Je Suis le Grammar Curmudgeon. ¿Está Bien?
Aug 07 '03 (Updated Sep 29 '03)
The Bottom Line Using foreign words and phrases in your reviews? Spell 'em right or I'll hound you all over the site!
Greetings, one and all - he's back! After a hiatus of several months, the Grammar Curmudgeon (with his ragtag band of Lexicological Irregulars) is on the hunt once more, patrolling the considerable bandwidth of Epinions in search of fodder for another diatribe on proper English usage. Or, perhaps I should amend that: proper English usage as seen by this particular semi-prescriptivist.
This time out, yours truly wishes to hold forth on the subject of foreign words and phrases. As you know (or as you darned well should know), English is infamous for co-opting words and phrases from other languages. Regardless of the admonition "neither a borrower nor a lender be," our language is deep in debt to many tongues, and I'm convinced that repayment isn't likely in this lifetime. Ergo, most of us find ourselves using one or another of those loan words almost every day - and distressingly often, we're ignorant of the words' correct spelling and usage, not to mention their proper pronunciation. Here, without further ado, is a sampling of the sometimes hilarious misuse of borrowed words (the examples are from Epinions reviews or comments, but are all disguised in some way):
...I've seen many faux paus in modern society...
Ah, the inevitable social stumble, the misstep, the usage blunder. From the French for "false step," the phrase faux pas, pronounced "foe pa," is one of the first foreign phrases many of us learn. That word pas, by the way, is the same 'step' that appears in pas de deux, the French equivalent of the two-step - or is it the Cotton-Eyed Joe? Here our reviewer apparently attempted to form a plural through a spelling change, but has merely managed to change the pronunciation to "foe poe."
In an interesting aside, the real plural of faux pas is faux pas, however the plural is pronounced "foe pas." And we used to call Asians inscrutable...
...I think she deserved every kudo...
When I saw this one, coffee almost came out of my nose. People, people... The word kudos has been picked from the back pocket of our Greek friends. It arrives with a literal meaning of "magical glory" and a common meaning of "effusive praise." The word is not, however, a plural! Therefore, each single morsel of praise, no matter how small, is kudos in its own right.
When used as the subject of a sentence, by the way, the word takes a singular verb: not "kudos were rained on his head," but "kudos was rained on his head." If you have trouble remembering this, it helps to remember that the terminal 'S' is not pronounced like a 'Z' but as a soft 'S' - in other words, it doesn't rhyme with "rose"; the last letter has the same sound as "ross."
... forced the citizens to cow-tow to the new ruler...
Happily, I wasn't drinking coffee at the time. Here, our correspondent apparently has a bovine female that's in need of assistance. Presumably s/he'll call the ACA (American Cattle Association) for a tow truck? Ahhh, I get it now: the desired word was "kowtow," a word borrowed from Mandarin Chinese and meaning "to bow obsequiously; to show servility."
Since the word has been transliterated from a language that doesn't use the western alphabet, some might - sigh - be inclined to cut the writer some slack. After all, the spelling of Moammar Khadafy/Ghadafi/Qadaffi/etc. changes randomly for that same reason. Except that kowtow has been in common usage for more than a century, so no slack's coming from me!
...my truck has been horse de combat for more than a month...
Ohhhhhh, Willlllburrrr... It's a darned shame that the spellchecker couldn't catch this one before it galloped onto the site. Obviously, our correspondent meant to use the French hors de combat, meaning "out of action." Equally obviously, our correspondent doesn't know that the terminal 'S' in hors is silent, or perhaps s/he would have said the vehicle was whores de combat. I don't know, though, that s/he didn't try it and give up - it's hard to sneak that particular spelling past the in-line filthter.
...the hero is saved by an inevitable Deus et Machina plot element...
I'll be perfectly honest - this one's mine from a very old review (my Latin was corrected by the redoubtable jankp, if memory serves). Instead of the desired definition of "god from the machine" - which is Deus ex Machina - yours truly converted the thought to teh above, which means "god and the machine." If you think that my written Latin is bad, you should have heard me try to pronounce this phrase the first time out. And in front of a former seminarian, too...
And there you have it:
not merely a small collection of comical goofs, but living proof that the Grammar Curmudgeon is human, too. Whatever else you take away from this little diatribe, next time you decide to dress up your writing with a foreign phrase or two, do some research - especially if you don't happen to speak that particular language. Otherwise, you might end up seeing me poke fun at a slightly altered version of your prose a few months down the road.
This is the fifth of a series of notes from the Grammar Curmudgeon, an irregular series of... what, "diatribes"? "rants"? "suggestions"? on improving the quality of your writing - not just here on Epinions, but every time you create a sentence, a paragraph, or even a book. Feel free to suggest further topics (I already have a generation's worth up my sleeve) by emailing me or leaving a comment.
You can see the previous Grammar Curmudgeon rant at word choice. A later rant appears at Usage II.
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