Lions eat on the ‘dinning’ ground as people ‘get stolen from the graves’!

An avid reader and contributor to this column, one D. Mwasandube, kindly shared what he unearthed from Page 7 of the Monday, February 21 edition of Bongo’s senior-most and authoritative broadsheet. 

On this page, there’s a story whose headline reads, ‘Robbers stole crosses from my daughter, mother’s graves for METALS’ SALE.’

There’re at least two issues that need to be sorted out in the headline. 

One, the unconscionable persons who will shamelessly steal symbols that are placed at graves to honour the dead aren’t robbers; they’re simply THIEVES.

Why, robbery (which gives us the word “robber”) is the action of taking property unlawfully from a person or a place by FORCE or THREAT of force. 

As we all know, no force is required to remove crosses at graveyards, for that action normally takes place in the dead of the night.

And saying “scrap metals’ sale” sounds awkward. And, we note, there’re too many quotation marks for a headline! Let’s attempt a rewrite: ‘THIEVES stole crosses from graves of my daughter, mother to sell as scrap metal.’

To colour the story that carries that graveyard thievery, there’s a picture whose caption is thus written and (wallah!) we quote: “Scrap metal is in high demand but dealers have to be aware that some PEOPLE are BEING STOLEN from the graves for SALE.” We surely don’t need to give this one a clinical critique of this one for you, do we, reader?

Let’s now share what we picked up ourselves from Page10 of the senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, February 18 where there’s an enlightening story penned by a wildlife expert, entitled, ‘This is how carnivores are created to eat meat.’

In Para 4 and 5, the expert writes: “Zoologists say in one sitting lions eat not less than five kilogrammes of meat, but it’s the male lions that eat first followed by the cubs and FEMALE come third. 

By making third on the DINNING ground, lionesses end up with almost empty stomachs…”

We’ve a grammatical issue here: we don’t say “and female come third.” We say “…THE females come third.” 

And then, the big cats take their DINER on the DINING (not dinning) ground.

In Para 14, the scribbler carries on: “Animal flesh cannot be crushed, ground and chewed…Man’s as well as OTHER herbivores’ saliva is alkaline, containing carbohydrate digestive enzymes.”

Man as well as “other” HERBIVORES’ saliva? The adjective “other” as used here suggests that man is a herbivore, but that’s not true. Man is an OMNIVORE, meaning he feeds on both meat and plants.

Several pictures have been used to boost the allure of the article. One of the pictures is explained by a caption that reads: “HERBIVOROUS eat grass and end up INTO jaws of CARNIVOROUS.”

The words “herbivorous” and “carnivorous” are adjectives, but the caption writer has used them like they were nouns. The noun for the former is HERBIVORE and for the latter it’s CARNIVORE. A rewrite: “A HERBIVOROUS animal eats grass and end up IN (not into) THE jaws of a CARNIVOROUS animal.”

Another caption reads: “A leopard is INCAPABLE TO see in A complete darkness...” Here’s our redeeming rewrite: “A leopard is INCAPABLE OF SEEING in complete darkness.”

Finally, we’ll take a look the Thursday, February 20 edition of Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet, whose Page 5 has a story entitled, ‘SUA’s new partnership expands capacity in irrigation, food production.’ 

A scribbler who was in Morogoro to cover the kickoff of the said partnership between JICA and SUA wrote: “Speaking during the launch EVENT yesterday, Prof Maulid Mwatawala…emphasised SUA’s unique position…”

The word “event” that our colleague uses to qualify “launch” is unnecessary—it’s tautological. It’s enough to just say: ”Speaking during the launch yesterday…”

Ah, this treacherous language called English!