English usage

  • Little Brother alive and well in North Somerset

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    North Somerset strikes me as a somewhat ambivalent area of the country. On the one hand, it has town councils eager to indulge in Luddism and hold back the tide of technology (posts passim). On the other, the unitary authority – North Somerset Council – seems eager to do its bit for Orwell‘s dystopian vision of the future in its own Little Brother-ish way.

    North Somerset Council is apparently compiling a database of email addresses of people who choose that means of contacting it, according to a report in today’s Bristol Post.

    According to the council, this database is for use to contact people in an emergency and will not be passed on to third parties.

    However, the council has only just released details of the existence of this email address database once it had already collected 20,000 entries.

    According to a council spokesman: “The central database complies with data protection and email addresses will not be shared or sold to third parties (now where have we heard that before? Ed.).

    “This is just another way of the council being able to communicate with its residents should an emergency situation arise.

    “The addresses will not be used for any other reason. People who do not want to be contacted in this way can ask to have their details removed from the database.”

    Isn’t that reassuring? People can have their details removed from the database if they don’t want to be contacted by this means. This means North Somerset residents will have to take action themselves to be removed from a list that they probably didn’t want – or consent – to be added to in the first place.

    There’s far too much of this kind of data scraping going on. It would have been better if North Somerset Council had sought the informed consent of its email correspondents before adding them automatically to its database, but then again that would involve treating people like intelligent human beings. However, this is a highly unlikely prospect given that North Somerset Council has an even greater propensity than its big neighbour Bristol to refer disingenuously to its residents as ‘customers’. 🙁

  • Trains of thought

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    As I never learnt to drive, I’m reliant for getting around on my own motive power or the use of public transport, particularly trains.

    To the best of my knowledge I’ve been using the railway for some five decades now, starting from my earliest recollections of junior school trips in the early 1960s to Whipsnade Zoo and London Heathrow Airport hauled by steam locomotive.

    Train travel has changed immensely since my early days. Trains themselves no longer carry mail or parcels and there’s no such thing as the guard’s van either, where the mail and parcels were stowed along with wicker baskets of racing pigeons.

    Train announcements have likewise mutated. Nowadays, they are bland and sound like they’ve been cobbled together in a studio, rather than delivered live by a live human being. My all-time favourite was that of a now long-gone male announcer at Bristol Temple Meads. When on duty, he announced the impending departure of any service with the words: “The X train on platform Y is now ready to depart. Close the doors and stand clear, please!” Announcements of this kind have now been rendered redundant by the introduction of centralised carriage door locking, which is activated some 30 seconds or more before departure.

    The language of the railways has changed over the decades too. The guard – a member of the proletariat – has been superseded by the modern ‘train manager’; presumably letting British management, a well known industrial disease, have charge of trains is a continuing reason for their failing to run to timetable. 🙂

    If you go looking for refreshment, the good old buffet car has gone, replaced by the bland, utilitarian ‘shop’. Who’s there to serve you? Not the steward: he or she has been replaced by a lumpen, jargon-ridden creature called the customer service host. How appetising. Talking of food, when was the last time passengers (sorry, ‘customers’ in the shiny newspeak of the train operating companies) saw a restaurant car?

    When on the train one can always spot the ‘train managers’ who started their working lives as guards or ticket collectors by their announcements over the speaker system: these are the ones whose trains “arrive at” the station, rather than the grammatically incorrect “arrive into”(on this side of the Atlantic at least; US aircraft frequently do this at their destinations).

    Bon voyage!

  • “Cutlass supplied”

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    Skull and crossbonesEvery now and again there’s a job advertisement that’s so unusual it deserves wider circulation: and there’s a great example on the tourist business website Destination Bristol at the moment.

    Bristol Pirate Walks are looking for an Assistant Pirate to join Pirate Pete.

    The Assistant Pirate should be confident and outgoing with a bubbly personality and be ready to meet and greet visitors to Bristol from across the world, from children and families to corporate groups.

    This is a part-time role with full training given on the history of this port, and would be of interest those who enjoy meeting people and leading walking groups around the harbour.

    Cutlass supplied

    As pirates are typically portrayed as folk whose speech requires little grammar, I wonder if the “full training given” will include lessons in ignoring English syntax. 😀

    Of course, Bristol, being a port city, has close associations with the sea and hence maritime crime of all kinds, including piracy, as well as having pirates amongst its sons and daughters. Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, was born in the (now comfortably fragrant and middle class) Redland area of the city in 1680.

  • Crapita lives up to its name – again

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Tech

    Yesterday’s Daily Mirror reports that Birmingham City Council‘s new £11 mn. automated telephone system, which features computerised speech recognition technology, is a massive failure for the simple reason that it cannot cope with the local Brummie accent.

    Hundreds of locals have complained they are unable to get through to council services, such as the rent arrears department. To add insult to injury, when callers encounter difficulties, the recorded voice of a woman with a Geordie accent tells them: “I can’t understand that, could you please repeat it?”

    Victoria Square, Birmingham, with the city council headquarters. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    Indeed the system is so abysmal that each call is costing the city council – the UK’s largest local authority – the equivalent of £4.

    Last year the council axed its call centre, which used to employ 55 people and contracted Capita IT Services (whose home page reads: “Capable. Our experts are able to create improved business performance with our customers”. Ed.) to supply the new, unusable system.

    Could this be a sister company of Capita Translation and Interpreting, the outfit responsible for the court interpreting fiasco (posts passim)?

  • Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.

    This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.

    Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:

    The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.

    If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉

    Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.

  • Language before computers

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech

    In recent decades, computing has had a major influence on language. I’m indebted to my old friend Mr Wong for the following round robin that landed in my inbox and admirably illustrates how computing, computers and IT have pervaded everyday language.

    Memory was something you lost with age.

    An application was for employment.

    A program(me) was a show on TV

    A cursor was someone who swears a lot.

    A keyboard was a piano.

    A web was a spider’s home.

    A virus was the flu.

    A hard drive was a long trip down the motorway.

    A mouse pad was a mouse lived.

    There were others – something about a floppy – but I’ll spare your blushes with those! 😉

  • The Chaos of English

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    Lurking in Bristol Wireless’ IRC channel earlier this morning, I was made aware of the poem The Chaos by Gerald Nolst Trenité (1870-1946), who was a Dutch writer, traveller and teacher.

    The Chaos demonstrates many of the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and first appeared as an appendix to his 1920 textbook, Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen*.

    It is reproduced below in all its glory for your delight.

    Dearest creature in creation,
    Study English pronunciation.
    I will teach you in my verse
    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
    I will keep you, Susy, busy,
    Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
    Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
    So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

    Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
    Dies and diet, lord and word,
    Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
    (Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
    Now I surely will not plague you
    With such words as plaque and ague.
    But be careful how you speak:
    Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
    Cloven, oven, how and low,
    Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

    Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
    Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
    Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
    Exiles, similes, and reviles;
    Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
    Solar, mica, war and far;
    One, anemone, Balmoral,
    Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
    Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
    Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

    Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
    Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
    Blood and flood are not like food,
    Nor is mould like should and would.
    Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
    Toward, to forward, to reward.
    And your pronunciation’s OK
    When you correctly say croquet,
    Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
    Friend and fiend, alive and live.

    Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
    And enamour rhyme with hammer.
    River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
    Doll and roll and some and home.
    Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
    Neither does devour with clangour.
    Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
    Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
    Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
    And then singer, ginger, linger,
    Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
    Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

    Query does not rhyme with very,
    Nor does fury sound like bury.
    Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
    Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
    Though the differences seem little,
    We say actual but victual.
    Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
    Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
    Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
    Dull, bull, and George ate late.
    Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
    Science, conscience, scientific.

    Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
    Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
    We say hallowed, but allowed,
    People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
    Mark the differences, moreover,
    Between mover, cover, clover;
    Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
    Chalice, but police and lice;
    Camel, constable, unstable,
    Principle, disciple, label.

    Petal, panel, and canal,
    Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
    Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
    Senator, spectator, mayor.
    Tour, but our and succour, four.
    Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
    Sea, idea, Korea, area,
    Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
    Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
    Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

    Compare alien with Italian,
    Dandelion and battalion.
    Sally with ally, yea, ye,
    Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
    Say aver, but ever, fever,
    Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
    Heron, granary, canary.
    Crevice and device and aerie.

    Face, but preface, not efface.
    Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
    Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
    Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
    Ear, but earn and wear and tear
    Do not rhyme with here but ere.
    Seven is right, but so is even,
    Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
    Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
    Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

    Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
    Is a paling stout and spikey?
    Won’t it make you lose your wits,
    Writing groats and saying grits?
    It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
    Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
    Islington and Isle of Wight,
    Housewife, verdict and indict.

    Finally, which rhymes with enough —
    Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
    Hiccough has the sound of cup.
    My advice is to give up!

    Source: Wikisource

    * = English pronunciation exercises

  • Put icons back in church where they belong

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Once upon a time the only place one would see anything “iconic” was in a Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox Church. A gilded frame, copious amounts of gold leaf and a halo or haloes were usually involved.

    However nowadays – much to my dismay – something just has to exist to be regarded as an icon: no veneration is necessary and the word has become hackneyed and synonymous with lazy journalism, as in this piece from today’s Bristol Post, where the undeserving victim is traditional British fish and chips.

    Let’s see what the Guardian Style Guide says about iconic:

    In danger of losing all meaning after an average three appearances a day in the Guardian and Observer, employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known – from hairdressers, storm drains in Los Angeles and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Weetabix, the red kite and the cut above the eye David Beckham sustained after being hit by a flying boot kicked by Sir Alex Ferguson. Our advice, even if our own writers rarely follow it, is to show a little more thought, and restraint, in using this term.

    Turning to icon, the Style Guide lists the following objects which were described in the Guardian as “iconic” in a single fortnight in 2010:

    Archaeopteryx
    bluefin tuna
    Castro’s cigar
    David Beckham wearing an anti-Glazer scarf
    Grace Kelly in casual wear
    Imperial War Museum North
    Liberty prints
    limestone stacks in Thailand
    Nigel Slater
    Mad Men
    Variety
    the John Hughes films Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science
    postboxes
    prints of the Che Guevara image
    Stephen Fairey’s Obama Hope design
    the parliamentary constituency of Hove
    the Brandenburg Gate
    Bach’s St Matthew Passion
    a community-owned wind turbine
    Kraft cheese slices
    salmon farming
    the blue and white stripes of Cornishware pottery
    Penarth Pavilion, Cardiff
    the Norwegian church and Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay
    a multimillion-pound arena in Leeds
    a “rock-built engine house at Bottalack near St Just”
    the Royal Albert Hall
    wind turbines (“iconic renewable energy technology”)
    Wembley Arena
    the video for Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

    This abuse of language has gone on far too long. Let’s put icons back where they belong: in an Orthodox church, in a gilt frame and covered in gold leaf; is that too much to ask?

  • Language and open source

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Tech

    I’m intrigued by the way we advocates of free and open source software (FOSS) are viewed and described by the world outside our circle. Frequently, the terms are very loaded, e.g. ‘zealot’.

    A report today in The Register Channel on Scottish NHS IT procurement and a decision to waste millions on Microsoft Windows 7 is no exception. Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius, a major UK open source supplier, is quoted and referred to as a ‘firebrand’.

    According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, firebrand‘s first recorded use was in the 13th century, when it was originally “a piece of burning wood“. Its meaning was extended to over subsequent centuries to include “one that creates unrest or strife“.

    Synonyms for firebrand are: demagogue, exciter, agitator, fomenter, incendiary, inciter, instigator, kindler, provocateur, rabble-rouser.

    I’ve met and spoken to Mark on a number occasions and the last thing one can describe him as is a firebrand or any of its above synonyms. Admittedly, he has a business to run, but he’s also concerned that the UK spending on ICT amounts to an eye-watering £20 billion per year. That’s three times more than is spent on the army. Most of that £20 billion is spent on proprietary software and its suppliers, in the course of which vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are exported to MS’ coffers in Redmond, USA.

    Both Mark and I feel that FOSS would be a better alternative and there’d then be more money for the NHS to spend on patient care – a far better use of resources. If that makes us ‘firebrands’, then we’ll wear the label with pride.

  • Sir Humphrey’s newly banned words

    Steve WoodsLanguage

    The British Government has just updated its style guide for content written on the .gov.uk domain. It covers all aspects of writing material, including tone of voice, use of plain English, avoidance of Americanisms and the like.

    However, my eye was inevitably drawn to the proscribed bits and the style differences for Inside Government, i.e. when government department talks to government department, and in particular its section 4.1.3, entitled “Words to avoid”.

    For the benefit of passing mandarins and interested citizens, these are reproduced below, along with comment, both Sir Humphrey’s (in round brackets) and mine [in square brackets with the text in italics]:

    • agenda (unless it is for a meeting)
    • advancing
    • collaborate (use ‘working with’)
    • combating
    • countering
    • deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like ‘improvements’ or ‘priorities’) [I must part ways with Sir Humphrey here; services are provided, not delivered]
    • dialogue (we speak to people)
    • disincentivise [bravo!]
    • drive out (unless it is cattle)
    • empower [about time]
    • facilitate (instead, say something concrete about how you are helping)
    • focusing
    • foster (unless it is children)
    • impact (as a verb) [hallelujah!]
    • initiate
    • key (unless it unlocks something. A subject/thing isn’t ‘key’ – it’s probably ‘important’)
    • land (as a verb. Only use if you are talking about aircraft)
    • leverage (unless in the financial sense)
    • liaise [a very useful word for something non-commital, but a common spelling trap for the unwary 🙂 ]
    • overarching
    • promote (unless you are talking about an ad campaign or something)
    • robust [sometimes tough love is required]
    • slimming down (weight loss is slimming down. Everything else is probably removing x amount of paperwork, etc.)
    • streamline
    • strengthening (unless it is strengthening bridges or other structures)
    • tackling (unless it is rugby, football, some other sport)
    • transforming (what are you actually doing to change it)
    • utilise

    The banning of these words is justified as follows:

    We lose trust from our users if we write government ‘buzzwords’ and jargon. Often, these words are too general and vague and can lead to misinterpretation or empty, meaningless text. We need to be concrete, use plain English and be very clear about what we are doing.

    Will this result in more comprehensible communication from government? Only time will tell.

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