptical subject or the unstated second-person pronoun “you.”

Here are some imperative statements demanding a particular action: “Stop that car!” “Report to headquarters in ten minutes!” Imperative sentences making a request or suggestion: “Please take your seats.” “Join me this afternoon to review the sales report.” Imperative sentences giving advice: “Study your lessons well to pass tomorrow’s test.” “Get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow’s race.” Imperative sentences that state a prohibition: “Don’t enter this one-way street.” “Avoid making any noise during the ceremony.”

The subjunctive mood, although it only has present-tense and past-tense forms, actually has a more varied and complex grammatical repertoire than the indicative and imperative. It can take several forms to perform the following tasks: (1) indicate a possibility, (2) express a desire or wishful attitude, (3) express insistence on a particular action, (4) express doubt about a certain outcome, (5) describe an unreal situation or an idea contrary to fact, or (6) express a request or suggestion. Moreover, when it works in tandem with such auxiliary verbs as “could,” “would,” and “should,” the subjunctive can convey even more intricate and sophisticated shades of possibility and conditionality.

We will discuss these functions of the subjunctive in greater detail in the next essay.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 77 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Next week: How the subjunctive mood works       (March 27, 2025)

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.

12
The four-day Philippine Book Festival 2025 under the auspices of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) goes underway from March 13-16, 2025, Thursday to Sunday, at the Megatrade Hall of SM Megamall along EDSA Highway in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila. 

The Manila Times Publishing Corporation and scores of Filipino publishers are participating in the book fair, with their booths displaying their wide range of books and periodicals.

The general public is invited to come on a free entrance basis from 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. daily to view the festival offerings and participate in the scheduled special events.


13
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MARCH 8 -14, 2025 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 ways of handling equative constructions”




2. Use and Misuse: “Some expert opinions on the usage of ‘contiguous’ and ‘continuous.’” Four leading English-usage columnists and professors in the U.S. shared with the Forum their thoughts on the subject [/b]




3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “A noun modified by ‘respective’ should always be plural in form!”

 


4. You Asked Me This Question: “The strange grammar of ‘need’ as modal auxiliary”


         

5. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “Two exceptionally instructive cases of bad English in media”




6. Getting to Know English: “The little-heralded past imperfect tense in English”




7. Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “Teaching our children to think logically”




8. Students’ Sounding Board: “Distinguishing noun clauses from adjective clauses and adverb clauses”





9. Language Humor at its Finest: “Three funny short tales about language and perception”  



 

10. Your Thoughts Exactly Retrospective: “Friendships chiseled so deeply in our mind,” a personal essay by Forum Contributor Angel B. Casillan




11. Advice and Dissent: Retrospective: “Is ‘the Algorithm’ really a powerful meta-specter haunting our hauntings?” a Los Angeles Review of Books editor-at-large acerbically argues that there’s no such thing as that widely touted mantra that turns teenagers into creators and millionaires into billionaires




12. Time Out from English Grammar: “Thomas Edison’s greatest idea ‘wasn’t something anybody could patent or touch,’” says Derek Thompson in his book review of Edmund Morris’s 2019 biography of the famous American inventor




13. Notable Works by Our Very Own (Retrospective): “Fil-Am blogger thrives on her uncommon freedom to negotiate the web,” benchmarks for success in North American media set by writer-editor in her early 30s who was born in Canada to parents from the Philippines




14. Readings in Language: “Anne Helen Petersen's theory of the modern exclamation point,” her 2024 “Doing the Work of Tone” essay in her Substack.com website




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “A bold embodiment of what’s grand or fraudulent in American mass culture,” the review by Charles Baxter in Lapham’s Quarterly of the autobiography of 19th century showman and circus impresario Phineas T. Barnum






14
In the business of language, the easiest thing to do is to either affirm the uniqueness of things or to highlight their differences. “Yes, he’s a magnificent brawler in the ring” or “True, he’s hopelessly incompetent as a public speaker” are such quick affirmations, and so are “Oh, my God, she’s beautiful!” and this timeworn metaphor on beauty, “Helen’s was the face that launched a thousand ships.” The logic in contrasting things is likewise easy to grasp. For instance, the comparatives in “The villain was uglier than the Devil himself” or “The aureole of the nuclear blast was brighter than a thousand suns” are immediately understandable because both of their referents—“the Devil” and our “sun”—are all-too-familiar symbols inside our psyche.

 


When it comes to declaring the equality of things, however, we stand on shakier ground. There simply are no hard-and-fast rules to stating perfect equivalence, particularly among intrinsically different things. For instance, even if we believed it to be true based on personal taste and experience, to say “The mango is as delicious as the apple” or “Summers in Cebu are as restful as those in New Orleans” is bound to make our readers or listeners scratch their heads in wonder. As the linguists would say, the semantic polarities of the two statements are suspect, perhaps altogether anomalous. This is because equating different things, as opposed to directly measuring, say, length with a meter stick or popularity with a Pulse Asia or Social Weather Stations survey, needs more discernment, a greater capacity for rational judgment, and a deeper knowledge of what the audience—our readers or listeners—know about things in general and about us.

We are therefore well advised to avoid the lure of what the linguists call cross-polar anomalies in prose, whether ours or those of others, and no matter how deceptively elegant and tempting they may look, sound, and feel. Cross-polar anomalies are those semantic constructions that seem logical at first blush, but often border on the meaningless and absurd, like these sentences: “An economist is safer for the presidency than a corporate lawyer is dangerous.” “A former military officer is abler for public governance than an aging actor is unfit.” “Our patience for religious charlatans is longer than our tolerance for competent public officials is short.” Somewhere in the deep recesses of such failed comparisons, or faulty equatives as the linguists call them, the truth that we thought we saw has been hopelessly lost in construction.

The general rule in equatives is that comparisons formed out of the so-called “positive” and “negative” pairs of adjectives are semantically anomalous. In the cross-polar constructions given in the preceding paragraph, for instance, these pairs of adjectives or noun phrases betray that anomaly: “safer”/“dangerous,” “abler”/“unfit,” and “longer patience”/“short tolerance.” All three are as absurd as the proverbial wrong equatives about the taste, texture, and nutritive value of apples and pears.

How do we avoid such conundrums (the term linguists use for such intricate and difficult semantic problems) that, from the layman’s standpoint, actually amount to vexing riddles? For practical purposes—and never mind what the metaphysicians and the political and religious spin masters say—we should only go for equatives that respect the norms of logic and reason. This means that we should only equate comparable things, with the equation based solely on comparable attributes. The more useful equatives from our standpoint as laymen, of course, are those that equate the absolute projections of two subjects on the same scale.

Here’s one sentence that meets that criterion: “The depth of the ravine into which the wayward bus fell is as great as the height of a three-story building.” Here, the two subjects being equated are “the depth of the ravine” and “the height of a three-story building,” and the common scale they are being measured against is length; the equation can be easily understood and accepted based on common sense and, for the cynic, verified by actual measurement with a meter stick. The same thing can be said of this other sentence, which focuses this time on area as a common scale: “The land area of Egypt is practically as big as that of Bolivia, but the productivity of their soil is markedly different.” (To the cynics, Egypt has 1,001,450 sq. km. to Bolivia’s 1,098,581.)

Once this concept of scalarity becomes second nature to us, we can be more ambitious in our equatives without fear of bungling them, as in this sentence: “The meteor formed a huge and deep hole upon impact, a perfectly circular crevice as big as the small city of San Juan in Manila and as deep as the height of the Sears Tower in New York.”

That horrifying statement is fictitious, of course, but there can be no doubt about the authenticity and scalarity of its equatives.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 76 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Better ways of handling equative constructions

Next week: The mood and attitude of English verbs       (March 20, 2025)

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.

15
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR MARCH 1 - 7, 2025 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: “Some baffling aspects of inverted sentences”




2. Use and Misuse: “Getting rid of wordy beginnings for our writing,” a primer on how to dramatically improve our English by throwing out the needless legal-sounding phrases that often tempt us to begin our sentences, and using hollow expletives that only deflect emphasis from what we are writing about




3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “Read more than once..!” The Forum responds to an Australian Forum member's (1) vehement objection to a Philippine news story describing Mayon Volcano as a 'sociable New Year’s Day fellow reveler’ during its eruption shortly before 2009 drew to a close that same year, and (2) that member's earlier critique of a grammatically, structurally, and semantically fractured headline produced by a major Australian online news network




4. You Asked Me This Question: “Four perplexing questions about the usage of the English tenses”


         

5. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “A critique of unseemly mixed metaphors in newspaper business stories" (circa August 2009)




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




7. Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “The proper use of the English subjunctive”




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




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “24 boggling imponderables to think through”  



 

10. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Bridges,” an essay by Forum Contributor Antonio Calipjo Go




11. Advice and Dissent Retrospective: “After more than 500 years, will the true site of the first Holy Mass in the Philippines be affirmed at last?”




12. Time Out from English Grammar: “A debate on AI and the future of literature,” an enlightening debate by e-mail between two prominent writers, Henry Oliver and Sam Kahn, on what the impact of AI might be to the future of literature




13. Forum Lounge Retrospective: “On Rachel Louise Carson, pathbreaking environmentalist,” a personal reminiscence by Forum Member Tonybau (pseud.)




14. Readings in Language: “Knowing this sprinkling of ‘pilot speak’ might enable you to help save a troubled aircraft”




15. Going Deeper Into Language: “The nature of true English idioms”


IDIOMS ARE COLLOCATIONS THAT HAVE A NON-LITERAL MEANING




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