My Silent Fire Retrospectives - Batch 4

[Joe Carillo]

My Silent Fire Retrospectives - Batch 4
By Jose A. Carillo

Silent Fire was my Saturday column on English usage in The Manila Times from 2008 - 2009, completing what used to be a six-times-a-week run of my English Plain and Simple columns during the first two years of its continuing 18-year-run to date. This is the fourth and final batch of the retrospective series of 12 selected Silent Fire columns—three columns per batch that started last Sunday, September 29. They are being run primarily for the benefit of very young English-language learners and too busy adult learners at the time who had likely missed reading them.

Feedback about the English grammar critiques presented in these columns would be most welcome.


10 - “Clichés and bad body English”

My two sons, 21 and 14 years of age at the time, had been watching with keen interest the ongoing series of student debates on ANC, “Square Off.” As you may already know, that TV show pitted two-person debating teams from various universities and colleges, with the young speakers taking on the roles of their adult counterparts in the Philippine Congress in debating various highly controversial issues.

I really couldn’t find fault in the English of most of the young debaters, whom I presumed were among the best and most articulate from their respective schools. Despite the pressures of time and competition, their speeches would generally be free of such language scourges as footloose modifiers, mangled idiomatic expressions, subject-verb disagreements, wrong pronoun usage, and frequent misuses of prepositional phrases and prepositional idioms. And on the whole, I think, their English pronunciation and accents were generally beyond reproach as well.

But as my two sons were quick to point out whenever we had the chance to watch those TV debates together, the body English of many of the debaters often left much to be desired, and their overuse of such clichés as “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” could be so infuriating at times. Often, in fact, my sons would urge me to write about those things in my Manila Times English-usage column in the hope that the message would somehow reach the debaters.

STOCK PHOTO OF ANC “SQUARE OFF” DEBATES - FOR REPRESENTATION PURPOSES ONLY

One time my eldest son said, a pained look in his face: “Look at how that debater endlessly chops the air with both hands, Shouldn’t his coach remind him that he’s not in a karate competition?”

“Well, son, that mannerism is part of his body English,” I said, “and I’m afraid that none of my English-usage prescriptions could correct it. Only a knowledgeable public speaking trainer or trusted friend can wean him from it without shattering his self-confidence.”

“But what about this girl who seems to be always sneering at her opponent?” my younger son asked me another time. “Doesn’t she realize it’s bad form to sneer in public, in full view of the TV audience at that?”

“You’re right, but she probably isn’t even aware of it,” I explained. “That’s the problem with TV—it’s a terribly cruel medium. That habitual facial expression of hers probably won’t even be noticed if she were debating onstage in a big school auditorium, but it gets magnified when the TV camera does a medium close-up of her. Somebody has to call her attention to it, though, and she would need a lot of facial practice in front of a mirror to get rid of it.”

“Now look at this guy, dad,” my elder son butted in. “Why does he keep on obnoxiously repeating ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ or ‘Madame Speaker’ in practically every sentence of his speech? He must have used it a dozen times already in three minutes. Isn’t there a debating rule against that?”

“I’m not sure, son, but habitual expressions like that are actually semantic crutches. When people attempt to speak at the speed of light, their brains may not be able to send their next thought to their tongues fast enough. That’s why they need those expressions to fill in the semantic gaps.”

“I see… But what about this other debater, Dad? He’s now on his 15th ‘at the end of the day’ and the debate is still far from over. Hearing this cliché many times over takes away the joy in watching these debates. Can’t he and the other speakers just say ‘ultimately’ or ‘after all’? And why don’t the people behind these debates ban that terrible cliché?”

“Patience, my son, patience! Who knows? Without knowing it, some of those people may be habitual users of that dreadful cliché themselves. Anyway, I promise to write about this in my Manila Times column. Let’s just hope they’d have the chance to read it before the new round of debates next week.” (The Manila Times, Silent Fire, February 23, 2008)


11 - “The proper uses of ‘they’ and ‘it’”     

A few days ago, I received e-mail from the editorial department manager of a big publishing company asking about the proper use of the pronoun “they.” His question mystified me: “Can ‘they’ be used when referring to objects or things like chairs, tables, or any other inanimate objects? My understanding is that ‘they’ can only be used for persons and, in some cases, for animals.”

In my reply to him, I wondered if he was actually referring to the pronoun “it” rather than the pronoun “they.” This is because most people normally don’t have any problem using “they” in either of two cases: (1) as third person pronoun serving as the plural of “he,” “she,” or a group of two or more individuals not all of the same gender; or (2) as plural pronoun in reference to an inanimate or lifeless thing or to a group of individuals, things, and abstract entities.

                              IMAGE CREDIT: R J LEARNING FUN   AS FEATURED ON YOUTUBE.COM
 
To show that it’s the most natural thing to use “they” as plural pronoun for inanimate objects in the same way that it’s used for persons, I gave an example for each usage. With several people as antecedent nouns (usage 1): “Nancy, Bert, and the two strangers came to the party uninvited. They demanded to be served drinks despite the protestations of the party host.” With two buildings—they are inanimate objects, of course—as antecedent nouns (usage 2): “The Twin Towers were struck by the jetliners in quick succession. They both collapsed within the hour.”

I then said in my reply that problems would be more likely if the pronoun usage involves the singular pronoun “it.” As we all know, “it” generally can be used only when referring to objects or things (like chairs, tables, and all other inanimate objects) or to animals, as in this sentence: “The cat chased the mouse. It finally caught the latter near the kitchen sink.” As a rule, “it” can’t be directly used in reference to persons. We obviously can’t say this: "The foreigner asked the traffic aide for directions. It was obviously lost.” The second sentence should be said this way instead: “He was obviously lost” (if the foreigner is male) or “She was obviously lost” (if the foreigner is female).
 
Of course, in those rare situations when there’s no way of knowing the gender of the foreigner, it would be tempting to use “it” as the pronoun in subsequent mentions. That’s outright incorrect, though. The grammatically prudent approach is simply to avoid the personal pronoun in constructing the sentence: “Obviously lost, the foreigner asked the traffic aide for directions.” “The foreigner was obviously lost and asked the traffic aide for directions.”
 
There’s one particular sentence construction, though, where “it” can be used as pronoun for a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant: “Someone’s rapping at the door, but I don’t know who it is.” Here, it doesn’t sound right when we use either “he” or “she”: “Someone’s rapping at the door, but I don’t know who he [or she] is.” (It might be a dog, who knows?)
 
When referring to pets, however, using the pronoun “he” or “she” instead of the pronoun “it” is sometimes semantically preferable. This is when the pet’s endearment to the owner is evident in the situation being described: “My pet cat Meowie is such a lovely, infuriating thing. She rolls all over like crazy when she wants something from me.” Indeed, using “it” in such situations would sound unnatural, perhaps even insensitive. (The Manila Times, Silent Fire, May 31, 2008)

 
12 - The rocky road to idiomatic English

A United States-based reader, Frank A. Tucker, sent me an online newspaper clipping in mid-June of 2008 that carried this provocative title: “Who’s afraid of Philippine English?” (“Educators Speak,” Manila Bulletin, June 15, 2008). The article by Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, professor emeritus of the De La Salle University-Manila, discussed Philippine English pronunciation and vocabulary in the context of a monograph published by Dr. Teodoro Llamzon in 1969. The monograph considered the English spoken in the Philippines as a distinct dialect of English and gave it the name “Standard Filipino English.” It also provided a list of what Dr. Liamzon called “Filipinisms,” which he defined as “English expressions [that] are neither American nor British, [that] are acceptable and used in Filipino educated circles, and [that] are similar to expression patterns in Tagalog.”

Then Mr. Tucker posed this question to me: “What is your opinion of Philippine English?”

Here’s my open reply to that question:

Dear Frank,

I don’t normally allow myself to be drawn into an academic discussion of English grammar and usage, for I always try to go for the jugular when it comes to the subject of good English. After all, I have always believed that a no-nonsense, no-frills approach is the most effective way of teaching it.

As to your question, however, I am willing to say this much: I’m not very sure if categorizing certain ways of saying things in English as “Filipino English” and legitimizing them by academic fiat is conducive to teaching and learning good English.  My feeling is that regardless of nationality, all nonnative English speakers will begin to learn English by attempting to translate their native-language thoughts into English using the expression patterns of their respective languages. Such a learning process will, of course, inevitably give rise to some of the stilted and unidiomatic constructions that Dr. Liamzon had listed in his monograph.

Still, I must point out that there’s really nothing functionally wrong or intrinsically objectionable with, say, the expressions “I will go ahead of you” (instead of the American English “I’m going ahead”), “I was the one who called the ice-cream vendor” (instead of “I called the ice-cream vendor”), and “My head is painful” (instead of “I have a headache”). Although unidiomatic, all three are grammatically, semantically, and structurally correct English in much the same way as their indicated idiomatic English counterparts. And they are not necessarily “Filipino English” either; they are very likely simply transient forms of expression that many nonnative English speakers—regardless of nationality—will initially use while learning to speak and write English.

My feeling then is that these expressions are not something that Filipino learners of English should be embarrassed about, and that there’s also no compelling need to academically validate such expressions for posterity as acceptable English. Indeed, we don’t have to tell people that, “Hey! Your English is not Standard American English, but since almost 50 percent of you are using that kind of English anyway, we might as well legitimize it as acceptable Filipino English.” This looks to me like a self-defeating prescription for learning English the way it’s spoken or written by its native speakers.

Instead of legitimizing “Filipino English,” I would rather that we encourage Filipino learners of English to make a stronger effort to transcend their non-idiomatic ways of speaking or writing in English. They can do this by taking every opportunity to read excellent writing by native English writers and to talk with excellent English speakers and to listen to them more often; after all, there is no dearth of media or occasions providing such learning opportunities.

By doing this, the conscientious Filipino learner of English should be able to outgrow his or her “Filipino English,” which is likely only the groping, tentative English of a nonnative English speaker on the sometimes long and rocky road to learning idiomatic English.

With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo    (The Manila Times, Silent Fire, July 5, 2008)     

This ends my 12 Silent Fire retrospectives. I wish all my Forum readers and friends all the best in their continuing quest for better English!