Mind the translation!

This evening as I was riding on the train, I noticed the usual warning 'Mind the gap' translated into Malay. Although I have no scholastic expertise in Malay grammar, and Malay isn't my native language, I have a reasonable grasp of it and I can analyse its nahu with reasonable competence. And the translation is wrong.

When hypercorrection forces an adverb to become an adjective

About a week after I posted this on my blog, a reader informed me that the OED had myriads of examples of 'I feel badly' with presumably the same meaning as 'I feel bad'. The rational part of me could not accept this because as long as 'feel' is used as a copular verb, there is no way an adverb could follow in that manner. It would make nonsense of the sentence. However, 'feel' is an unusual word in that apart from its copulative use, it can also function as an ordinary main verb. Because of the semantic uniqueness of 'feel', might 'I feel badly' be synonymous with 'I have a bad feeling', with 'badly' not functioning as a subject complement, which it cannot under the circumstances? But it still sounded to me as a very odd way of saying it. I was very tempted to dismiss it as a case of hypercorrection that went on to be accepted as correct by reason of its frequency of use.

Frankly, you should say nothing if you know nothing

I was very much surprised when following my last blog post Grammar Ignoramuses Strike Again on Quora, Frank Dauenhauer whose laughably erroneous Quora post I commented on, reacted with seething rage. He made furious comments on that post (you may read them for yourself - just click on the link above) and he also sent me an angry email. He then posted on his Quora page my entire blog post (which is fine - I have nothing to hide) and he tells his Quora followers that he has been "savagely maligned" by me. Why he went ballistic escapes me totally.

As I informed him, every word I wrote in that blogpost is true. When I call someone a grammar ignoramus, I am merely stating a fact. And quite apart from that mistake made by Frank in his Quora answer, I have other evidence that corroborates my assertion that he is ignorant of grammar. If you have been following my blog, you should know that this was not the first time I pointed out Frank's errors. He has made many errors, some of which are pretty outrageous. It's hard to tell which one of his errors takes the biscuit but I am fairly certain what I am about to reveal to you in this article will have many of you in stitches.

Grammar ignoramuses strike again on Quora

A lot of people I know are quick to admit they know nothing about Physics but hardly anyone will readily say they don't know English grammar. I'm sure I have looked into this before elsewhere in this blog. I most certainly have offended quite a lot of people when I call them 'grammar ignoramuses'. But they really are. Most people are ignorant of English grammar. That is a fact and I have given in this blog examples of cabinet ministers in the UK who were stumped by journalists' questions on simple English grammar and I have also mentioned the reason for this. In the 1960s, linguists very wrongly advised against teaching English grammar in schools and this advice was adopted all over the world where English was taught. Although they are now redressing this huge mistake in the UK by reintroducing grammar in schools, it is not wrong to say that most English-speaking adults today are grammar ignoramuses.

But unlike Physics ignoramuses who do not profess a knowledge in Physics, let alone pretend to teach anyone Physics , grammar ignoramuses really believe they are grammar experts. I used to think they were dishonest but I am fairly certain now that it's a kind of benign mental state that makes a person believe he has a vast knowledge in grammar when he is really utterly ignorant of it. They are honest but they are ignorant and they don't even know that.

You can see this in Quora, an internet-based forum where people ask questions and those who think they know the answers give their response. I have mentioned Frank Dauenhauer before in this blog post: Query Quora. That Frank knows nothing about English grammar is obvious. He can't even get his part of speech right and that's kindergarten-level grammar. Here's what he posted on Quora slightly more than a week ago in response to the simple question, 'Is it "I feel bad" or "I feel badly"?':

To gym or not to gym

The first time I heard this word 'wrongly' used was some years ago when my son's friend told me he liked 'to gym'. Since then, I have seen 'gym' used as a verb with all its inflections by mainly youngish people. Although I must confess I absolutely detest such an abominable conversion, I cannot turn a blind eye to how rich the English language has become through this process of verbing over the centuries. There are many examples of fairly recent verbs that originated from nouns and we use them every day without batting an eyelid. One such verb which I use liberally is ‘text’ which today can only be used in the context of sending a message on the mobile phone. It has the advantage of brevity. 'Texting a friend' is much shorter than 'sending him a text message' but brevity alone does not guarantee acceptance of the usage of a word, especially when the usage sounds suspiciously modern. Why then do I (and presumably you too) find ‘text’ more acceptable than ‘gym’ when both words are used as verbs?

Query Quora

It boggles the mind why anybody would bother to ask a question on grammar in Quora. Quora is one of those websites where anyone can give his opinion on any question even if he has absolutely no knowledge of what he is talking about. I have previously dealt with errors in Quora in four separate blog posts. These are errors that you wouldn't have expected a child to make:

1. Progressing with the Progressive - the same Frank Dauenhauer appears in this post.

2. Pronouns aren't conjunctions  which is hilarious because Veronica Curlette about whom I wrote posted a comment and tied herself up in knots and that obliged me to write a further blogpost:

3. Pronouns aren't conjunctions Part 2 and as if that wasn't enough, a furious Veronica made a further comment, this time citing the dictionary but what's really hilarious was she didn't realise that she had confused a sentence example in the dictionary for the definition!  Naturally, I had to write, rather cheekily if I may be allowed to admit, a further blog post:

4. Pronouns Aren't Conjunctions Part 3 (or Hell hath no fury like a woman who's told she's a grammar ignoramus).

But people don't learn from their mistakes and these grammar ignoramuses continue to fill the limitless pages of the internet with the fruit of their ignorance. I was alerted to this Quora posting on 3 March but it's hard to address all of them; there are thousands of Quora postings on grammar and sadly, the only people who seem eager to give their answers are all ignorant of grammar. Here's the 3 March Quora post:

Hardly a humble celebration.

I made a prediction 7 years ago in a blog post that our innate hypocrisy would ensure that words which didn't mean what we really intended to say would soon acquire new meanings. Just two days ago, the Queen said she was 'humbled and touched' by the celebrations.

An ad by the Singapore Police Force

One has to move with the times. In this TikTok era, people don't read long sentences. They have short attention spans and if they do read at all, they only read the few words  that fit comfortably in a meme.  Anyway, the huge scam warning in the photo comes from the police themselves and there are two slip-ups in that short sentence!