language

  • The price of petrol – an object of worship

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    image of petrol pump nozzle in tankThere’s been a lot of coverage in the media recently on the falling price of crude oil – and consequently of petroleum products – but it is questionable whether any other coverage has attained the level of religious fervour exhibited by the Bristol Post, an organ not normally renowned for its piety.

    Yesterday’s Post featured a report with the headline Unleaded petrol drops below £1 in Swindon – but when will Bristol see the hallowed price?

    Yes, that’s right – hallowed.

    According to Collins English Dictionary, the adjective hallowed has the following meanings:

    1. set apart as sacred
    2. consecrated or holy

    Nowhere else have I encountered the price of petrol being referred to as being set apart as sacred, let alone consecrated or holy.

    Collins also adds helpfully that hallowed is used to describe something that is respected and admired, usually because it is old, important, or has a good reputation.

    I hardly think any of the adjectives so helpfully added by Collins could be applied – even in the broadest sense – to the price of petrol in the West Country.

    Could it be that the unnamed journalist responsible for the piece is ignorant of the meaning of hallowed?

    Quite possibly.

    Furthermore, the Bristol Post is well known locally for its unquestioning championing of the motorist and demonisation of cyclists, not to mention its barely concealed opposition to Bristol Mayor George Ferguson’s plans for residents’ parking zones. That being so, perhaps Post “journalists” do worship piously at the pumps every time they fill up. 🙂

  • Erasmus Prize for Wikipedia Community

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Tech

    Wikipedia logoWhen Wikipedia came online in January 2001, no-one could have have imagined its subsequent development. Fourteen years later, innumerable authors have produced more than 34 million articles in 280 languages. The Wikimedia Foundation attracts 20,000 mn. hits on the online encyclopaedia and its sister projects, heise reports.

    This success is now being recognised by the Dutch-based Praemium Erasmianum foundation with the noted Erasmus Prize. Part of the citation reads: “By distributing knowledge to places where it was previously unavailable, Wikipedia also plays an important role in countries where neutrality and open information are not taken for granted. With its worldwide reach and social impact.”

    Each year the Praemium Erasmianum foundation recognises people and institutions for their services. The prize will be handed over to representatives of the Wikipedia community in the autumn, while the prize money of €150,000 is to be used for community development.

    In the meantime, the Wikimedia Foundation must grapple with future strategy. As Foundation Trustee Phoebe Ayers recently explained on her blog, the online encyclopaedia’s readership has clearly declined, particularly in industrial countries. Even sharply rising mobile access figures cannot compensate for the loss. The number of authors has also been declining steadily for several years. The Wikimedia Foundation is investing in a more attractive platform that’s also easier to use to counteract this trend.

  • Dutch language is long-winded and peculiar, research reveals

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    De Volkskrant reports that speakers of Dutch are daily more circumlocutory with many diversions and ’empty elements’ than speakers of languages such as Bantawa, Bininj Gun-Wok, Egyptian Arabic, Samoan, Sandawe, Kharia, Khwarshi, Kayardild, Teiwa, Tidore, Sheko and Sochiapan Chinantec, according to research by graduate researcher Sterre Leufkens of Amsterdam University. A total of 22 languages were scored by Leufkens for the presence of unnecessary grammatical elements and rules. Her dissertation contains several disappointing findings about her mother tongue.

    Take the difference between ‘de‘ and ‘het‘. English only has ‘the‘. Under the coconut palms of Samoa in the south Pacific they have know for a long time that life can be easier from a linguistic point of view. Another interesting fact is that when Dutch arrived in southern Africa, ‘de‘ and ‘het‘ melted like Dutch snow in the African sun to make space for the clearer ‘die‘.

    map of world depicting where Dutch is spoken
    Where Dutch is spoken. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Key – Dark blue: native and majority language; Blue: Afrikaans (daughter language); Light blue: secondary (non-official language), where some knowledge persists

    Plural form

    Dutch is also long-winded because verbs have a plural form – hij loopt and wij lopen – and due to the double plural endings of substantives: ‘ziektes‘ and ‘ziekten‘, ‘sektes‘ and ‘sekten‘. Dutch has no less than three ways to compose words. In linguistic jargon such peculiarities are known as historical junk.

    In Dutch the lumber could have accumulated over the centuries due to the fact that few people made this language their own as a second language. When large groups actually do that it often results in grammatical simplifications. That must have happened some 1,500 ago with the West German dialect from which English is derived.

    It still remains to be seen whether Dutch contains more lumber and ballast than German, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Greek or Armenian. Dutch features as the sole Indo-European language in Leufkens’ research. “The point was to get an initial impression of what is possible in this area,” Leufkens told the magazine Onze Taal. “In that case it is better to take languages that are as far apart as possible.”

  • Latvian man spends 4 weeks in jail due to interpreter problem

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of scales of justiceA Latvian man spent 4 weeks in jail for an offence that would normally have attracted a non-custodial sentence, the Shropshire Star reports.

    Rolands Etjantens pleaded guilty on 8th December to a charge of common assault, but was remanded in custody by Telford magistrates to await assessment by the probation service to see if he was suitable for community punishment.

    According to his solicitor, Etjantens’ lack of English also meant he was not suitable for unpaid work in the community or supervision by the probation service as both of these would also require the use of interpreters.

    District Judge Andrew King ultimately sentenced Etjantens, of no fixed abode, to 42 days in prison, meaning that he would be released within a few days.

  • Beyond compere

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    a female compereThere’s a classic homophone in today’s online Bristol Post, which carries a feature on the return of What the Frock!, the city’s all-female comedy night.

    The homophone in question is in first sentence of the third paragraph, which at the time of writing reads as follows:

    The line-up features extended sets from both Mae Martin and Anna Morris and will be compared by Bristol’s very own Jayde Adams, pictured, winner of the Funny Women 2014 Awards.

    Compared? With what? Or whom? 😉

    The word you’re looking for, struggling Post journalist, is compere, whose dictionary definition is:

    com¡pere
    (kŏm′pâr′) Chiefly British
    n.
    The master of ceremonies, as of a television entertainment program or a variety show.
    v. com¡pered, com¡per¡ing, com¡peres
    v.tr.
    To serve as master of ceremonies for.
    v.intr.
    To serve as the master of ceremonies.

  • Dinner for One – a German New Year’s Eve institution

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Dinner for One, starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is an institution on German television on New Year’s Eve, as well as in Austria and Switzerland.

    Dinner for One was originally written as a two-hander comedy sketch for the theatre in the 1920s. Its author was Lauri Wylie.

    In 1963 German television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) recorded a performance of the piece in the original English with a short introduction in German.

    The sketch presents the 90th birthday of elderly upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a celebration dinner every year for her friends Mr Pommeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby and Admiral von Schneider. However, due to her great age, Miss Sophie has outlived all her friends…

  • Friend deputises when Capita interpreter fails to show

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    image of scales of justiceOn 29th December the Grantham Journal reported on the case of a Romanian man appearing before Grantham Magistrates Court charged with the theft of £2,000 worth of chewing gum and other items from two Lincolnshire supermarkets.

    31 year-old Ionut Dumitru Nae of Coventry, had pleaded guilty on 24th November to attempting to take £900 worth of gum and other items from Morrisons in Stamford and then stealing more packs of chewing gum, champagne and other products to the value of pound;1,500 from Asda in Grantham.

    However, the defendant had to rely on the assistance of his English-speaking friend to translate in court when no interpreter turned up.

    Hat tip: Linguist Lounge.

  • Want to bash immigrants? Use interpreters! The Express does!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    The Daily Express, once described by Prince Philip as a “bloody awful newspaper“, is not well known for its love of foreigners.

    One has to wonder whether there are any limits the depths to which it will sink in its xenophobia.

    The latter was apparent in an article earlier this week on police use of interpreters in West Yorkshire (which are provided by our old friends and paragons of competence Capita Translation & Interpreting, according to the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. Ed.).

    Apparently the police had to resort to using interpreters 6,000 times for 75 different languages.

    The Express’ derisive attitude to foreigners is obvious in the report’s second sentence, as is its scant regard to skilled professionals such as interpreters being paid properly.

    The cost, believed to be rising because of a soaring number of immigrants, was not revealed but interpreters can command fees of up to £40 an hour.

    To support its xenophobia, the Express finds a willing accomplice in Bradford Tory councillor Michael Walls, who even goes so far as to suggest that officers with a second language assisting in interviews would be a cheaper option for the police than engaging a skilled professional interpreter. He is quoted by the Express as saying: “Police officers who have a second language would be more economical.”

    Clearly neither the Express nor Councillor Walls have heard of a minor impediment to such a scheme, one that’s called conflict of interest.

    Your correspondent wonders what the considered response of the Law Society would be to such a suggestion.

    The article is open to comments and Express readers are not backward in showing their xenophobia (and accompanying support for UKIP. Ed.) either. Indeed the first comment is quite definite, starting: “They should have to Speak English before we let them in!”

    How would that person feel if the tables were turned and he or she couldn’t go on holiday abroad because he couldn’t speak fluent, French, Spanish or Thai beforehand?

  • Dark Ages Christmas cancelled at Poundland

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    cards with wording hark the herald anglesLocal papers around the country, including the Bristol Post, have reported that budget retailer Poundland has withdrawn Christmas cards containing a basic spelling error.

    The cards themselves feature the words “Hark the Herald Angles“.

    Furthermore, The Independent also reports that Poundland was also selling Christmas decorations spelling out either “Merry Shristmas” or “Merry Christmay“.

    It is apparent that proof-reading costs far too much and would – if implemented – destroy Poundland’s profit margin on seasonal kitsch.

    Incidentally, the Angles of East Anglia, in the shape of the Wuffingas dynasty, were instrumental in the establishment of Christianity in England. Rædwald (who was buried in the ship burial at Sutton Hoo) was the first East Anglian king to be baptised in 604. His descendant King Anna (or Onna), who reigned from c. 636 – 654 AD, had several of his offspring canonised as saints: his son Jurmin and all his daughters – Seaxburh, Æthelthryth, Æthelburh and possibly a fourth, Wihtburh.

Posts navigation