Celery/Salary

This headline (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 17 May 2009) may sound ‘punny’ to Singaporeans, but speakers of other varieties of English would probably find it rather baffling.

In Singapore English, the vowels /e/ and /æ/are often merged, so that celery and salary become homophones, i.e. are pronounced alike. In other varieties, however, they are not homophonous: in British English, for example, they are respectively /'seləri/ and /'sæləri/.

Of course, context may help: salary collocates or goes with negotiation. But if one doesn’t pronounce salary like celery in the first place, then the collocation probably wouldn’t arise at all, and one would still be left wondering what negotiation has to do with the vegetable.

Apostrophes

This is part of an advertisement currently seen on trains in Singapore. The last sentence of the body text reads: Dengue season is here, don’t be it’s next victim.

The first apostrophe is correct but not the second. Make it: Dengue season is here; don’t be its next victim. Interestingly, the slogan at the bottom gets it right, however: It’s your life. It’s your fight.

Many people confuse its and it’s — to careful writers, this is one of the surer signs of semi-literacy. The first is a possessive determiner that goes before nouns (e.g. its name), while the second is a contraction of it is (e.g. It’s time to leave).

It is worth remembering that apostrophes help indicate omitted matter, so don’t, it’s and can’t are contractions of do not, it is and cannot.

The fact that ’s is often used to indicate possession — for example, in Mark’s, Singapore’s, and Jupiter’s — may be one reason people think it logical to use it’s as a possessive determiner. However, it is worth noting that possessive ’s attaches only to nouns, and not to pronouns.

Who’s The Christian Here?

In Singapore, the term Christian applies only to Protestants, and not to Catholics, so a Christian person is either a Christian or a Catholic.

Singapore Christians may therefore find the above, from the BBC website, surprising, since it features three Christians: the Pope (Roman Catholic), the singer Bono (who was raised as both a Catholic and Church of Ireland Anglican), and the Archbishop of York (Church of England).

Car Park vs Parking Lot

In British English (BrE), drivers park their cars in a car park — or what American English (AmE) speakers call a parking lot.

In Singapore English (SgE), both terms are used, but with an interesting difference: the building or area where cars are parked is a car park (as in BrE), but each parking space is a parking lot.

As the picture (Straits Times, 30 March 2009) above shows, there are three cars in three parking spaces — or, in SgE, three parking lots (hence the plural). Indeed, the caption reads:

Ladies-only lots at Furama Riverfront Hotel are conspicuously painted pink so as to set them aside from the usual lots. Out of the 278 lots there, seven are set aside for women. The lots are located near the entrance to the hotel lobby.

Contrast this with the caption in the example below, from Time magazine (13 April 2009):

Cars may be sitting on lots like this one in Michigan, but should sell as the GDP rises.

As Time is American, it uses AmE parking lot for BrE car park.

No Less/Lower


This example is from Han Fook Kwang, editor of the Straits Times:

No higher authority in the Christian community than Anglican Archbishop John Chew of the [NCCS] issued a statement .... (31 May 2009).

What he meant was the statement came from someone very high up — but what he wrote actually conveyed the exact opposite.

The expression he needed was no less/lower an authority than ....

We can see this a lot more clearly if we move the parts of the sentence about: The Anglican Archbishop John Chew, no less, issued a statement ....

What this means is that the person who issued a statement was very high up: he was the Archbishop, nothing less/lower than that.

Subject–Verb Agreement Again

This example comes from the supervising editor of the Straits Times, Sumiko Tan:

About €3,000 (S$6,000) are thrown into the [Trevi] fountain each day ... (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 31 May 2009).

Wrong. Since we aren’t counting each euro individually, but are thinking of €3,000 as a single sum, we need a singular verb:

About €3,000 is thrown into the [Trevi] fountain each day.

Adverbials

To the perverse or evil, the above headline (Daily Telegraph, 19 May 2009), Cooking with Children, may suggest they are about to read an article giving them recipe ideas using children as ingredients — free-range children, anyone? — something like the following book title, Cooking with Spices:

Adverbials such as the above have many meanings. The headline is intended to have an ‘accompaniment’ meaning, e.g. I went to the zoo with my children today, while the book title has an ‘instrument’ meaning, e.g. I opened the tin with a sharp knife. It is only when the reader misinterprets the intended adverbial meaning that hilarity ensues.

Fortunate Food

This sign, which incidentally is perfectly grammatical, seems to suggest that only restaurant food that is fortunate is allowed in.

If, however, you were physically there and knew it was the entrance to Fortunate Restaurant, then you would understand it to mean only food ordered from the restaurant may be consumed there.

Syntactically, the noun phrases are structured differently. The intended interpretation has food as head noun and Fortunate Restaurant as noun premodifier. By contrast, the unintended meaning has food as head noun also, but with two premodifiers: the adjective fortunate and the noun restaurant.

Dangling Modifier

Dangling modifiers are often hard to spot, and as a result frequently provide unintended comic relief, as this letter from a reader shows (Today, 15 May 2009).

As written, the sentence means the writer is a densely populated country.

This is because the non-finite clause, being a densely populated country, comes before the subject I in the main clause, and so is interpreted as modifying or adding to it. A clause or phrase that wrongly modifies a subject is called a dangling modifier or a dangling participle.

The writer could have avoided it by making the non-finite clause finite, with its own subject:

As Singapore is a densely populated country, I believe ...

Grammar at the Shops

There are a few problems with this notice. First, the plural form apparels is wrong, since the word apparel is uncountable in Standard English (for this reason we don’t normally say some flours or some milks).

Second, Less Up To 20% is a non-standard way of saying Up To 20% Less. The writer was probably translating directly from Chinese, using the word less as a verb (as in Mandarin kòu 扣).

Finally, I’d change regular priced items to regular-price items.

Telling It Like It Is

Strange. When fares go up, posters never warn passengers of ‘higher bus fares’ — instead, they invariably use the weasel words ‘fare adjustments’.

‘Naiveness’

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, there is no such word as naiveness (Channel News Asia, 4 May 2009) in English.

Make it naivety or naïvety (from French naïveté).

A/The Number Of...

The number of post offices here have actually increased (Straits Times, 25 March 2009) is wrong.

Make it has, since the verb agrees with the head noun number. When we use the number of, we are really referring to a number.

By contrast, a number of functions as a quantifier, akin to some or a few, so the verb agrees with the head noun:

A number of post offices have shut down this year.

The same rule applies to total: A total of 54 applications have been received, but The total of 54 applications is far higher than we had expected.

Subject–Verb Agreement

‘Wear and tear resulting from years of use mean that, sooner of later, this piece of plastic will chip and crack’ (Straits Times letter, 10 April 2009).

The underlined is wrong: make it means. This is because the subject of the sentence, wear and tear, is a single idea, i.e. singular. Wear and tear are not thought of as separate things.

Similarly, we’d also say Fish and chips is my favourite dish because fish and chips make up a single dish.

Misplaced Modifier

The last sentence (from a Straits Times letter) reads as though the father had trouble explaining something the radio DJ had said to his (the father’s) son.

The ambiguity could easily have been avoided by moving the highlighted phrase: I found it obscene and had a tough time explaining to my son what he said.

Shared Modifiers

‘T.K. Sabapathy is one of the most respected and regarded art historians in Southeast Asia,’ says a poster advertising a talk. Note that respected and regarded share a modifier, most.

Most respected is all right: I can respect a person a little, a lot, the least, or the most.

Regarded, however, needs more than just that: we can’t say a person is regarded a lot or a little; rather, we have to say she/he is highly regarded, etc.