Mar­lene Davis

Re­cent­ly, a young man came to fix my com­put­er and when he came up­on my writ­ings and the sub­ject that cur­rent­ly holds my at­ten­tion, he told me that he would be "fright­en" to speak to me now. That gave me pause be­cause there he was, adept at his job, do­ing won­ders with the com­put­er and there was I, all thumbs. I told him so and I re­alised that I must make my in­ten­tions clear to all who read my col­umn. My in­ten­tion is not to em­bar­rass or to be judge­men­tal, but to em­pow­er read­ers and lift their stan­dards in speech and writ­ing and make them feel con­fi­dent and ca­pa­ble of un­der­stand­ing and ex­press­ing them­selves in Eng­lish, the lan­guage that our tor­tu­ous his­to­ry has by chance made our own.

Stan­dard Eng­lish lan­guage has to be learned and prac­tised; the rules can be daunt­ing and dif­fi­cult, though not im­pos­si­ble to mas­ter. I want to help to make users of the lan­guage con­fi­dent and re­as­sured, as I know the dif­fer­ence it makes to be so up­lift­ed. I am sym­pa­thet­ic be­cause I was brought up by a very strict aunt who would not brook "slack­ness" with writ­ten or spo­ken lan­guage. I am al­so sym­pa­thet­ic be­cause I know, look­ing back, that I was for­tu­nate to learn more Eng­lish lat­er at ter­tiary lev­el. Fur­ther­more, I had to learn it and con­tin­ue to do so in or­der to teach the thou­sands whom I have taught.

I wish every­one well and, if I hear or see a mis­take, I feel sor­ry that I had not in­ter­vened ear­li­er. I re­alise how dif­fi­cult it is ver­bal­ly to cor­rect any­one who is now part of the work­force, dressed im­pec­ca­bly and in high heels or a jack­et­ed ex­ec­u­tive or CEO. There's no oth­er way, apart from this silent out­reach medi­um, to men­tion that you just don't say or write this or that. Through this medi­um, one word to the wise or even the not-so-wise should be suf­fi­cient.

It is im­por­tant for me to add this: I love the di­alect or Cre­ole, as it is called nowa­days. I learned to love it when I was abroad study­ing in Cana­da and lat­er liv­ing in Eng­land and would hear it by chance and be warmed and com­fort­ed by its fa­mil­iar sing-song nu­ance and rhythm. Every lan­guage has a home lan­guage that we learn with moth­er's milk. There is no re­strain­ing set of rules to con­fine us, but that is the chal­lenge that we face with our Stan­dard Eng­lish lan­guage. There are some gaps we need to fill. I am will­ing and able to bring these to our read­ers' at­ten­tion and to ask them to seek my help if they need to do so. The Eng­lish lan­guage is the in­ter­na­tion­al lan­guage and we are very lucky that our knot­ty his­to­ry has made us heir to it. Trust me, with time and with learned pow­er over its va­garies, we can learn to love it, too.

Not one cur­rant

In an­swer to the usu­al greet­ing: "How are you?" or "How're you do­ing?" I of­ten re­ply: "I'm car­ry­ing on re­gard­less!"

Some peo­ple are quite mys­ti­fied, but oth­er, more self-con­fi­dent en­quir­ers laugh­ing­ly re­spond, "You mean ir­re­gard­less," and we both laugh hap­pi­ly, shar­ing the joke.

I know that my friend knows it's a joke be­cause that's what "ir­re­gard­less" is–a joke! It is a play on the two words "ir­re­spec­tive" and "re­gard­less," mak­ing them one word–a clever con­junc­tion of two words of sim­i­lar mean­ing. It was bandied about as a clever piece of word play, but has al­ways been known to be in­cor­rect.

So those who use it se­ri­ous­ly have missed the joke–the joke is on them.

Talk­ing about jokes on words, there are many that Tri­nis make, eg, "Give me a Cokes." Most peo­ple know that that's a joke (un­for­tu­nate­ly not every­one knows that it is) but many say words that are fun­ny, like "Back in times" in­stead of "Back in time".

I guess it has to do with the Tri­ni propen­si­ty for adding an "s" to words, such as cur­rants rolls.

I put God out of my thoughts one day and cor­rect­ed a ven­dor on Fred­er­ick Street, telling her: "It's not 'cur­rants' rolls–it's cur­rant rolls," to which she replied, "Is not one cur­rant ah does put in it. Is plen­ty, plen­ty cur­rant ah does put in it."

Served me right!

Se­ri­ous­ly, though, there are some note­wor­thy words to which Tri­nis add an "s," mak­ing it no joke and one of them that springs to mind is the demon­stra­tive pro­noun "mine." They say "This is mines," in­stead of "This is mine."

Why mines? I guess they don't re­alise that the on­ly mines are in the book King Solomon's Mines (I couldn't re­sist that jibe, which I heard a teacher tell a child one day) and that the trap among the demon­stra­tive pro­nouns is that one of those pro­nouns is not like the oth­ers–and that one is "mine." The oth­ers all end with "s"–yours (sin­gu­lar), his, hers, its, ours, yours (plur­al), theirs.

Mine is the ex­cep­tion and please, "mines" is no joke.

I was speak­ing to some­one this week, some­one who dis­ap­point­ed me great­ly by say­ing, "The green ones are yours; the red ones are mines." My heart flipped and my shoul­ders dropped, but there was noth­ing I could say with­out em­bar­rass­ing her. It was to me as bad as say­ing "sheeps" or" deers" for sheep or deer.

Some time ago in one of my cours­es, I in­clud­ed "fur­ni­ture" among words (col­lec­tive nouns, re­al­ly) to which "s" is not added to form the plur­al and could hard­ly re­strain my mirth when one of the course par­tic­i­pants, a ma­ture la­dy, put up her hand and asked se­ri­ous­ly, "So, if you have a room with a lot of desks and chairs, stools and ta­bles, you will still call them fur­ni­ture?"

Her face fell when I nod­ded and said, "Yes! Fur­ni­ture. That's it. Nev­er fur­ni­tures."

The Eng­lish lan­guage rides again with its idio­syn­crasies and ex­cep­tions to the rule. In Eng­lish, one must know not on­ly the rule but the ex­cep­tion to the rule–as in most of these cas­es.

So, to sum up there are words that, like sheep, have no "s" added in the plur­al: deer, mine, a Coke, fur­ni­ture, equip­ment.

Am I omit­ting any? Please let me know.