Murder Most Foul

I can bet the immortals in Paris will be nettled to see such a sign board. For goodness sake, if Merci beaucoup is too long,  Merci bcp isn’t, however wrong it is. Anyway, I wonder how many of their clients get to know they are being thanked.

 

If you can't see the mistake, you probably don't have that language

 Now, while I was away{from this blog} I came across grotesque scenes, murder most foul I’d say, people recklessly using language; violating language, is what I call it. I have always been of the opinion that one uses a language they are most proficient in especially when you have the choice! Now let’s get our hands a little dirty doing a post-mortem of what you people have been doing with English.  As if text language isn’t a catastrophe enough, some people I know have extended their extravagance[with words] to other areas like prepositions. Whether out of ignorance or not, this isn’t forgivable especially when you have been in a designated English class for 12 years as the 8.4.4 system demands. Have a look: 

We might cut the guy some slack for misspelling my name because I am certain even auto correct wouldn’t accept that, but doesn’t it sound awkward to make a construction such as in the noon* let alone typing it and hitting send? This chap decided to destroy my day in the morning.

Someone told that making such mistakes or not, sometimes depends on where you come from. Only that her depends was followed by to! So I had no choice but ask where she’s from. Depending on, it’s neither depending to or with which I hear quite frequently.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have gigabytes of other such unheeding uses of language from even the least expected of folks that I have to nurse some shock before I can bring it up here for you to see. 

/nəʊ mɔː(r)/ (#NoMore)

In tribute to the fallen Garissa University College Comrades, Special tribute to the linguistics and language students who were quite a number

In the standard theory of the Generative Transformational Grammar, Noam Chomsky introduced the lexicon which comprises of complex items and redundancy rules. The lexicon is described as a set of lexical entries each consisting of a distinctive feature matrix and complex symbols, where complex symbols is a set of different kind of features which may be syntactic and semantic, or may specify which transformational processes apply to strings containing the items in question or features that exempt from certain phonological rules and so on. The standard theory however is not the subject of this post: the lexical item student is. Below would be a possible derivation for student

Student

+Young

+Intellectual

+Energetic

With this derivation, the death of ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTY SEVEN, not by disease or any natural phenomenon but by death irks me and rubs my nerves the wrong way! 147 souls, youthful, energetic, promising intellects is far too much a price to pay for terrorism! At this point we need to stop these terrorists there and for good! The troubled north has had enough misfortunes with the education sector hit hardest and as a result, economic growth is like a pipedream in that region. Late last year when terror was unleashed on Mandera from right, left and center most of the fatalities were on teachers, the education sector was left on its knees for the better part of the first term. A decade ago, in the same region Garba-Tulla high school was forced to close its doors for two years, even after reopening the school has never been able to reclaim its lost glory, I hope Garissa University College does!

It is tough though, for me to take of my mind that we are talking about young souls, around my age. People who should be studying or doing other productive activities for themselves and the society! The crème de la crème, a piece from the best  People at the most productive time of their life and going beyond Kenya it is something that we, as human being should come together and curb because it is happening all over! Exactly a year ago 140 chibok girls were kidnapped Boko Haram, I may have been relieved when I saw them being forced to recite the Quran but we need them educated! Five months ago Taliban opened terror on Pakistani students in Peshawar School, Pakistan! At around the same time Africa lost another 50 students by a suicide bomber in Potiskum, North eastern Nigeria. In what is termed as Europe’s worst attack since World War II a lone terrorist unleashed terror on Norway bombing government offices before attacking a youth camp leaving 69 young ones dead. I’d run out of fingers counting where the youthful generation has been targeted but evidently, in any terror attack the young and most productive generation is usually the most affected! In any case, human life is sacred, and this profligate extermination of human life all over the world need to be stopped at all costs. We also should accept that terrorism is terrorism, it doesn’t matter who the perpetrator and above what we need a stronger resolve, hard-line decisions and change of tactics to combat terrorism!

I stop at his quote from one of the world’s greatest linguist and intellectual! It applies to everyone in my view, from governments to the civilian populations and the actual perpetrators of acts of terror

The title of the post is a phonetic transcription of "No More" the current trending topic on social media following the Garissa University Attack

Can You Speak in Your Tongue?

“…hawa watu wanakuwanga* waj*nga sana…” asserted a guy seated next to me in a matatu “…these people are so tribal they want to speak their language everywhere, they think this country is theirs…” went the incoherent arguments by this guy that to some extent we would say he was ignorant. “…wanadhani sisi wote ni wakikuyu?” I wasn’t surprised by the unnecessary outburst that was caused by the mere fact that the conductor of the Nairobi bound matatu was speaking Gikuyu “too much”.

This can elicit different debates especially in Kenya where there are over 50 native languages which has been used negatively by our politician to divide and rule!

In Kenya, and especially the Nairobi metropolitan region there’s a mistaken move of tagging mother tongue speakers with negative stereotypes which as my syntax professor likes repeating is st*pid! Her argument is that we are studying a universal grammar but still insist on studying it in English to verify its validity while we are so rich in terms of languages. In fact in that class we have upto five African languages at our disposal!

Away from linguistics, I’ve wanted to write this article but I always wonder where to start, thanks to guy X above the threshold has been exceeded and my centre can hold no more! Let’s try and tackle it from a political viewpoint; according to the 2010 constitution, Swahili is the national language while English and Swahili are the official languages. A little further, it has been a government policy that children are taught their mother tongues and in mother tongue from class 1 to class 3 in catchment areas while in metropolis like Nairobi, Thika, Nakuru among others they use Swahili or English. Things become complicated here! These children in Nairobi, for instance, cannot say that Swahili is their first language, neither is English. Most of them also do not speak in their mother tongues, so what are we left with? The sheng phenomenon! Unfortunately we cannot blame the children, none of us choses which language we will learn first. I cringe when I hear parents discourage their children from speaking their first languages!

Before joining school, we usually have already acquired a first language; first language acquisition starts as soon as one is born. It is the language that you acquire during this critical period that you will be able to speak flawlessly and even judge when someone doesn’t speak it well. Suffice it to say, you will be a native speaker of that language. Going by the research done in cognitive science, education and language acquisition, the advantages of this first language cannot be overstated. It is this language that should be used for didactic purposes according to certain scholars, an idea that I buy. Take the case of Kenya for instance: English is the language of instruction even with the mother tongue lessons in lower primary. Having ever through a public school, brought up by teachers and even taught (a private school), I can tell you for sure that English is such a challenge and so is Kiswahili. Teachers have admitted that more often than not they’ve had to explain subjects such as science and social studies in mother tongue so that the pupils could grasp. That is in the rural areas, in Nairobi metropolitan the situation might not be exactly the same but is definitely not better. I have been in classes in Thika and Nairobi and you do not want to hear the kind of Swahili that is used even for instructional purposes. The challenges in English and Swahili were evident. My “mini-research” got much more interesting when I observed English compositions from the two regions. Helping a colleague mark English compositions made me afraid of what to expect from the French exam that I’d later administer! This problem isn’t exclusively Kenyan; many other countries such as Nigeria, Namibia and Pakistan are confronted with this problem.

"...a third of the world's languages ar in Africa yet Africa is the only continent where children begin learning in foreign languages..." -Prof Kithaka Wa Mberia

Such findings are only found in academic corridors as theses or conference papers after which they are cast onto the shelves of the library to gather dust. In a conference during the International Mother language Day, a scholar showed how learning is slowed down by lack of linguistic competence in the language of instruction, and the impact on the cognitive ability of the child since attention has to be divided between learning English, the language of instruction, and the concepts to be learnt! United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has for the last 50 years championed for the mother language in learning at the elementary levels. Multilingualism is supposed to be mother tongue based, how well one has mastered their first language has a positive effect on the acquisition of a second language, according to research done in second language acquisition. Other scholars have argued that the goals of education for all are more easily achieve in countries where first languages are used. It has also been found that multilingual children tend to develop better thinking skills than monolinguals, as such most African countries would stand to benefit if there was a good education policy, properly implemented. Kenya for instance is already multilingual, and with individuals, before reaching a foreign language most people will have an indigenous language, Swahili and English. The case of Swahili however puzzles me and is subject to research. In my translation classes, I was rather surprised to see some of us put Swahili as their language C meaning that they could not have Swahili as their target language yet it is assumed that this is the language we use daily.

Even with the poor mastery of English and Kiswahili in Kenya, there are still grave issues with our mother tongues especially in urban and peri-urban areas. Today children are becoming more alienated from their cultures. The inability to communicate with grandparents and even parents is worrying and subsequently leads to a situation where the young generation no longer has a connection to their cultural heritage. “For the sake of national integration…” I hear people argue. But I hear more stereotypes about tribes than things that would foster national integration by use of a common language. As the world’s languages reduce, so do the cultural values carried in these languages.

Evidently, the benefits people who mastered their first languages alongside other languages reap are immense as are benefits that come with second/foreign languages. However the benefits of the latter underlie those of the former thus overlooking them will have far reaching effects!

-        There are 70 languages native to Kenya, however some have become extinct while a few others like el molo have as few as 650 speakers. -        According to UNESCO the literacy rate in Kenya was at 84% in 2010 ranking 4th in Africa. -        Most of the research done on our native languages has been in Europe and America

Translation: Changing Words from a Language To the Other?

Most language dictionaries will refer to translation simply as changing words from one language to another. I am however of a different school of thought, there’s more into translation than changing words from a language to another.  Translation is about changing meaning into a form that is not only fathomable by the speakers of the target language but also acceptable in the target language; it is about transporting cultural elements from one language to another in a way that they will be compatible with the culture of the target group. In translation it is imperative that you transport all linguistic and cultural parallels in the target language, so that the message can be as original as possible.

Let’s take for instance the following:

He’s married.

She is married.

When the above sentences are translated to let’s say French, they will be as follows:

Il est marié.

Elle est mariée.

There is no much change apart from ensuring that the past participle mariée in the second sentence agrees with the feminine subject elle. However if the same sentences are translated into an African language they will have to metamorphose more than they would when being translated into a European language. Let’s use the Kiswahili example which will respectively translate as follows:

Ameoa.

Ameolewa.

The third person singular in this case is the syllable A which is the same for masculine and feminine. However we can be able to identify the gender of the subject by looking at the nature of the sentence. Loosely translated into English from Kiswahili, the sentences will translate as follows:

He has married.

She is married.

Why this discrepancy? In most African cultures, it is the man that marries and the lady gets married thus the variation. If one translates without taking this into consideration, it is likely to raise eyebrows in African target audience making the man seem inferior, or the lady look defiant perhaps because of gender roles. There are many other such sentences in which you have to consider more than the words to make a perfect translation.

There are many such paralinguistic features as well as linguistic ones that determine someone’s translation. As such renowned theoreticians, translators and scholars have come up with theories to help translators. In fact, translation has evolved from a simple practice to a major field of study. The skopos theory of translation looks at translation from a functional point of view; the action of translating is determined by its skopos(purpose) or more directly, it implies that the end justifies the means. With this approach, the source language is just a point of departure after which the translator has the freedom to transform the text in a way that it will pass the intended message in the target language.

Danica seleskovitch’s interpretative theory of translation has a different approach. It divides the process of translation into three stages: comprehension, “deverbalization” and re-expression. According to Jean Delisle in his book La Traduction Raisonée, we can only translate well, what we’ve well understood. The translator has to understand (comprehend) the text to be translated well before translating. At the comprehension stage the translator thus needs to know what type of a text he’s dealing with, the register, when and where was the text written and by who and more importantly the message and how it is coded. These among others are the questions would be important to end up with a perfect translation.

The deverbalization phase passes fast in the translators mind. This is the stage where words are stripped off, and you’re left with the message only; think of language as cloths dressed on message. This stage is important to avoid translating simply word to word. As such one might end up using homographs like eventuellement in French and eventually in English which don’t really mean the same thing.  The final stage according to the interpretive theory of translation is re-expression, where meaning is now "dressed" in words of the target language. This level is important because of the differences between language for instance in syntax. 

Evidently there’s more into translation than just transcoding words from one language into another.  At the end of the day, it is about the culture aspect, register, and context, type of text among other linguistic or paralinguistic aspects just as much as it is about language. All these parallel aspects should be put into consideration in order to end up with a perfect translation that will pass the intended message, so that if a text is based in a very liberal society and it is being trans-created in a remotely located, conservative society, the parallels should be identified and considered. It is because of this, bilingualism doesn't make us translators; you need to get a professional translator for all your needs in translation.

The author of this article works works with Kenya French Speakers, Kenya's premier language experts

Semantic Shift: Meaning Changes Precipitated by the Internet

Thanks to the internet and social media the semantics of English is taking a shift. unlike a language like French in which words have to go under the scrutiny of l’Academie Francaise before they can be adopted into standard French, English accepts anything from anywhere by common usage. Being a grammar nazi in the times we are living in has become a responsibility; ask one he will tell you how badly he needs a red pen to underline words on timelines that seem misplaced.

Nominalization, coinage and other neologisms have become common in the postmodern era. We all miss those days when black berries and apples were just fruits. In those days, gingerbread was just a cookie and jellybean was a sugar candy. When friend was just a noun for what becomes of a person we have befriended and like was a verb.

It took me sometime to realize that an epic fail was neither a paradox nor sarcasm however ironic it may sound. Google is now a verb in the Oxford dictionary although my auto correct still insists that I have to write its first letter in the upper case. Today tweeting is not confined to the chirping of members of class aves; in fact, I’d be surprised to know you’re reading this and you do not tweet. 

 You are worried by the current trend? Or interested by a particular fashion trend? You better be heading to twitter to see what’s actually trending!  Talking of trends, remember you will need a tag for something to start trending. I don’t really mean that you will need to attach or stick a paper or something, but I suppose it’s something close to that. But then am afraid else where you might be tagged on photos and posts! Did I just mention post? Well seems things are murkier than I thought. By post I don’t mean mail, neither do I mean a job opening nor a piece of wood/metal in a vertical position like in a goal post. I mean something quite different, like a message posted on social media. Actually what we do to tweets is post them, perfect example! Viral isn’t only for infections, it can also be for photos and videos. Meanwhile, if you carry your notebook today, you won’t need a pen, how good? However you will be in great trouble if yout notebook’s drive gets a virus unless you have used cloud storage for your back up.

When you see me type : ) I am not trying to punctuate although I just closed a bracket that I didn’t open, I was only trying to key in an emoticonJ. Have I told you that in the present day # has gotten another use apart from denoting a sharp tone in music? Yes, when we’re chirping tweeting, we do use # and call it a hash tag. This is just a tip of the ice berg; there are more words that have taken a totally different semantic path from what used to be the obvious. Words like stumble; have I told you that Stumble Upon is a proper noun today? 

I am afraid if we continue with this discussion we might end up with annoying barbarisms that have no regard for grammar and spelling. We might end up with unintelligible vowel-less lexical items. All in all, that is how dynamic the English language is.

**italics - some of the words that have a acquired new meanings

Smart Devises**, Non-Smart Users?

Going through my Facebook feed I am saddened by what our gadgets have reduced us into.  My friend has crafted a very great status that his fellow 2000 or so friends wouldn’t resist clicking the like button but they won’t. Guess why? His auto-correct had something different in mind!  Our elephant thumbs on tiny touch keypads only make the situation worse!

Modern day devices come equipped with auto-correct features among other features that make us part with colossal sums of cash that we wouldn’t have even thought of raising in the first place. On auto correction, life has become so simple. Who needs to master the spelling of a 10 letter word in a language that’s not his first?  Suffice it to say we now have prosthetic brains in these gadgets.

Human language is way too complex for a machine to comprehend; only a human brain can. The end product i.e. utterances or sentences are after complex processes in the human brain; that’s why you should never trust a gadget to interfere with what you want to say or write. Let’s cut a long story short by a few illustrations.

My brother, who lives in Kigali, is leaving tonight.

My brother who lives in Kigali is leaving tonight.

Both of the above sentences are properly punctuated, however the semantic bearing of the two sentences isn't the same owing to the different positions of the comma. While in the first sentence the words between the commas aren’t critical to the meaning, in the second one the same words, without a comma have a lot to do with the meaning of the whole sentence. In fact, auto-correct features don’t help much where punctuation is concerned save for offering you capital letters after the full stop.

It’s quite obvious that auto-correct won’t be of much help when using proper nouns, especially when dealing with our African names. Sometimes, especially on mobile phones, these grammar/spell checkers wont detect when you improperly use homonyms  such as there and their which we can extend to you’re and your; everyone who minds grammar can bear me witness how this** are annoying in text messages or on social media.

we've all been in such a situation thought not this awkward!

Till when are we going to allow the very devices we use to tweet call our audience (tweeps) twerps?  It can be awkward in text messaging. We already know how difficult text messaging is since we don’t have the facial expressions and other non-verbal cues to complement our messages; I need not talk of the catastrophe that befalls someone when they blindly follow their devises**, or to be fair to the users; when there devices have better ideas.

Clearly artificial intelligence cannot replace the human competence in language; I am yet to mention computer translation and speech translation where computer scientists are using an almost similar technology as the one in spelling and grammar checkers. The algorithms used in these use probability and statistics; perfection would require a replica of the model of the human language, any good student of Noam Chomsky, can tell you how (im)possible this is! Chomsky’s view on the same would require a different page!

Back to spell/grammar checkers, let’s see how many modern grammar checkers will properly correct the poem below, created for old auto corrects.

This is the best Microsoft word can offer:

Eye halves a spelling checker
it came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong or write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect all the way.
My checkers told me sew.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t use auto correct, use it but don’t trust it; unless you believe your device is smarter that you, but in this age of Google and Android, I wouldn’t be surprised! I personally prefer turning off my auto-correct features than letting these probabilistic guesses from mindless devices mess my texts. Now help me identify where in this text I deliberately let Microsoft office 2010 decide for me, or where it failed to save me.

** Auto correct fails in this article

About Me, Myself and I

Thanks to Kenyan English we now accept constructions like “Me I am going….” The fact that this kind of a construction may go unnoticed doesn’t mean that it is correct. However much an error is repeated, it can never become right unlike that lie which becomes truth once repeated so often. What’s even more nettling is seeing this mistake appear on documents created using word processor programs, grammar checkers are there to help to get rid of these mistakes but some people just ignore! Smart devices dumb users, right? (Topic for another page) anyhow, let us try and differentiate these personal pronouns.

Me

Only use me when you are the object in the sentence. It is used along with other objective pronouns like her, us, him etc.

E.g. the old man called john, the old man called him

Thus is such a case if we replace the personal pronoun him with first person singular it will be; the old man called me!

Easy, right?

Me is also used to refer to the person being referred to by a preposition. For example:

·         This article has been written by me.

·         Rose was accompanied by Beth and myself me.

Love yourself, not you!

Myself

Now that I mentioned in an instance where it is misused, why don’t we just have a look at how it is used before we go to I? Myself is a reflexive pronoun meaning it is used as an object that refers to the speaker who is also the subject, thus we can say it is the reflexive form of I.

·         E.g. I love me myself

·         I like being me myself

However we have developed this bad habit of using me instead of myself especially on social media, trust me I might be heading for an “un-follow expedition’’ for anyone using that after I have shared it.(Bah, Kabutha is just a single follower anyway, well to me you’re committing crimes against grammar J). Back to the track, use of myself is not limited to I, it is also used for referring to oneself after being mentioned in the same sentence.

·         E.g. you don’t expect me to tell you about myself.

Finally it is used to put emphasis that for instance someone did something without assistance.

·         E.g. I myself witnessed all the drama

·         I did all the work by myself. By+oneself=alone

The former may sound incorrect but it is correct, I bet the clarification in the latter is clear. By oneself I mean himself, herself and myself. I have deliberately avoided commenting about a common construction like the director or myself will answer all your questions. Does anyone know how correct that is? Shed some light in the comment box below

I

Perhaps I ought to have started with this, nevertheless let’s look at it. I is more or less the opposite of me.  Only use I when you are the subject in the sentence just like you do with he and she. When you use I together with another noun or pronoun to form the subject, I always comes second.

·         E.g. I am talking to you

·         Dennis and me I are talking to you.

Remember, for subject use I, for object stick to me and myself for reflexive and emphasis. They are not interchangeable at all!

Have a nice week ahead and take care of yourself J