Avoid sounding like a sycophant when writing about bigwigs!
TEACHER’S needed? What is that, which belongs to a certain teacher, that is needed? That doesn’t make sense at all, which is why we’ll be excused if we concluded that a school owner asked a painter to make it known to all and sundry that his school needed TEACHERS urgently ahead of the start of a new term. The possessive mark, i.e. the apostrophe (’) between R and the S is totally misleading. Trust signwriters! PHOTO|COURTESY OF FACEBOOK
What you need to know:
- What disturbs me — and I suppose it’d disturbs you too, good reader — is when I note that many culprits in this form of semi-literacy aren’t pre-secondary school dropouts.
For the zillionth time, let’s remind one another this: do pay attention to punctuation. In the numerous WhatsApp groups I belong to, I come across posts — original or forwarded — that have been penned without any attention to punctuation.
What disturbs me — and I suppose it’d disturbs you too, good reader — is when I note that many culprits in this form of semi-literacy aren’t pre-secondary school dropouts.
Some university graduates are actually on this bandwagon. Think about this.
One takes a learning journey through secondary school, high school, joins university and acquires a degree, but one fails to:
• Put a FULL STOP at the end of a sentence; a QUESTION MARK after penning a question; an exclamation mark after expressing a surprise or
• Start a sentence or names of people and places with a capital letter!
What comes short of killing me is when I note such kind semi-literacy displayed by, of all people, a teacher! That’s when I close my eyes and pray: “God save our little ones who are in school!”
Having thus lectured (bah!), let’s proceed to do what this column is essentially all about, i.e. dishing out linguistic gemstones picked up recently. Here we go…
In Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of Wednesday, March 26, there’s this story: ‘Deputy minister hails Singida Black Stars on stadium inauguration’. The scribbler’s intro reads: “The Deputy Minister of (sic) Information, Culture, Arts and Sports, Mwinjuma Hamis, has extended HIS HEARTFELT congratulations to Singida Black Stars following the inauguration of their Airtel Stadium…”
May we say it again: Let’s avoid the emotion-charged expressions in reporting what our sources said. Why, such expressions state things that aren’t scientifically verifiable by the second party, in this case, the reporter. Our own songbird Lady Jaydee says it all in her song Usiusemee Moyo.
For instance, it’d be overly presumptuous for you proclaim that your wife loves you immensely! Let her say it with her own mouth. Only a person suffering from a serious narcissist complex will look into a partner’s eye and say: “I know you love me a lot!”
And, only an unmitigated sycophant (we call them chawa in Kiswahili lingo) will address a crowd and introduce an aspiring MP and proclaim to the attentive crowd: “Standing before you is your next MP, a man whose LOVE for citizens of this constituency is immeasurable!”
The same broadsheet’s Monday, March 31 edition has a story entitled, “DPM urges REA to help prisons SERVICE implement clean cooking energy drive’.
Let’s be fussy a bit and say this: two abbreviations (DPM, REA) on a single headline are a wee too much. I’m familiar with newsrooms that ban the use of more than one abbreviation on one page! Consider it a depiction of intellectual laziness.
Let’s redeem the headline with a rewrite: “Biteko urges REA to help Prisons implement clean cooking energy drive.”
We’ll wind up with what we obtained from Page 3 of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, April 5. For a free-standing photo that colours the page, the caption scribbler writes: “CCM Secretary General Ambassador Dr Emmanuel Nchimbi cuts A ribbon to launch a publication…”
Cuts a ribbon? Nope…cuts THE ribbon. It’s the one and only ribbon in regard to the event. Just as we don’t write of some honcho laying “a” (instead of “the”) foundation stone for this or that monumental building.
On the same page, there’s another story entitled, ‘Mwinyi reassures peaceful poll, urges unity’. Towards the end of the story, the scribbler reports: “Earlier, President Mwinyi led mourners to pray for the fallen veteran journalist…Dr Mwinyi attended the funeral PRAYER which WAS held at Al Azhar Mosque…”
Funeral prayer..? Nope! We say, funeral PRAYERS... Just like we say Friday prayers, and not Friday prayer.
Ah, this treacherous language called English!
