Recent Posts

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Lounge / SSS to offer calamity loan to "Carina”-affected members

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 26, 2024, 01:37:38 PM »

The Social Security System (SSS) is set to provide calamity loan assistance to members who have been affected by Typhoon 'Carina' in the National Capital Region and in areas that may soon be declared under state of calamity.

SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Rolando Ledesma Macasaet said that members in typhoon-stricken areas can borrow a loan equivalent to their one monthly salary credit or up to a maximum of P20,000.
 
“SSS will always be ready to assist our members in typhoon-affected areas," Macasaet said. "We want to assure them that in times of calamities, they can rely on SSS to provide them the needed financial assistance as they recover from Typhoon Carina.”
 
To qualify, typhoon-affected members must:
--Have at least 36 monthly contributions, six of which must be posted within the last 12 months before the month of filing of
   application;
--Be living or residing in the declared calamity area;
--Be below 65 years old at the time of loan application;
--Have no final benefit claim such as permanent total disability or retirement;
--Have no past due SSS Short-Term Member Loans;
--Have no outstanding restructured loan or calamity loan.

Macasaet said that interested members can apply for the calamity loan using their My.SSS account via www.sss.gov.ph.
 
“Once approved, the loan proceeds will be credited to the member’s registered Unified Multi-Purpose Identification (UMID)-ATM Card or their active accounts with a Philippine Electronic Fund Transfer System and Operations Network (PESONet) participating bank,” Macasaet explained.
 
He said members could pay the calamity loan in two years or 24 equal monthly installments with an annual interest rate of 10 percent.
 
“We hope that through the calamity loan assistance, we may be able to help typhoon-affected members as they recover from the adverse effects of Typhoon Carina,” Macasaet said.

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Site Announcements / Playlist Update (July 20 - 26, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 23, 2024, 04:31:29 PM »

PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR JULY 20 - 26, 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 Joe Carillo Retrospective: “A serious bad-grammar syndrome"




2. Use and Misuse Retrospective: “The problem with our English according to Jose Carillo"




3. You Asked Me This Question: “Clarifying how the double possessive in English works”



                     
4. My Media English Watch: “Let’s be firm on whether the name 'Philippines' is singular or plural”




5. Getting to Know English: “Is your 'were' in the indicative or subjunctive mood?”




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




7. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Dying to Live,” reflections by Antonio Calipjo Go, Forum Contributor

 
 

8. Going Deeper Into Language: “A business professor’s recollection about American idioms,” by MBA professor Oscar P. Lagman, Forum Contributor




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “Memorable quotes from famous celebrities of yesteryears”




10. Advice and Dissent: “Grammar poll on a contentious subject-verb agreement disagreement”




11. Time Out From English Grammar: “Bill Gates funds developer of feed additive that reduces cow burps and farts” 




12. Notable Works by Our Very Own: “Non-historian explores the heart and soul of the modern Filipino” by Luis H. Francia, Filipino writer and crearive riing professor




13. Readings in Language:  A review of Ed Simon’s “In praise of the long, complicated sentence” in LitHub.com online magazine




14. The Forum Lounge: “The one single thing that brought them all to America,” a Facebook post by a female South Virtnamese expatriate to the United States




15. A Forum Lounge: Retrospective: “Waltzing on the Web,” a personal essay by Jose A.Carillo

Click this link to earlier Playdate features!

Visit Jose Carillo's Blogspot on the English Language

3

Essays by Joe Carillo / Retrospective: A serious bad-grammar syndrome

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 23, 2024, 11:19:56 AM »

A serious bad-grammar syndrome   

Sometime in 2003, the English grammar of my wife’s favorite newspaper had taken such a serious plunge that she just blew up during breakfast.

“What kind of gibberish is this?” she asked, furiously pointing to a front-page photo caption. Listen:

‘The world’s a stage for the concerns of the family which deeply concern Pope John Paul II who addresses the Fourth World Meeting of Families at the Quirino Grandstand on Saturday via a live video feed direct from the Vatican.’”

“So what’s wrong with it?” I asked, drinking my coffee.

“You’re the editor in this house,” she said, “so you tell me. Why would anyone string up so many details in one sentence? Isn’t there a journalistic rule against a 40-word run-on behemoth like that? And what does this mean: ‘The world’s a stage for the concerns of the family which deeply concern Pope John Paul II’? I know there’s an allusion to Shakespeare somewhere there, but why make ‘the concerns’ the performers? And isn’t it queer to use ‘concerns’ twice? What kind of English is this?”

“A strange one, which could happen when you’re about to miss your deadline,” I said. “You use clichés already in your head for effect—for literary resonance—but there’s a downside: you risk being obscure or funny because nonliterary people may not get what you mean. As to the writer’s grammar, I wonder why it’s so unnaturally atrocious today, but it’s only a caption, no need to get upset about it.”

“Caption or not, I still think that it shouldn’t be exempt from the rules of good grammar,” she said. “And what’s this ... another caption seeking exempt-status from those rules? Listen:

‘And baby makes 10. Rose and Rodrigo Alenton with their nine children, plus one, Maria Jose (inset) born to his mother, a delegate to the congress of families which ends today.’

“Maria Jose born to his mother? Did she give birth at the congress? Isn’t that and the math and the whole caption gibberish again?”

“Looks like, but again, it’s only a caption.”

“No, love, I think it’s a serious bad-grammar syndrome,” she said, pulling a folder from the nearby computer table. “I can’t take it anymore. Let me show you the lousy grammar things I clipped from this paper’s issues these past two weeks. Here’s one bad-grammar lead:

‘Did the shootout among cops in Quezon City came as a result of credit-grabbing.’”

“Oh, oh, must be a simple typo—forgivable. It should be ‘come,’ of course.”

“Really? But what about this columnist’s lead sentence:

‘Taxes and death being the only two sure things in life, add tax evasion.’

“What kind of semantic nonsense is that?”

“Ouch! The caption writer probably was just in a hurry, maybe for a date. She must have meant this: ‘Taxes and death used to be the only two sure things in life. Now add tax evasion.’”   

“You’re so defensive of your kind! But let’s see if you can be as forgiving with this front-page lead:

‘The People Power II Revolution is the movie in the nation’s mind again, as Filipinos mark its second anniversary tomorrow.’

“Isn’t ‘the movie in the mind’ thing preposterous?”

“That, of course, is a line from Miss Saigon. You know that; we saw the play on Broadway almost 17 years ago, remember? The writer of that front-page lead probably thought everybody watched the play or memorized Lea Salonga’s song, "The Movie in My Mind." That’s just another attempt at resonance.”

“Resonance, my foot! I think it’s nothing but unwarranted and obscure exhibitionism! Anyway, look at this suspicious lead:

‘In a stirring twist, two witnesses claimed [name withheld] had provoked his assailant into shooting him.’

“My dictionary says that ‘stirring’ means ‘busy, exciting, rousing, thrilling.’ What’s exciting or thrilling about that twist? The guy’s dead, isn’t he? Isn’t that macabre?”

“Oh, the reporter must have meant ‘surprising’ or ‘intriguing’—‘stirring’ was probably only a slip of the keyboard.”

“You’re defending them again! But try defending them over this one:

‘Expect memories to awaken when, after so many years, classmates at the University of the Philippines College of Law meet again.’

“Do memories awaken?”

“I don’t think so, but passions do. ‘Awaken’ means ‘to rouse from sleep’ or ‘to wake up.’ Rather tough for memories to wake up, even if they are personified.” 

“Now you are getting the drift. But don’t defend these guys all the time just because you were once a news reporter yourself. Now figure out this funny lead:

‘Zero assets and zero bank accounts. That, according to [name of a public official], is what he has in the United States...’

“There are two subjects, ‘zero assets’ and ‘zero bank accounts,” so the correct usage should be ‘those are’ and not ‘that is,’ right?”

“Of course! In English, those two items don’t add up to zero. It’s the number of the noun—not its modifier—that makes it singular or plural. In this case, good math simply happens to be not very good English, but don’t be so hard on the reporter for not knowing that.”

This essay in conversation form, which forms Chapter 143 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge, first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its February 1, 2003 issue, © 2003 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
A serious bad-grammar syndrome

Next week: When educators befuddle      (August 1, 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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Site Announcements / Playlist Update (July 13 - 19, 2024) Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 17, 2024, 10:40:18 PM »

PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR JULY 13 - 19, 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 Retrospective: “The sensible way to write”




2. Use and Misuse: “When editors lower their guard, headlines sometimes take a macabre turn"




3. You Asked Me This Question: “Question within a question”



                     
4. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “How 'right of reply' differs from 'right to reply'”




5. Getting to Know English: “The problem with “Hello!” and “Whatever!””




6. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “How to avoid semantic bedlam in the usage of the word 'only'”




7. Education and Teaching Retrospective: "An urgent call to arrest a decline in English proficiency among Filipino workers”

 
 

8. Students’ Sounding Board: "The need for caution in asserting what’s good or bad English”


Which is grammatically correct? 
“Mauna Loa is the largest volcano (in, on) the planet.”


9. Language Humor at its Finest: "31 nuggets of zany wisdom from the humor bin”




10. Advice and Dissent: “To face life’s tough challenges, do we need fairy tales more than ever?”




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




12. Time Out From English Grammar: “The psychometric test that promised to be an 'X-ray to the soul'”




13. The Forum Lounge Retrospective: U.S. radio-TV writer Andy Rooney's “33 Golden Nuggets of Inspiration,” contributed by Forum Member Justine A.



14. Notable Works by Our Very Own: “Two novelists explore family, national identity, and homeland”


15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “All That Matters,” contributed by Forum Member tonybau

Click this link to earlier Playdate features!

Visit Jose Carillo's Blogspot on the English Language

5

Essays by Joe Carillo / The sensible way to write

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 17, 2024, 03:09:24 PM »

People ask me sometimes if there’s a quick formula for effective writing. My answer is yes, I know of one, but I can't guarantee how quick it will work. In fact, like most people who make a living from writing and editing, I arrived at the formula not in just one burst of enlightenment but through years and years of practice. That formula, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: Effective Writing = Good semantics + Good syntax + Sensibility.

Before discussing it, however, I want to make it clear that by effective writing, I don’t necessarily mean great prose. I only mean writing that gets our message across clearly and understandably. If you have the gift to write novels, plays, or movie scripts that can impress audiences, that will be great. But if you happen not to have it, don’t simply bewail your fate. It’s never too late to make yourself do much better with the written word. So long as you clearly understand how the formula’s three variables work, that goal should be well within your reach.

                                             IMAGE CREDIT: BRITISH COUNCIL

The first writing variable is, of course, our vocabulary. I use the term semantics rather loosely for this variable so it can cover not only the acquisition of words but also the understanding of their various meanings. This variable is actually the easiest to load in our favor. In English, by just learning 10 new words every day, we can enrich our vocabulary by 3,600 words a year; by the time we are 50 years old, there should be more than 200,000 words at our command. That would be about the same number as all of the basic words in the English language outside of archaic words, scientific terms, and jargon—more than what we will really ever need to write effectively.

The second variable is admittedly more difficult to master: syntax or grammar. We were all supposed to have started learning it since we were toddlers. But since English is only a second language for most us, we learned to speak the language only gradually and discovered the intricacies of its grammar much later. Gaps in our English syntax are therefore inevitable. Thus, even if we have a superior intellect, we may not necessarily be able to speak or write English as well as its native speakers do.

An excellent grasp of English semantics and syntax will be great, of course, but we all know that this won’t be enough. It doesn’t guarantee the ability to write good prose. There are in fact many highly educated people whose spoken English is beyond reproach, but who can’t write a clear, understandable, and interesting sentence that goes longer than six words. Their problem is that when they sit down to write, alone and without the stimulus of a live listener, they can only write stilted, unfocused thoughts addressed to no one in particular. In short, their writing doesn’t communicate.

This happens because they don’t know that effective writing actually needs a very important third variable. Some people call it “sensitivity” but I prefer to use the term “sensibility” for the variable in writing that creates sensation, feeling, and understanding in the reader through the written word. The “sensible” writer is one who can make his prose resonate or connect with the unseen reader. The ability to achieve this resonance is obviously a much more elusive factor than both semantics and syntax. But it is unfortunate that it’s not recognized and formally taught in schools. What’s often learned as the principal goal of writing is self-expression, which is the opposite of sensibility.   

The obsession with self-expression is, I think, the single biggest reason why many intelligent people cannot write effectively. They do not realize that writing actually must do the exact opposite of self-expression to work with a reader. They become so busy giving vent in writing to what they feel and think, what they know, and what they believe in. They do not grasp the fact that for the readers to understand and appreciate these things, they must write only with words, meanings, and mental images that are already in their readers’ heads. The reality is that these will often be not the words, meanings, and mental images that come naturally to us.

The sensible way to write, therefore, is to clearly understand that we are not writing for ourselves but for others. Writing is essentially speaking silently to an unseen listener. Our terms of reference when we do this shouldn’t be our own intellect or accumulated knowledge; iy should instead be our best estimate of the quality of mind and temperament of our readers. And it should be obvious by now that the only levels of vocabulary, grammar, and language that will work for this purpose are those of our readers. Effective Writing = Good semantics + Good syntax + Sensibility. Only by carefully balancing this equation can we really hope to make our writing clear, understandable, and interesting to our target readers.

This essay first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times on January 3, 2003.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
The sensible way to write

Next week: A serious bad-grammar syndrome       (July 25, 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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Site Announcements / A Retrospective of 12 English Usage Essays from the Forum's Earliest Years

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 17, 2024, 08:29:55 AM »

July 17,2024

Dear Forum Member and Friend,

As a 2024 midyear retrospective, Jose Carillo's English Forum is presenting a selection of 12 English usage it featured during its first five years (2003-2008).

Most of these early essays focus on the general aspects and use or misuse of English as one of the world's major languages. The rest of the over 2,300 essays presented in the Forum from 2003 onwards take up the elements of English as a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary through which people convey meaning both in spoken and written forms.



The essays in the selection are as follows:

1 - The Misuses of Language
2 - The Language of Science and Literature
3 - The Grammar of Manners
4 - The Battle for Our Minds
5 - The Wisdom of Lewis Carroll
6 - The State of Our English
7 - Giving Justice to Tolkien
8 - In Defense of the Web
9 - When Wordplay Goes Overboard
10 -The Days of Our Lives
11 -Don’t Worry About English Slang!
12 -A Great Accent Alone Isn't Great English

You can directly access and read the 12 essays by simply clicking their respective links to the Forum above. Until further notice, you can also directly access the 12 essays by clicking this link to the Jose Carillo Forum homepage: https://josecarilloforum.com/

With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo

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Selected 12 English Usage Essays in My Forum’s Early Years (2003 - 2008) / 11 - Don’t Worry About English Slang

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 16, 2024, 02:49:46 PM »

11 - Don’t worry about English slang!

A reader of my weekend English-usage column “Silent Fire,” Raul Galleros, posed this very interesting question about English slang:
 
“What is the best way to understand deep English slang? I have difficulty understanding its pronunciation. When I am watching a movie or a talk show on television, I find it hard to understand the dialogue of people talking in very deep English slang. I make an effort to watch a lot of English movies and TV shows to develop my comprehension, but it seems I am not making any progress. In contrast, when I hear Filipinos speaking in English in a movie or on TV, I can easily understand and absorb their language.”
 
Here’s my open reply to Raul:

Unless you are a serious student of English linguistics, don’t worry too much about not understanding the deep English slang you hear around you. It doesn’t mean that your English or your listening comprehension is deficient. It simply means that the English you are hearing is not meant to be understood by you, and that you really don’t belong to the group or community that uses it. Slang is a special-purpose coded language that’s meant to exclude you and other people from the coterie of friends, contacts, or initiates that uses it.

                                                              IMAGE CREDIT: FACEBOOK

And there’s absolutely no need for you to actively learn any form of deep English slang. You’ll acquire it simply by the company you keep or by sustained exposure to it. The more prevalent a particular slang—whether it’s gay-speak, drug-speak, gangsta rap, Ebonics or Black English, Cockney, Singlish, Chinglish, or our very own Taglish—the more it will insinuate itself into the language through the movies and the mass media, particularly TV and radio. But if you are befuddled by any of them, don’t ever feel that your English is inferior or inadequate. The problem is not with you; the problem is with the scriptwriters, the talk-show hosts or guests, or the video or radio jockeys. They are forgetting one cardinal rule of communication: to use language understandable to the great majority of their mass audiences. By using deep English slang, they are failing to get their ideas across to you and to others like you.

It’s also possible, of course, that you are watching movies and TV shows or listening to radio shows that are not really meant for you. A good number of Hollywood movies that reach us, for instance, are made for predominantly American Black target audiences; this is why those movies often use rather heavy Ebonics in their dialogue. And some TV and radio shows cater to special audiences appreciative of heavy metal or gangsta rap English. So what do you do? Avoid them and choose only those that use the kind of English you are comfortable with.

Naturally, it will be much easier for you to understand and absorb the English of Filipinos appearing in the movies or speaking on TV or radio. This is because the best of them use Standard American English, which is the kind of English that the Philippine educational system is trying its best—but not entirely succeeding—to teach Filipinos to write and speak from grade school onwards. This English is easily understood because it deviates little from the vocabulary, grammar, structure, and semantics of the English that’s formally taught to us—and it’s spoken without the infuriating twang or drawl of some native English speakers or the jaw-dropping peculiarities or flourishes of some nonnative ones.   

So, Raul, don’t worry too much about not understanding deep English slang. And don’t even bother learning it unless you are keen on joining an exclusive gang or fraternity that requires members to speak its particular English slang. You can find much better use of your time by continuously improving your Standard American English instead of engaging in linguistic jaywalking, which is what speaking in deep English slang actually amounts to in the final analysis. (March 15, 2008)

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Selected 12 English Usage Essays in My Forum’s Early Years (2003 - 2008) / 12 - A Great Accent Alone Isn't Great English

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 14, 2024, 08:05:02 PM »

12 - A Great Accent Alone Isn't Great English

While we were window-shopping at the mall some years back, my wife Leonor nudged me on the ribs and whispered: “Love, did you hear what that girl over there was saying on her mobile phone?”

“No,” I replied. “Why, have you been eavesdropping?”

“Of course not!” she protested. “I just overheard her. She was speaking so proudly and loudly with an American English pronunciation, call-center style.”

“So what’s so special about it? Most call-center people need to speak like that. They must sound like North Americans to the North Americans, so a pleasant neutral American accent is drilled into them by their call-center English trainers.”

“I know that, and in fact I wish I had her nice English accent myself. But the problem is that her English grammar is simply horrible.”

“Like how?”

                                        IMAGE CREDIT: ZEUS2017.BLOGSPOT.COM

“Well, for one, she just couldn’t seem to put her verbs in the proper form. For instance, I distinctly heard her say, ‘Text me when it will to finish.’ Isn’t the verb form ‘will to finish’ weird? She mixed the future tense and the infinitive. The correct form should be the simple future tense ‘will be finished,’ right?” 

“Of course, but maybe her mistake was just a fluke. You know how it is with us Filipinos. We often think out our thoughts in Tagalog or in our regional language first, then translate them into English. There’s bound to be some grammar mishap somewhere sometimes.”

“But I think that girl’s English problem is more serious than that. I also heard her say, ‘I will go here with my balance.’ It should be ‘come’ instead of ‘go’ because she’s referring to a movement towards and not away from where she was, but she seemed blissfully unaware of the difference between the two.”

“That’s awful!”

“So now you’re convinced she has a serious English problem?”

“You’re probably right, but I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about that.”

“Why not? For a start, I can tell her right now to read your book, The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors. I’m sure she’ll learn a thing or two from it.”

“Don’t be silly, Leonor,” I admonished her. “That kind of hard sell simply won’t work. She’d really hate you for it. You might even get slapped in the face.”

“Well, love, it’s just a thought. But there must be a way to make people like her realize that great English pronunciation doesn’t necessarily mean great English. Excellent grammar and usage must also go with it. Why don’t you write about that sometime?”

“Maybe, but in fairness to that girl, she’s not alone with that grammar problem. It’s because many people don’t take their English grammar seriously enough. They are made to believe they can acquire good English simply by listening to how it’s spoken and by just memorizing the various English stock phrases. But good pronunciation is really only the icing to the cake, so to speak. To be really good in English, you need to be competent in your English grammar and usage. Only then can you be sure of speaking or writing properly in English even in unstructured communication situations.”

“So what do you suggest should English-challenged people do to improve their English?”

“Well, they need to go back to the very basics of English grammar and master them. They must learn how to put together the various elements of English in a grammatically systematic way—its words into clear, logical sentences; its sentences into clear, logical paragraphs; and its paragraphs into clear, logical expositions or compositions. Then they also must learn enough of the English idioms so they won’t be forever speaking or writing in stiff or stilted English.”

“Isn’t that a rather tall order?”

“It is, but if you want to speak or write in English well enough, you really have no choice but to do it.” (July 12, 2008)

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Selected 12 English Usage Essays in My Forum’s Early Years (2003 - 2008) / 10 -The Days of Our Lives

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 14, 2024, 07:54:28 PM »

10 -The Days of Our Lives

Sometime in 2006, I chanced upon an intriguing bit of information on the Web. It was that the word “Wednesday” had its origins in “Odin’s Day,” the day honoring the god Odin in Norse mythology. All the while, I supposed that the English names of the days had simply been conjured from thin air, and that in the particular case of “Wednesday,” the Anglo-Saxons had perhaps playfully coined it from the word “wedding” in the sense of Wednesday being a propitious day for marital unions. As it turned out, I was way off the mark on both counts, in much the same way that Christopher Columbus, after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean at a time when the chronometer had not yet been invented to measure longitude, had mistaken the New World for India—then grievously mislabeled the native Americans as “Indians” for posterity.

                                     IMAGE CREDIT: THEARCHAEOLOGIST.ORG
 

Now, I told myself, if the Anglo-Saxons had named Wednesday after Odin, then for consistency’s sake they must have named the rest of the days after Norse gods as well. I soon found out that this was largely the case. To my surprise, however, I also discovered that the English names for the days actually had their roots in astrology, mythology, and superstition—a thoroughly unscientific process that would have invited the strongest objections from rational-minded people.

To put this matter in better perspective, let us first examine the highly unlikely concept of the seven-day week. I say unlikely because the week doesn’t have a natural and logical basis as a division of time. It is unlike the day, which can be clearly experienced as the period between one sunrise and the next, and unlike the year, which can be conveniently marked as the complete cycle of the seasons.

In ancient times, however, Mesopotamian astrologers came up with the notion that the seven celestial bodies that regularly circled the Earth—the sun, the moon, and the planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn—influenced people’s lives and actually controlled the first hour of the day named after them. The astrologers thus formulated a seven-day week based on this idea, assigning each day to a particular celestial body and naming it after its corresponding god. This system became popular in Egypt during the time of the Roman Empire, and the Romans later informally adopted it to replace their traditional eight-day marketing week.

In 321 A.D, the reigning emperor, Constantine the Great, formally incorporated the system into the Roman calendar and decreed that the days be named in honor of Roman gods in the following order: Dis Slis, “Sun’s Day”; Dis Lnae, “Moon’s Day”; Dis Martis, “Mars’s Day”; Dis Mercuri, “Mercury’s Day”; Dis Jovis, “Jove’s Day” or “Jupiter’s Day”; Dis Veneris, “Venus’s Day”; and Dis Saturn, “Saturn’s Day.” Most of Western Europe adopted this system, but the Anglo-Saxons decided to do a bit of reverse linguistic engineering. For the English calendar, they replaced the names of the Roman gods with those of their major Norse deities.

The Anglo-Saxons thus named their days as follows: Sun­nandaeg, “Sun’s Day”; Monan­daeg,  “Moon’s Day”; Tiwesdaeg, “Tiu’s Day” (after their war god Tiu); Wodnesdaeg, “Woden’s Day”; Thunresdaeg, “Thunor’s Day” (after their thunder god Thunor); and Frigedaeg, “Frigg’s Day” (after their love goddess Frigg). Perhaps because they couldn’t find a fitting Norse god for it, they retained the Roman god for Saturday and called it Saeter­nesdaeg, or “Saturn’s Day.” From the seven Anglo-Saxon names for the days, it should be obvious now how the modern-day English words for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday came about.

In sum, through the names of the days in English and in the other major languages, we and the rest of the world have been involuntarily subscribing to astrology and paying homage to ancient gods, and it looks like this will be our common destiny for all time—for better or for worse. (May 1, 2006)

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Selected 12 English Usage Essays in My Forum’s Early Years (2003 - 2008) / 9 - When Wordplay Goes Overboard

« Last post by Joe Carillo on July 14, 2024, 07:37:25 PM »

9 - When Wordplay Goes Overboard

Going by its dictionary definition, the noun “racket” means “a fraudulent scheme, enterprise, or activity” or “a usually illegitimate enterprise made workable by bribery or intimidation.” More loosely, it means “an easy and lucrative means of livelihood” and is slang for “occupation or business” (Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary). In whatever sense, though, I have always thought of the word as denoting something socially abhorrent—perhaps even illegal or criminal.

Sometime in September 2005, however, a fellow English-language editor sent me e-mail that disquietingly turned the word “racket” on its head, so to speak. “May bago po akong raket (I have a new racket),” he said, then proceeded to describe the new enterprise he was engaged in. What he really meant was a new “sideline” that was not even remotely illegal or illegitimate, so I found it disturbing that he should use a normally distasteful word for it. Perhaps such loose usage would be acceptable in informal, face-to-face conversations, but it was very unbecoming to be put in writing by someone who should have more respect for language and its nuances.

                                                                          IMAGE CREDIT: MUMBLINGNERD.COM


I had already forgotten that incident but recently, during lunch with a former associate in the English-language editing business, the peculiar usage popped out again when she asked me this question: “Ano ho ba ang raket ninyo ngayon? (What is your racket at present?).” I almost choked on my drink hearing that nasty word again! How could such a serious distortion of meaning gain wide currency in our language? What is it that makes even intelligent, discerning people view illicit, aberrant things as perfectly acceptable?

It didn’t take long for me to find possible answers to these questions. Driving through a main thoroughfare to meet a client sometime later, I came across scores of product streamers that posed the following question (or words to this effect) in big, bold letters: “Ano ba ang raket ninyo ngayong summer? (What’s your racket this summer?).” It appears that the use of “raket” with a positive spin had been legitimized by mass advertising. For shock value and recall, the word had been appropriated to mean “any business” or “gimik” (gimmick)—one that’s easy and pleasurable to do. In the process, of course, the fraudulent and illegitimate aspects of the word had been glossed over.

In this sense, “raket” joins the word “salvage” in having been corrupted in Philippine usage to mean its opposite. The first is from a grim, derogatory word into a respectable, fun word; and the other from a respectable, positive word into an unpleasant, derogatory word. Some of us will probably recall that the verb “salvage” means “to rescue or save [something] especially from wreckage or ruin,” but in the Philippine context, it has become a euphemism for “to kill or assassinate” or “to execute or dispose of a person summarily and secretly.” This usage grew out from a government task force report that inadvertently used the word to describe the extra-legal executions of thousands of Filipinos between 1975 and 1983 during martial law.

(The Filipino writer Jose F. Lacaba, in a note to the Double-Tongued Word Wrester, a website that records old and new words from the fringes of English, makes this observation about this inversion of “salvage”: “It began as an anglicization or Englishing of the Tagalog word ‘salbahe,’ whose meaning ranges from mischievous or abusive (adj.) and a notoriously abusive person (noun). ‘Salbahe,’ in turn, is derived from the Spanish word ‘salvaje,’ wild, undomesticated, savage.”)

It is normal for a society to do all sorts of wordplay, of course, but I think the Philippine use of “raket” and “salvage” to denote their opposite sense has gone dangerously overboard. We must draw the line somewhere to safeguard language and our value systems. As the slogan of my favorite English-language website, Vocabula.com, sagely warns, “A society is generally as lax as its language.” (April 24, 2006)