I Can't Help Myself

I ought to start a campaign here against shoddy English. It is everywhere, and it is often inexcusable. Spanish restaurants should not find it difficult to get an English speaker to point out inaccuracies. The problem is that they find those who profess to speak English, including some English people, and they are none the wiser. The result of this can be the likes of the classic Restaurant Boy "flesh on the tenterhooks" that was to be found on its business cards, until I pointed out that it was garbage. There was never any excuse for Taylor Woodrow's "we build in Spain since 1958"; it's a British company for God's sake. They may have been building in Spain since the late '50s, but they still can't sell all their apartments in Puerto Pollensa.

It's not as though I am dogmatic. I can play fast and loose with the English language, and I do. It is one of the beauties of English that it is so amenable to flexible usage, to the making-up of words and to the abandonment - usually for emphasis - of those rules that were drummed into you at school. Never start a sentence with and or but; always have a subject, object and verb in a sentence. I've just broken that rule; there was no subject. I do not object to text style or to Americanisms. Language should be flexible, but not if it makes no sense, is wrongly spelt or is just plain wrong.

Maybe it's all the years of editorial. I can't help myself. There were two adverts for restaurants in "The Bulletin" yesterday. Both carried mistakes, one more blatant than the other. Try this out: "the excellent quality of one of Britain's foremost Indian restaurants is now open for lunch and dinner". What's wrong with this? How can "the quality" be open? The subject is "the quality". They mean the restaurant, but it's a nonsense. Then there is this: "fine wines to compliment each course". It's the wrong compliment; it should be the other one - complement. A minor slip or typo perhaps, but still a slip. Then there are estate agents. The Spanish frequently get this wrong and refer to "state agents". They are thinking that they have to drop the "e" as this is indicative of a Spanish spelling. In trying to get it right, they get it wrong. But even if the estate agency is British, there are the frequent howlers; well, they are howlers to me. "The property comprises of four bedrooms, etc..." It can consist of or it can comprise. It cannot comprise of. It's shoddy English to comprise of; it's also wrong. Then there is Spanglish or the inaccurate use of "false friends" that have crossed from Spanish into English. The clearest example of this is the use of "reform", as in the building/the restaurant/the bar needs some reforms. Look up the Spanish word "reforma" in a dictionary - in mine anyway - and it does indeed say "reform" but it also says "(ARQ) repair". The "ARQ" is short for "arquitectura". One can undertake repairs or renovations or perform a refurbishment, but not a reform; it is not how the word is used in English, but it is here - by the English. One can re-form with a hyphen, but even that isn't accurate. There should be some reforms to the way English is spoken.

English, unlike Spanish, German, French and other languages, tends to avoid a rigid approach. Much like there is no written constitution, there is no written set of rules in the sense of a body that arbitrates on linguistic matters. Yet there are of course rules - thousands of them. It is just that the English, the British, are often unaware of them. And this can largely be explained by schooling and by that tendency towards flexibility. A German, for instance, will insist on being taught rules for English grammar; he has his own grammar hammered into him at school. A Spaniard may not insist, but he will be fully aware of the existence of rules. During the summer, I used to meet up with a Mallorcan friend - Toni who runs Pippers restaurant in Puerto Alcúdia. As a favour, I was helping him out with his English. When I got to grammar, he understood well the rules and applications of tenses. Ask many English speakers, and they wouldn't have a clue.

In "Euro Weekly", the editorial manager has been doing regular items about language and language learning. She makes a good point this week when referring to the fact that Brits, when learning Spanish, run up against the grammar wall. It's not surprising. To teach a Brit Spanish, one probably has to first teach them about English grammar. Perhaps it all boils down to the fact that the English verb system, at its basic level, is so simple. "I write, you write, he writes, we write, you write, they write." "Yo escribo, tú escribes, él escribe, nosotros escribimos, vosotros escribís, ellos escriben." Conjugation is less obvious in English, and don't even let's mention the formal and informal "you's". Then there is the fact that we don't change our adjectives and that we don't have masculines and feminines (and neuters in some languages). At least in Spanish there is no declension of the article, as there is in German (and by article I mean "a", "the", and also "this" and "that").

Mind you, what can the poor old Brits do? As I write this on a Saturday afternoon, many will be glued to Sky. And the media are often at fault. They are at fault for admitting into their midsts those whose tenuous grasp of the English language should bar them from ever going near a broadcasting studio: the football pundit or football manager most obviously. I fancy it was Big Ron what did it, a man who didn't so much murder the language as put it up against a wall and fire a volley of bullets through its heart. And his crime was? To introduce the use of what might be termed the football present perfect. Listen to almost any pundit or manager now and, when reporting an incident, he will say: "the boy's gone down the wing (or worse, has come down the wing), he's crossed it, the goalie's come for it and the striker's put it in the back of the net". Unless this is a report on something that has just been shown, it is always wrong, and 99% of the time this is the case. (Depending on context, it should either be the past or present tense.) But because Big Ron, or whoever it was, did it, i.e. used the present perfect incorrectly, so others aped him, and they aped him because they thought it was correct. And they thought it was correct because they didn't know their language, and especially their grammar.

I come back to my old friend, the man in the bar (who does exist by the way). We were once having a conversation about language and language learning, and I cited the case of the use of the present perfect. He said it didn't matter. Why should people need to know what these tenses are called or what they do? And you know, he was probably right, because for the Brits they don't matter. Which is maybe why many struggle to understand Spanish. From shoddy English to shoddy Spanish.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Stereophonics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxE1vyxIoAc). Today's title - legendary act and legendary lead singer who died recently.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)


Index for November 2008

Alcúdia marina - 3 November 2008
All-inclusives - 16 November 2008
Architecture - 11 November 2008
Artà - 22 November 2008
Asociación de Britanicos Irlandeses Residentes Empresarios y Trabajadores en las Baleares - 1 November 2008
Balearic economy - 6 November 2008
Bars - 15 November 2008
BBC - 9 November 2008
Bees - 10 November 2008
Campos - 17 November 2008
Can Picafort - 6 November 2008, 18 November 2008
Car chase - 13 November 2008
Car sales - 5 November 2008
Catalan - 24 November 2008
Churches - 11 November 2008
Citizen participation - 19 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Coffee - 4 November 2008
Credit and interest - 26 November 2008
Crime - 3 November 2008
Dictionaries - 24 November 2008
Digital television - 20 November 2008
Ensaimada - 12 November 2008
Environment - 17 November 2008
Eurorregión Pirineos Mediterráneo - 16 November 2008
Expatriates - 10 November 2008
Fairs - 5 November 2008, 12 November 2008, 21 November 2008
Fiestas - 18 November 2008
Fira de Tardor 2008 - 21 November 2008
Football - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Garry Bonsall - 19 November 2008
GOB - 17 November 2008, 29 November 2008
Golf - 17 November 2008
Gotmar Residents Association - 19 November 2008
Holiday bookings - 16 November 2008
Holiday lets - 9 November 2008
Hospital General de Muro - 12 November 2008
Hotels - 8 November 2008, 9 November 2008, 16 November 2008, 26 November 2008
Landscapes - 23 November 2008
Language - 24 November 2008, 30 November 2008
Nordic walking - 7 November 2008
Parking - 18 November 2008, 29 November 2008
Paul Davidson - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Pedestrianisation - 1 November 2008, 19 November 2008, 22 November 2008, 25 November 2008
Planning permissions - 26 November 2008
Police - 3 November 2008
Political parties - 17 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Pollensa Fair 2008 - 5 November 2008
Power cut - 14 November 2008
Property market - 2 November 2008
Pumpkins - 12 November 2008
Rafael Nadal - 28 November 2008
Real Mallorca - 13 November 2008, 14 November 2008, 15 November 2008
Residents associations - 1 November 2008, 19 November 2008
Rubbish tax - 22 November 2008
Sa Pobla - 21 November 2008
Santa Margalida - 18 November 2008
Season 2009 - 27 November 2008
Spanishness - 6 November 2008, 8 November 2008, 11 November 2008, 15 November 2008, 23 November 2008
Storms - 4 November 2008, 7 November 2008
Street cleaning - 20 November 2008
Tea - 4 November 2008
Television - 3 November 2008, 20 November 2008
Tour operators - 16 November 2008
Tourism - 8 November 2008, 16 November 2008, 22 November 2008, 27 November 2008, 28 November 2008
Town halls - 18 November 2008, 19 November 2008, 25 November 2008
Train - 5 November 2008
Tram - 5 November 2008
Unemployment - 4 November 2008, 7 November 2008
Water supply - 21 November 2008
Websites - 29 November 2008
Weddings - 11 November 2008
Winter tourism - 1 November 2008