EU commissioners have salaries not wages
The devil is in the detail and no matter how overtly perfect a person’s English is, and how well-edited his or her reporting, you can tell he or she has migrated from Globish when they talk about an EU Commissioner’s “wages”.
EU Commissioners most certainly don’t have wages. They have salaries. Wages are calculated by the hour and paid by the day or week. Labourers have wages. Blue-collar workers have wages. Dockyard fitters have wages. Casual workers have wages. Students helping out for the summer at TEFL schools have wages. Immigrant workers setting out the deckchairs on the beach have wages.
Everybody who is paid by the month has a salary. If you’re sitting there at work reading this at your desk-job and your pay goes into your bank account every month, you are paid a salary and not a wage.
If you’re reading this on your smartphone while waiting for the next delivery to come into the warehouse and will pick up your cheque on Friday like you do every Friday, you are paid a wage.
The word SALARY – like the word SUITCASE – has been completely lost to the form of English spoken in Malta, in which the vocabulary continues to shrink and words are made to serve several purposes as they do in Maltese. This when English is an incomparably more highly evolved language in which words have very specific meanings.
I am tired of hearing otherwise well-educated people, some of whom grew up speaking English in Malta, saying of somebody like a politician or an architect: “He has a good wage.”
I get an immediate mental image of this renowned architect or somebody like Manuel Mallia queuing up for his pay-envelope on a Saturday morning while wearing his blue overalls and calculating kemm qabad f’idejh.
The bag in which you pack your clothes for travel is a SUITCASE not a ‘luggage’. The money which goes into your account every month on the basis of your agreement with your employer is your SALARY not your wage.
Self-employed people, particularly professionals with their own practice, do not have salaries and they most certainly do not have wages. They have income. To have wages or a salary, you must have an employer. The only circumstances in which a self-employed person can be said to have a wage or a salary is if he employs himself with his own company and pays himself one, which is normal acceptable practice.
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I will bow to greater knowledge but surely the right phrase here is ‘lost earnings’ or ‘lost pay’. Somehow ‘lost salary’ doesn’t ring right.
[Daphne – None of them are correct, because he shouldn’t be saying it at all. EU Commissioners, like elected politicians, are not supposed to be in it for the earnings/salary/pay. And yes, in that sentence you would use earnings, not salary. I wrote this to explain the difference between wages and a salary, because last week I had a conversation with somebody who told me that her boss (the CEO of one of Malta’s biggest operations) has “a good wage” and it upset me.]
Dalli’s lost earnings are likely to have been far more than his salary and allowances.
But then there are the wages of sin, which is an astonishingly apt phrase in Dalli’s case.
How can there be wages of sin la Alla ma jħallasx bin-nhar ta’ Sibt? Presumably they should be the salaries of sin….
John Dalli didn’t receive wages or salaries from the European Commission; he received TIPS because his real and much bigger income was going to emanate elsewhere, and he was going to bank it in the Bahamas.
Uffa how I wish you have a Like button. This is one of my pet whinges. It is a salary. The other is pleased to meet you – should be it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance.
[Daphne – I do have a Like button. Two, actually – one at the top of the post and another at the bottom. Nobody says ‘it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance’ unless he wishes to be thought a Transylvanian who is translating mentally as he speaks. The thing to say is howdoyoudo.]
What’s wrong with pleased to meet you?
[Daphne – Nothing. But British English has a built-in sorting codes, like sofa and settee, napkin and serviette, living-room and lounge, and so on.]
Daphne like ‘much more’ I do not have a Like button.
Maybe it was the sound of commission in the word Commissioner that attracted him to the post.
Just as a point of interest.
Salary derives from the Latin word for salt ‘sal’ and eventually ‘salario’ became a form of payment.
“La scarsità del sale e la sua importanza alimentare (come insaporitore e come conservatore di cibi) gli hanno conferito la dignità di moneta e l’offerta, lo scambio e l’uso del cosiddetto ‘oro bianco’ si è caricato di significati simbolici legati alla vita civile e religiosa.”
Basically the importance of salt particularly in the preservation of food was so high that at times payments were made in salt. This was considered as ‘white gold’.
The expression ‘worth his salt’ derives from this.
An example of the other Malta. One person (a known Labour supporter) who frequently posts comments on timesofmalta.con writes:
“I don’t personally care if Dalli is right or wrong and as far as I am concerned as an ex-PN minister he can take a hike for all I care.
But when a Maltese national is hounded by foreigners without a justifiable cause then yes I would show solidarity with him and believe he is innocent until proven otherwise.
It is shameful how many posters here sided with the foreigners on circumstantial evidence and are the prosecutors, judge and jury of the case.”
(http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140710/local/dalli-barroso-should-be-arrested-if-he-came-to-malta.527145)
This person cares less about the reputation of the island being tarnished by someone who has been repeatedly hounded by allegations over corruption than sticking it to the EU.
I cannot take this ignorance any more.
Some shops are sporting a “luggages for sale” sign.