Thoughts on Human ‘Writes’
I HAVE to take issue with your Group Foreign Editor, Shannon Ebrahim, because of an error that she allowed to be printed in the “Insider” section of Friday's Argus.
She writes that Robert Mugabe had ordered Tsitsi’s settlement be raised to the ground. The Oxford Dictionary defines “raise” as “to move something to a higher place”. By this definition the only things that could be “raised” to the ground would be things like worms, moles or miners!
The word she was looking for is “razed” which the OED defines as “destroy a building or town completely”. I am an avid reader, sometimes reading two books a day. I love word puzzles and crosswords and I am, I admit, pedantic about the English language. For this reason I get somewhat steamed up when authors and writers set bad examples for their readers.
In fairness to Ms Ebrahim, I can only surmise that she used a word processor to write her article and therefore fell foul to the evil American plague called “spellcheck” - now that is a diabolical plot to get the rest of the world to be as dumb as Americans. I mean Americans don’t even speak English.
Given the opportunity, I would happily go back in time and drown Mr Webster at birth. Thanks to him most of the world now leave half of the letters out of doughnut, drink “lite” drinks, call scones “biscuits”, biscuits “cookies”, jam is changed to jelly, so jelly becomes “jello” - it’s absurd. They insist on renaming things for no reason at all and rewrite the laws of language and spelling to suit themselves. Because of their mistaken belief that they are the ultimate arbiters of the world and all that is in it they blithely change things that don’t suit them. For instance “toe the line”, which means to be disciplined and determined, becomes “tow the line” which can only apply to parasailers and water skiers. Numbers are not immune to their meddling either. “Two hundred and ten” has become “two hundred ten”. Why?
I find it disrespectful of writers to allow or even encourage this kind of behaviour - I know I’m probably flogging a dead horse but I sympathise with Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady when he says “they should be hanged for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue”.
Please don’t hang Ms Ebrahim, but just emphasise that she has, as a journalist, a degree of responsibility to her audience and must set her standards accordingly so that she can be an inspiration to other old farts like me.
Y HENRIKSEN | Gordon’s Bay