Over the past week, I glimpsed several grammar constructions worth sharing on this platform. A lot has been going on following the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, and discourse across various platforms has been varied and intense. I came across expressions like “I saw a horrible dream yesterday night…”, “Bring a good reason for not wearing a face mask”, “I did a small mistake, and she was all over me”, “The GSU officer rode his horse and went to camp after the crowd became hostile”, “On coronavirus, CS Health says the truth through the daily briefings”, “I need like thirty…
Author: Alexander Chagema
“On a day that Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe admitted the virus was now being spread through community transmission, the government was toying with the idea of either locking down the entire country or the four counties of Nairobi, Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale that have been declared hot-spots”. This quote from a local daily caught the attention of someone at The Media Observer (TMO) who, mockingly, wrote; “You can imagine government officials gathered somewhere enjoying a cold beer, biting chicken wings and breaking out into uproarious laughter as they toyed with the idea of locking down the country. To “toy with”…
Competition between the ‘Yankees’ and ‘Limeys’ (derogatory terms) spanning decades is, to a larger extent, responsible for the American and British versions of the English language. Out of this competition arose terminologies that sometimes leave us bewildered, not knowing which to apply in a given context. Take ‘pants’, for instance. In British English, pants mean underwear (piece of clothing worn below the waist under trousers, petticoat, dress or skirt), yet in American English, pants could simply mean trousers. Thus, you can say “The seat of his pants is torn” and be understood by an American where a typical Briton would…
COVID-19 statistics from our Health ministry are too depressing. Generally, the attitude of Kenyans towards the pandemic has been casual, but last week’s exponential rise in cases has compelled a sizeable number of Kenyans to sit up and take note. The point is, all is not well. We hardly know what trajectory the pandemic will take, and that is scary. To get our minds off the grim statistics, even if just for a while, let’s refresh our understanding of the words ‘too’, ‘generally’, ‘well’ and ‘hardly’ that have been used in the introductory paragraph. They are part of a group…
The inevitability of death notwithstanding, human beings are not primed to accept it except in its finality. We all would love to live long productive lives, perhaps even match the unbroken record left by biblical Methuselah who is said to have lived for 969 years. Renowned country music maestro Kenny Rogers was 81 years old when he died a few days ago. To millions of country music lovers across the globe, the news was not welcome at all. Netizens, old and young who appreciated his music took to social media to send messages of condolences and pay tribute to the…
The hype that coronavirus has received is intense, and so has the attendant fear. When it was first reported in Wuhan, China in December last year, it did not cause much concern. Indeed, there was no reason to panic, especially after Wuhan was quarantined. However, little did the world know that the Chinese authorities had closed the stable door long after the horse had bolted. Now the world has to deal with a pandemic it is ill-equipped to handle. When news that the first case of coronavirus had been detected in Kenya broke last week, there was palpable panic. Supermarkets…
Ironically, while trying to enthusiastically correct Kenya’s collective mainstream media, the Media Observer makes more grammatical errors in a single issue than the media does in a month. However, we must give the devil his due. Many are times the Media Observer’s grammarians have pointed out embarrassing mistakes made by those whose stoke-in-trade is the dissemination of news in impeccable English language. Last week’s column highlighted an issue the Observer chose to critique, more for want of doing something than for correcting a grammatical or factual error. Building on that, I have randomly culled a few sentences from the same…
Inter alia, the Media Observer, Kenya’s media watchdog publication had this to say of a passage culled from a local newspaper: “Accompanied by several county askaris, Waititu oversaw the felling of indigenous trees including cypress and cedar, all over 20 years old (end of newspaper quote). Cypress and cedar are not indigenous trees (Laconic critique by the Media Observer)”. There is nothing in the quoted text to befuddle, or suggest that cedar and cypress are indigenous trees. The cause of the misconception is the preposition ‘including’, yet only its omission would have given credence to the critique – Accompanied by several county askaris,…
The number and letter combination ‘5W1H’ is not an M-Pesa or scientific code. It is representative of the five-question words; who, what, when where why and how (single ‘h’). In media practice, good journalism demands that every story worth its weight in gold should answer 5W1H. In court, a prosecutor who establishes 5W1H is bound to emerge victorious in matters of litigation. Sentences that begin with any of the 5W1H are questions to which answers should be given. For example; “Who came up with the wonderful idea of a telephone?” (It was Alexander Graham Bell or, I do not know).“What…
In life and in death, Kenya’s second and longest-serving president mesmerized a number of people. The multitudes that thronged Parliament Buildings to view Daniel Arap Moi’s body as it lay in State attest to it. And so did the thousands who attended the former president’s memorial service at Nyayo National Stadium on Tuesday last week. Love him or hate him, Moi held millions of Kenyans under a spell by the sheer power of his presence and character. His spell as the longest-serving president of Kenya is unlikely to be outdone; the Constitution takes care of that by spelling a maximum…
For a long time, BBI has been a catchword in Kenya. It is the acronym for Building Bridges Initiative, a political ideology crafted in March 2018 by a besieged President Uhuru Kenyatta and a fired-up opposition leader Raila Odinga who installed himself as the ‘People’s President’ at Uhuru Park on January 30, 2018. However, reason prevailed and the two buried the hatchet on March 9, 2018, when they agreed to work together for the good of the country. But while BBI united the country, it drove a wedge in the ruling Jubilee Party, splitting it into two; the Kieleweke and…
A synonym is defined as ‘a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language, for example, shut is a synonym of close’.Note the use of the words ‘nearly the same’. The words are cautionary; urging us to take care whenever we employ synonyms to break the monotony in a text or simply to sound different. Quite often, wrongly applied synonyms have succeeded in distorting the intended message. For instance, while ‘male’ is one of the synonyms for ‘man’, to substitute it without due care would result in bad form.…
While going through some passages last week, two grammatical constructions caught my attention. They were; “…six months after’ and “An officer over the rank of…” From the two, let us isolate the words ‘after’ and ‘over’ and discuss their usage vis a vis ‘later’ and ‘above’. Without meaning to, we sometimes use the words ‘after’ and ‘later’, ‘over’ and ‘above’ interchangeably; the result of which is a failure to communicate the intended meaning. It is even more confusing when one has to take care to ensure that where a word is meant to function as a preposition, it does not…
Of the five human senses; touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste, only sight can be interfered with by the function of the brain. You can choose not to see by simply closing your eyes. You cannot, however, choose not to feel, smell, taste or hear unless you are brain-dead. It is impossible to decide what one gets to hear as long as something is said within earshot and there are no artificial obstructions to the ears’ openings. Thus, we constantly acquire information from other peoples’ conversations even though it might be considered rude, especially when we are not invited to…
A few days before Christmas last year, many employees took brief breaks to be with family over the festive period. It wasn’t any different in the newsroom where I ply my trade. Many of the journalists who had taken a brief break from work resumed last week. So, while comparing notes and exchanging banter upon reuniting, a colleague jocularly objected when another looked at him askance and declared, “You have grown fat”. No sooner had the utterer swallowed saliva than debate ensued on whether people actually ‘grow fat’ or simply ‘put on weight’. At this point, I was intrigued by…
Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s sitting president, is getting a lot of flak in his Central Kenya backyard and from parts of the Rift Valley. Hitherto conformists in the Jubilee government have changed tack and are brazenly attacking the president in public. On January 1, 2020, four passengers on a bus en-route to Lamu town from Mombasa were killed by suspected Al Shabaab militants. Frankly, Kenyans travelling in public service vehicles in areas close to the Kenya-Somalia border are, so to speak, sitting ducks. Air travel to affected areas has been restricted. The question is; for how long will Kenyans sit out…
It was more for buffoonery than intellect that Iddi Amin, a one-time president of Uganda, was known. At the height of his tyrannical rule, Amin gave the edict that all Asians must leave Uganda. Those who wanted to make some money from clearance sales before fleeing Uganda hurriedly put up ‘for sale’ signs in their shops. During a tour of Kampala City after the edict, ubiquitous ‘for sale’ signs caught Amin’s attention and prompted him to ask: “Who is this sale?” Amin did not recognise the signs for what they were. To him, the preposition ‘for’ seemed to declare that…
I was having a tete-a-tete with a friend recently when he veered off our conversation by asking; “Did you see that Subaru for Esther?” For a moment I could not comprehend what he was talking about, so I gave him the look that said “you-just-lost-me-there”. It was only when he pointed at a vehicle ahead of us, but on a different lane, that I understood his question. My friend loves cars, and a pimped metallic blue Subaru Forester with a noisy exhaust was hightailing. With time, one gets used to, and hardly notices the antics of young Subaru drivers who…
Flamboyant Nairobi County Governor Mike Sonko ran into strong headwinds last week. Hitherto deemed an untouchable, he was arrested in a most uncivil manner and was later arraigned for corruption. An accomplished drama queen in his own right, he did not disappoint. He did not let police officers put handcuffs on his wrists unchallenged, and so they had to break a sweat to accomplish that mission. Missing in action at the time of his arrest was the youth who normally form part of his colourful entourage wherever he goes. The inevitable reactions on social media – for and against the…
Ambiguity is one of the worst challenges in the mastery of the English language. Writings must be as clear as possible to avoid a second or wrong interpretation. The last sentence of last week’s column was ambiguous. It read; ‘For instance, “Before loading the bag into the car’s trunk, the police dog was made to sniff it”. A simple question makes the ambiguity glaring; who loaded the bags? Not the police dog of course, although that is the impression given. The phrase ‘was made’ introduces another unnamed party, but because one has to determine who between the other party and…
In ancient times, political party adherents or supporters of any cause proudly wore badges on their coats to proclaim on which side they stood or which cause or leader they supported. Yet, as it so often happens in Kenya nowadays, principles and loyalty were part of the game only as far they served the interests of the parties concerned. Quite often, people changed their allegiances, but they did not have to go to any registrar of parties; society wasn’t organised then. By literally turning one’s coat to hide who or what one supported, one changed allegiance. That is the origin of the…
