Q and A on English usage and national varieties

Let me start by saying I really enjoyed reading your pieces on the English language and I am turning into a fan of yours. I would like to ask for your opinion or rather, the correct phrase to use to express the name one would give to a tanker carrying water which has been treated. […]

Let me start by saying I really enjoyed reading your pieces on the English language and I am turning into a fan of yours. I would like to ask for your opinion or rather, the correct phrase to use to express the name one would give to a tanker carrying water which has been treated.

 

Currently here in Kaduna, between my parents, fiancée, and a couple of friends, it’s between these two phrases: “treated water tanker” and “treated tanker water”.Thank you very much for your highly anticipated response.

Answer:

“Treated water tanker” is clearly the more correct phrase since what is “treated” is the water and not the tanker. The tanker is merely carrying water that has been treated.But it all depends on what you mean. If your point of reference is the water, then “treated tanker water” could be defensible, although, as I will show shortly, it’s unidiomatic. However, if you’re talking about the carrier of the water, then “treated water tanker” is the only correct way to say it.

Having said that, it’s worth mentioning that there is nowhere in the English-speaking world where people use the phrase “treated tanker water.” It’s not because it’s grammatically inaccurate; it’s because it’s functionally purposeless and unidiomatic. Note that the usual phrase for a tanker that carries water is “water tanker.” It’s a collocation, that is, a grouping of words that almost always co-occurs in a sentence. The word “treated” (that is, “subjected to a chemical treatment, action or agent”) is the only real adjective in the phrase and it functions to qualify the collocation “water tanker.”  Again, my sense is that when people think of a truck carrying water, they think in terms of the whole vehicle (thus, “treated water tanker”) rather than the water and the vehicle in isolation (which could justify the phrase “treated tanker water”).

But more than that, type the phrase “treated tanker water” on Google, insert quotation marks around it and see if anything will come up. Well, when I did, the only results that came up were my previous columns on the subject. On Yahoo! search, there was zero result. But “treated water tanker” generated 13 results on Google (not including the result from my columns) and six matches on Yahoo! search.

What does all this tell us? First, that both phrases are rarely used outside Nigeria and that the phrase “treated tanker water” is, in fact, never used anywhere, although it’s not grammatically wrong. It is easy to tell why this is the case: people in native-speaker English environments have no need for tankers that carry drinking water; that’s a Third World peculiarity. Tap and bottled water are the usual sources of drinking water for people in these environments. In cases where tankers carry water, it’s mostly for purposes other than drinking. As I’ve stated here many times, there is always a relationship between people’s language and their material reality.

Question:

I’m a frequent reader of your grammar articles. Although I’m not a Nigerian, I enjoy reading different point of views wherever I can. I came across some of your write-ups and I was inspired.

Anyhow, I’m Kenyan by nationality. You might be aware of what’s been going on politically in Kenya. For the last five years or so, our media, politicians etc, have coined words that have left me confused. Two particularly common words/phrases are (1) “Attack[ed]” and (2) “Kenyans have made up [their] mind.”

What really irks me is how those words are interchanged to drive a political agenda. For example, during political rallies, depending on which political party is addressing contentious issues, a politician standing in front of a mammoth crowd will declare “Kenyans have made up [their] minds” or [will say] his/her party is being “attacked.” Of course our news media will repeat the same.

So, I’m left thinking/wondering what happens to the rest of Kenyans who don’t buy into any political party’s agenda? Do they become less Kenyans?

Hopefully, you get my drift?

Answer:

You raise interesting questions about the deceitful use of language for political purposes. This is not, however, limited to Kenya. It happens in Nigeria, too. In fact, it happens everywhere in the world and, for that matter, in every generation. George Orwell was the first notable person to call attention to this type of language usage. In his famous 1946 essay titled, “Politics and the English language,” he said, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

This is done, he pointed out elsewhere, through staleness of imagery and lack of precision. The expression “Kenyans have made up their minds” is certainly not only stale but also fraudulently imprecise. No one, not least the politicians, has conducted any scientific opinion poll to determine whether or not Kenyans have made up their minds on any issue. The expression is intended only to anesthetize the Kenyan population into a false sense of consensus with the points of views of the politicians making the claims. But more than this, it’s also convenient and ready-made; it doesn’t require any thinking to say it.

Orwell identified three features of the political language of his time: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, and pretentious diction. This is true of our time too. The evidence can be found in the examples you cited.

Question:

I want to say a BIG THANK YOU for your essays. I personally have gained a lot from them.

I have a question for you. In one of your essays, you wrote that there is no such thing as naming ceremony in both American and British English. I Googled “naming ceremony” and found that there is naming ceremony even in Wikipedia and BBC.

There is an English course book (advanced) called Innovations by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley and I found in one of the units naming ceremony. Could you help on this as I am a bit confused?

Answer:

You are right that there is such a thing as “naming ceremony.” However, the expression has no currency in both contemporary American and British English, precisely because Americans and Britons do not celebrate the christening (that’s the more usual word for “naming” in American and British English) of their children as elaborately as we do. The fact that a word or an expression exists in the dictionary or on a web site does not in itself suggest that its usage is current.

I have been living in America for quite some time now and have never heard any native-born American refer to the christening of their children as a “naming ceremony.” My British friends also tell me they don’t use that expression now. They probably did in the past.

What I have learnt, though, after writing the article you referred to, is that Orthodox Jews also call christening “naming ceremony”– like we do in Nigeria. So, clearly, the expression is not uniquely Nigerian. It probably survived in Nigerian English from old-fashioned British English.