Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (29 page)

‘I hope you don't mind me mentioning it,' went on the parent undeterred. ‘My husband said it was a bit embarrassing to bring it up with you, but as I said to him, Mrs Smith must have had a lot of them through her hands in her time.'

Watch Your Language

I reckon I got a grade B in ‘A' level Geography, and not the predicted grade A, because of the wretched question on cotton. Mr Taylor was adept at predicting what might come up on the papers. One topic he reckoned we should revise thoroughly was concerned with the cotton industry in the southern states of the USA. Mr Taylor looked pretty pleased when we came out of the examination room, and announced: ‘I had an idea that cotton would come up.'

‘Where?' I asked, holding up the paper. I had searched for the question but never found it.

The examiner, rather than simply asking the candidates to discuss the reasons for the decline in the cotton industry in the southern states of the USA, phrased the question thus: ‘King Cotton is dead! Discuss.' I was unfamiliar with this expression; the only Cotton I had heard of with the capital ‘C' was Billy Cotton, who had a variety programme on the television. Perhaps this King Cotton, I thought, was some rich American industrialist. Anyway, I had never heard of him so opted for another question.

When examiners fail to use words and phrases which are not part of the students' everyday language and are not likely to be encountered in a school situation – language which is complex, formal and metaphorical – problems arise. Sometimes, the wording of the question on a paper causes difficulties in a totally unexpected way, in that it comes between the examiner's intent and the candidates' perception of that intent: those sitting the paper think they understand what is required but they get it wrong. In the following statement: ‘Sugar is a mixed blessing', the candidate thought ‘mixed blessing' was a kind of dessert like Angel Delight. Another candidate tackling the question: ‘Which lochs afford deep water berthage?' wrote: ‘The ones near the richest towns and cities.'

When candidates misunderstand the questions, there can be amusing results. Many answers of this type are published annually as ‘howlers'. You know the sort of thing:

 

What is a seizure?

A Roman emperor.

 

Under what circumstances are steroids used?

They keep carpets from slipping on the stairs.

 

Explain what you understand by the term ‘artificial insemination'.

It's when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.

 

What is a ‘Caesarean Section'?

It's a district of Rome.

 

In
a democratic society how important is it, do you think, to have elections?

Because if men didn't have them they couldn't have sex and produce children.

 

What was Hitler's secret weapon?

He used the dreaded Gaspacho.

 

What is a terminal illness?

It's when you are sick at the airport.

 

It is important to remember that the students are usually not trying to amuse; their answers are honest attempts to make sense of the questions. Of course, sometimes the candidate deliberately tries to make the examiner smile. One boy, required to write the essay, ‘Imagine you are a new-born baby and describe your first week in the world', wrote a side of: ‘Glug, glug, glug, glug.' Another, asked to discuss the disastrous effects of global warming, wrote: ‘Am I bovvered?'

The guidelines for those setting GCSE papers are clear in stating that ‘the language used in question papers (both rubric and questions) must be clear, precise and intelligible to candidates'. Perhaps someone should have a word with the examiner who set the question, ‘Trace the events leading up to the birth of Henry VIII' and the one who informed candidates at the top of the examination paper that: ‘This option is compulsory.'

It's the Way I Say it

I still recall with great pleasure the occasions when, as a small child, I stood with my father at the kitchen sink as we washed and dried the dishes (which we called the ‘pots'). He would launch into a funny poem or a monologue; I thought my father made them up.

The following week, after hearing a particular monologue – which I discovered later was the famous
The Lion and Albert
by Marriott Edgar – I was listening with the other children to Miss Wilkinson, headmistress of Broom Valley Infant School, telling us in the assembly to sit up smartly and rub the sleep out of our eyes.

‘You are a lot of sleepyheads this morning,' she told the six-year-olds sitting cross-legged before her on the hall floor. Then she asked: ‘Does anyone know another word for “sleepy”?' I imagine she was looking for a word like ‘tired', but I raised my hand.

‘Yes, Gervase?' she asked.

‘Somyoolent,' I replied, with all the precocious confidence of an infant. This was a word used in the monologue to describe the ‘posture' of the sleepy old lion, Wallace.

It was years later, after many recitations of the monologue, that someone pointed out to me that the word was actually pronounced ‘somnolent'. I have to admit, I still have problems with the word.

It is a fact that many of us have trouble getting our tongues around bothersome words. I had an education lecturer at college who got in a great tangle trying to pronounce ‘pedagogy' (ped-a-go-gee), ‘ethnicity' (eth-nis-i-tee), ‘phenomenon' (fi-nom-uh-non) and ‘philosophical' (fil-uh-sof-i-kuhl). At an interview for a teaching post, a candidate asked what the ‘remuneration' (which he pronounced ‘re-noo-mer-a-shun') would be, and, in a recent message from a call centre, a young woman said a representative would be in the area in February (which she pronounced ‘Feb-yoo-ary'). I was tempted to correct the mispronunciations – ‘ri-myoo-nuh-reyshun' and ‘Feb-roo-er-ee) – but resisted. There but for the grace of God . . .

Research on pronunciation was recently undertaken by Spinvox (a voicemail-to-text-message system, which corrects the inaccurate pronunciation of words). It was discovered that there are a surprising number of commonly used words that we get wrong, words like ‘anaesthetist', ‘statistics', ‘provocatively', ‘anonymous', ‘thesaurus', ‘regularly' and ‘aluminium'. Mispronunciation, of course, is no laughing matter, for when we get it wrong it is deeply embarrassing, particularly if some helpful person points it out.

My friend Alban, who farms near Whitby and is a plain-speaking Yorkshireman with a wry sense of humour, tells the story of when he was at school.

‘I'll tell thee what,' said his brother, ‘I just can't get mi 'ead round all this stuff abaat speykin' proper. We say “path”, and t'teacher says “paath”, we say “grass” and she says “graas”, we say “luck” and she says “loook”, we say “buck” and she says “boook”. It's reight confusin'.'

‘Tha dooan't wants to tek no notice,' his brother told him.

‘Nay, we've got to practise it for t'next week. Dust thy know then, dust tha say “eether” or dust tha say “ayether”?'

His elder brother thought for a moment before replying. ‘Dun't mek no difference 'ow tha says it. Tha can say owther on 'em.'

Words to Make You Wince

The
Sunday Times
conducted a survey to discover what people thought were the most beautiful words in the English language. The top ten words were: Melody/velvet, gossamer/crystal, autumn, peace, tranquil, twilight, murmur, caress, mellifluous and whisper. After this was published, I asked readers of my own newspaper column for their favourite words, and those words which they thought to be the ugliest. I received quite a post bag about the latter. I guess it was the unpleasant connotations which were the reasons for the appearance of words like ‘gizzard', ‘slop', ‘carbuncle', ‘scrawny', ‘ganglion', ‘insipid', ‘tyrannical', ‘incarcerate', ‘haemorrhaging', ‘bulbous', ‘slimy', ‘snot', ‘clot' and ‘prig'.

It is understandable that words that bring on nausea like ‘vomit', ‘gobbet', ‘sputum' and ‘scum' were high on the list, but there were some idiosyncratic and sometimes surprising offerings. These included ‘gusset', ‘hubby', ‘panties', ‘poppet' and (predictably from the two teachers who wrote) the acronym OFSTED.

Poets at the Ledbury Literary Festival were asked which word they thought was the ugliest in the language. Geraldine Monk disliked the word ‘redacted' (to have written out in literary form or edited for publication), a word I have to admit I had never come across. ‘It's a brutish sounding word,' she said. ‘It doesn't flow, it prods at you in a nasty manner.' Philip Wells had an intense dislike of the word ‘pulchritude' (which paradoxically means ‘beautiful'). Wells was vehement in his aversion to the word. ‘It violates all the magical impulses of balanced onomatopoeic language,' he said, ‘being stuffed to the brim with a brutally Latinate cudgel of barbaric consonants.' Wow! That's a bit strong. Actually, I quite like saying the word. It's from the Middle English and has fallen out of use. I think it should be more commonly used, particularly the adjectival form of ‘pulchritudinous'.

My pet dislikes are the jargon words and phrases that have crept invidiously into the language. I wince, when listening to a lecture on management, when the speaker employs the latest buzzwords and phrases. I particularly bristle when I am exhorted to ‘run that extra mile', ‘give it 110 per cent', ‘get on board', ‘suck it and see', ‘bounce ideas around', ‘throw it into the ring', ‘pull in the same direction' or ‘give it my best shot'. I dislike having things ‘flagged up' for me and I don't feel inclined to ‘get up to speed', ‘think outside the box', ‘climb aboard', ‘have a thought shower', ‘push the envelope' and ‘find a window in my diary'. I don't want to ‘touch base', ‘run it up the flagpole', ‘square the circle' or engage in ‘blue-sky thinking'. I do not like ‘no-brainers' and ‘bullet points' and I don't want to ‘chill out' or ‘have a comfort break'. Buzzwords reveal nothing that couldn't be more effectively communicated using simple language. There are ample words in English to express one's feelings clearly and accurately without resorting to this gobbledegook. Of course, buzzwords are designed to make the speaker (sorry, ‘facilitator') sound go-ahead, up-to-date and something of a specialist.

One word I do find rather ugly is ‘galimatias'. It sounds like a disease of a very personal nature or a species of parasitical plant. However, it is a word which those who use that management terminology which infects the language like bacilli should know. It means a style of writing which is confused and full of somewhat meaningless jargon.

 

So There!

Our English teacher Mr Smart

Says writing English is an art,

That we should always take great care

When spelling words like
wear
and
where
,

Witch
and
which
and
fair
and
fare
,

Key
and
quay
and
air
and
heir
,

Whet
and
wet
and
flair
and
flare
,

Wring
and
ring
and
stair
and
stare
,

Him
and
hymn
and
their
and
there
,

Whine
and
wine
and
pear
and
pare
,

Check
and
cheque
and
tare
and
tear
,

Crews
and
cruise
and
hare
and
hair
,

Meet
and
meat
and
bear
and
bare
,

Knot
and
not
and
layer
and
lair
,

Loot
and
lute
and
mayor
and
mare
.

 

Well frankly, I just couldn't care!

So there!

‘Are You Anybody?'