Manglish in print
Just look at this heading to an opinion piece in The Times today:
WHY MORE PEOPLE TURN TO DRUGS?
I know lots of Maltese people who would ask the same question in exactly the same way – but does The Times have to do the Maltese-language thing and enshrine colloquial errors in the official language?
It can’t do that anyway, because English is not theirs to mess about with. The rules are what they are.
So, for their guidance, here are some points.
1. ‘Why more people turn to drugs’ is a statement, or rather part of a statement, but that suffices for a title.
2. The presence of ‘why’ does not automatically indicate the existence of a question or the need for a question mark.
3. To ask a question as to why more people turn to drugs, it is necessary to add the crucial word ‘do’ – Why do more people turn to drugs?
4. Even this is not quite correct given the real question the author wishes to ask, which is about an on-going situation in which people are turning to drugs. This demands the use of a different tense: Why are people turning to drugs?
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Maltastar has the same habit of using a question mark instead of a full-stop.
The other day there was a HUGE heading about the “Archbishop” of Gozo.
Tenk yu Mjiss!
Daphne, Look at the construction of this sentence. I was lost after “considering if…”
Another solution is to replace the existing exhaust valve seat to a hardened one although this option is more costly but might be worthwhile considering if the engine is being reconditioned or the cylinder head is being removed for other mechanical maintenance or the car is kept as a classic.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101006/local/end-of-the-road-for-lrp-fuel
The resolution is a simple comma (,) placed between the two words: as “considering, if……..”
Al too often, the necessity of proper punctuation is missed by Maltese people when writing English.
People in general fail to understand that written text is not oral speech, where the natural pause would occur where the comma now has been placed. And the pause is essential for parsing and making sense, in this case, where there should have been a comma.
Edward, good on you for solving this one – I think you are right. However, the sentence is still too long for my liking.
My view is that a period after “costly”, and a fresh start, would have sounded better.
From one of The Times’ genius Bohemian film reviewers: “The thing that striked me most”.
Daphne, as you say, it is The Times’s (sub-editor’s?) responsibility to avoid bad grammar, especially in cases where the writer is not a native English speaker.
Reading it turned me to drugs.
This is called degeneration.
Just like Arabic degenerated into Maltese, Latin into Italian into Maltese, so English is degenerating into Manglish.
It is the effect of isolation. It depletes the genetic, and the linguistic, pool.
It is a scientific phenomenon which, like taxes and death, we cannot avoid.
Another one from The Times today: ‘New vaccine boosts survival of brain tumours’. Just what we need. How about ‘survival from brain tumours’. So sad.
With the textbooks, workbooks, etc used by some schools today, the language problem (both English and Maltese) can only get worse.
It seems like one cannot even rely on (supposedly good) independent schools to choose decent schoolbooks for children to make use of. My children’s school is a case in point. I sometimes have to restrain myself from correcting their books and worksheets.
x, I hope your children are being taught not to put prepositions at the end of sentences.