English is a fashion item

For a long time, I’ve written down my thoughts about and reactions to the way the English language is used or misused today and it’s time I drew a conclusion or three. I’m not a collector of things. The only collection I have is one of words and languages and usage. To come across the following is a moment of discovery, of pleasure: “It's thought that one in 50 people may have prosopagnosia, or face blindness.” (BBC 010716). The OED defines it as: “An inability to recognize a face as that of any particular person.” What a marvellous word; fancy that, somebody gave it a name, a psychiatrist, of course.

I’ve spent a lot of time expressing horror about things like: “Does the living wage mean less jobs?” (Press Association, 30 Sept 16) or gobbledygook such as: … your back story, rather than your ideas, is of greatest importance.” (Spectator 15.10.16). I used to panic when I saw words like: salacity, to critique, religiosity; they seem to be American creations but they go back a long way in English history. Dangerosity, I always used to think it was an invention of George W. Bush and indeed it must be; the OED doesn’t recognise it. George W. is the President who wanted to do away with all taxes, including syntax. “Rallies of this scale are unusual in Morocco. (BBC).

A major complaint of mine has been that we don’t have any discussion of language and grammar in our media, written or spoken. The one exception I can think of is a weekly column in the Spectator by Dot Wordsworth (sic), my apologies to her; it’s an interesting column, if a little abstruse. Le Figaro published an interview with Julien Barret on 01.11.16, entitled:  «La langue française est discriminante», discriminatory because Il y a une tyrannie du bon usage, there is a tyrannical concern with correctness. Mr Barret says there are several types of French, some more correct than others. Of course, he’s right. He cites the example of those who say, wrongly he claims, une pipe en écume de mer which is a corruption of the popular French expression une pipe de Kummer. Whereas, in fact, écume de mer is literally sea foam or meerschaum in German, which gives us our Meerschaum pipe. Zoologists know this substance as sepiolite. It doesn’t matter that this detail is incorrect; what counts is the discussion about the French language. Le Figaro closes the article with an explanation of how to avoid mistakes with one of the French language’s most troublesome points of grammar, the agreement of the past participle. Most French speakers have problems with this. I take my hat off to them. If only we could have similar kinds of discussion in our newspapers.

I have come to the conclusion that the English language is now a fashion item. By talking about the numbers and going south you want to be identified with the financial community, to be part of a clique. Others talk about the bottom line and begin every sentence with so because they think the American touch is best. But, there again, it’s probably subconscious, like their taste in music, it’s simply just got to be fashionable, or what they take to be fashionable. Ah, well.

Literally speaking

Literally, adv. The OED recognises the following meanings:

†1.1 nonce-uses. a By the letters (of a name). b In letters or literature. Obsolete.

1593 R. Harvey Philad. 7 And yet I tell you me-thinkes you are very bookishly and literally wise.

2. a With reference to a report, translation, etc.: In the very words, word for word. b transf. With exact fidelity of representation.

3. a. In the literal sense. 3. b Used to indicate that the following word or phrase must be taken in its literal sense.

 Now often improperly used to indicate that some conventional metaphorical or hyperbolical phrase

is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense, e.g.   1863 F. A. Kemble Resid. in Georgia 105 For the last four years.. I literally coined money.

I have always been fascinated by the use of the adverb literally, both in English and in French. I was brought up, very firmly, to use this adverb to mean, and this would admit of no exception, in the literal sense, as in the OED’s definition 3 above. The note at the end points out an ‘improper’ usage: I literally coined money. It would never occur to me to say something like this, so effectively have I been trained not to. It’s like unique which must never be qualified; rather/very unique are not acceptable. If you do accept this, then you must also accept that someone can be a little pregnant. As an afterthought, I do like the use in definition 1 which is today unfortunately obsolete and has been replaced by literarily.

In France, the situation is more fluid.

Littéralement, adverb.  Larousse gives the following two possible meanings :

D'une manière littérale, à la lettre : Traduire littéralement. This is the same as senses 2 and 3 of the OED.  

Absolument, tout à fait : Il était littéralement épouvanté. [he was literally frightened/shocked]. Here we have the equivalent of the qualifiers absolutely or quite. But it is still parallel to English usage; one can be literally frightened.

Larousse goes on to make the following recommendations:

‘Littéralement au sens de «  à la lettre, dans un sens strict  » s'emploie dans tous les registres : traduire un texte littéralement ; au sens de «  très, à l'extrême  » (il est littéralement épuisé), le mot relève de l'expression orale non surveillée.’ It confirms that the adverb should be used as in the two French definitions, but suggests that this usage belongs to the register of spoken language, spontaneous, not careful French.

Larousse goes on to recommend that in careful speech and in writing littéralement should be replaced by completely, extremely etc. ‘Dans l'expression soignée, en particulier à l'écrit, préférer les équivalents : complètement, extrêmement, au plus haut point, au plus haut degré, etc.’

Here is an example of the use of this adverb which is typical of its use in current French. The caption accompanies a photo of an object under water: Cet élément qui appartenait au Titanic a été littéralement pulvérisé lors du choc.[This object from the Titanic was literally pulverised on impact].

It’s all the more improbable as the concepts of underwater and powder are incompatible.

This leads neatly onto the verb pulverise which behaves in a similar way to literally and derives from the Latin pulver for powder. In French, pulveriser has these definitions [from Larousse]:

Réduire une matière en poudre : Pulvériser de la craie ; du charbon. {pulverise chalk]

Projeter un liquide en très fines gouttelettes : Pulvériser de l'eau sur une plante. [water, spray]

Réduire quelque chose en miettes, en morceaux : Les bombes ont pulvérisé l'objectif. [smash]

Anéantir quelqu'un, un groupe, le vaincre de manière écrasante : Pulvériser l'ennemi. [destroy]

In English, we have the same meanings as in French, but the reference to liquid in definition 1b is now rare and has been superseded by spray.

1. trans. To reduce to powder or dust; to comminute, to triturate. Also refl.

b. techn. To divide (a liquid) into minute particles or spray.

2. fig. To demolish or destroy, to break down utterly; to ‘smash’. “ The four battalion were pulverised... “ [The OED favours the spelling with ‘z’. I prefer the ‘s’ spelling].

In French, we find: Le gel du 18 août et celui qui est survenu début septembre ont littéralement décimé les récoltes. [The frosts … literally decimated the crops]. Here again we have this particular French usage of literally  and decimate. English would not say literally decimate, although it often uses this verb to mean destroy as in French. Both English and French agree that the careful use of this verb means:

To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of, but accepts the meaning, rhetorically or loosely, to destroy or remove a large proportion of; to subject to severe loss, slaughter, or mortality. (OED)

In French, décimer, (Latin decimare) has the same values as in English. Words mostly share the same meanings in different languages, but can differ hugely in the way they are used, especially in the spoken idiom.

Information fatigue

Modern technology has allowed everything to be captured, structured and stored. Artificial intelligence, including machine translation, in both theory and practice, has made extremely rapid progress. The Turing test, to tell from a screen and keyboard interaction whether you are communicating with a real person or a computer, is likely soon to show that it is no longer possible to make this distinction. A project has recently been identified the aim of which is totally to eradicate all diseases within the next few years, showing the power of computing and the ambition of scientists.

Virtually all information is now available, legally or illegally, and language is no exception. If you are in the habit of checking via your web browser that an expression is correct in this or that form, you are certainly going to find examples which justify anything you wish to say. Someone, somewhere, will have used it rightly or wrongly. Vocabulary and usage are therefore expanding incessantly and the user ends up not knowing what to say or write. This expansion takes place often by the adoption of formerly specialist, technical terms.

This leads to information fatigue: too much information, too much choice, too little discrimination. And this leads to communication which is difficult to understand from people who are confused about what they want to say. Lack of discrimination plus a penchant for following fashion means we often don’t understand what some people are talking about.

In addition to ‘different’ or ‘several different’ we now have information from multiple sources provided by multiple people. The problem, or should I say issue, is not the use of ‘multiple’ which until now has been reserved for more technical circumstances like ‘multiple fractures’ but that ‘different’ is going to find itself not sufficiently sexy, too simple, and will become relegated to history.

The bottom-line (net profit or loss to accountants), used with the meaning of anything from ‘result’ to ‘what I mean’. Definitions include ‘the fundamental and most important factor’, ‘the most basic fact or issue in a situation’. Again this seems to be an Americanism and personally I find it problematic to distinguish whether the user means ‘the result’, ‘the required result’ or ‘what I mean is’. I first came across to second guess about thirty years ago. I didn’t know what it meant then and I still don’t know what it means to this day.

Another example is ‘to prink’ which means to groom, smarten up. You have to have a pretty extensive vocabulary to know this. Currently, there is also to prink, meaning to pre-drink, which itself means to drink alcohol, often at home or in a pub, prior to going on to a club with the aim of becoming seriously inebriated. Compare this with to pre-load which has the same alcoholic meaning as to prink. But ‘to preload’ relates in cardiology to the tension in the heart muscle, as opposed to ‘afterload’. I should hate to think that our cardiologists might end up confusing these terms as other people do with the verb ‘to smoke’: are we talking about tobacco or marijuana?

The BBC reported the following on 23^rd September: “playlists account for 31% of listening time across all demographics, while albums lag behind on 22%”. Do we have to have a term straight out of anthropology when we could easily use ‘audiences’? It’s a good thing to help improve people’s vocabulary, but this one reeks of “Look at me, I’ve just learnt a new word”. So far, we’ve been spared the term ‘cohort’ in this context, from anthropology and statistics again, but I predict that it’s on its way.

On the cusp of, the intended meaning being ‘on the point of’, “the cease-fire was on the cusp of being agreed to”; another technical term, from astrology, incorrectly used when a simple alternative exists. The 2005 annotated edition of the OED does not recognise this usage, but if you look for it on the web, sure enough, it’s there: I am sitting on the cusp of middle age;  X's behaviour is only on the cusp of acceptability; we're on the cusp of something really wonderful. Should you use this expression in your next conference paper? What exactly does it mean? It’s a wonderful expression to use when you don’t know exactly what you want to say.

Just out of interest, I saw an item saying that September 24 was “officially National Punctuation Day, and we’re sure that you’re planning to celebrate by wearing “period” costumes and tossing back a few exclamation “pints.” Thank you to Brad Tuttle of Money for that. Now, there’s a most laudable initiative. Punctuation is a matter of precision.

Confusion, all is confusion

Last time, I wrote about men’s and women’s language and since then I have come across some surprising items in the press. Instead of enthusiastic reporting, the following, published in The Express on 11th August, should have been roundly criticised: John Hennigan made the mistake of calling Judge Patricia Lynch, QC, a “c***” as she jailed him for 18 months. In measured tones, Judge Lynch replied: “You’re a bit of a c*** yourself. Being offensive to me doesn’t help.” Hennigan, 50, shouted: “Go f*** yourself!” Judge Lynch simply retorted: “You too.” Instead, the judge seems to have gained a reputation as a no-nonsense member of the judiciary who puts offenders well and truly in their place. Nonsense, she should be reprimanded and told to uphold the dignity of the law.

Not only language, but feminine matters are becoming invasive, too. There was also a detailed article about the clitoris in Le Figaro recently, not just text, oh no, but photos to boot. I know it’s a French publication, but… And lunch-time television adverts seem frequently to be about creams to relieve various irritations that only afflict women. This does nothing for my appetite and makes me think that soon Big Pharma may start to demonstrate the efficacy of their potions on ED, with graphic illustrations of course; now that would liven things up a bit at midday.

Another article in the Daily Mail related how a transgender woman found romance with a man who also changed sex. This really is a most confusing area. LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. The word ‘sex’ as an administrative category on forms seems to be destined to disappear and to be replaced by ‘gender’ which used to be a grammatical term. Sex and gender in grammar and sociolinguistics were used to refer to different things. The debate in the United States at both federal and state level about which lavatories should be used by different people depending on whether they were born male or female but also whether they felt they really belonged to the other sex or neither of those, is going to lead us where? Administrative forms, censuses for example, will they show in future Male, Female, Other (please give details)? What will these details be? What proof will be needed? What will happen to comparative statistics? Will there be universal acceptance of three, or more, sexes? Will same sex marriages become the new normal?

The BBC ran a headline yesterday: “Transgender soldier becomes first woman on Army front line”. The article goes on to explain that the soldier joined the Scots Guards as a man in 2012 but began hormone therapy in the last month, and has officially changed her name. The Army said it was delighted to have its first woman in a close-combat role. The Guardsman, who had official documents changed by deed poll from her birth name of Ben to reflect her new name and status, has now been informed she will be able to stay in the infantry, as a woman. The BBC uses neither the term ‘sex’ nor ‘gender’, but ‘status’. Confusing?

That George Sand was in fact the pseudonym of Amandine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, a nineteenth century lady writer who fought for women’s independence, is well known. That Jan Morris was born James Humphrey Morris, historian, author and travel writer is perhaps less well known. Jan Morris is described as a trans woman who was published under her birth name until 1972, when she transitioned from living as male to living as female. These examples, in their day, were exceptional. There are new vocabulary items specifically created, such as “trans” woman and the verb to “transition”, which the OED dates to 1993. Nowadays, the sheer number of people involved, the various sexes, genders, statuses generated, leave many people unable to comprehend.

This situation in society will have to be reflected socio-linguistically. What I started by describing as men’s and women’s language reflects social evolution that is not really very complicated, in fact it’s rather trivial; it’s simply a matter of standards, of gravitas. The sex/gender question by comparison is a sea-change. It will be interesting to see how society in general and the different generations cope with it.

Men’s language and women’s language

With thanks to Penguin Books
for this image..

There was a time, maybe fifty years ago, when English had a class of vocabulary known as “men’s language” as opposed to “women’s language”. This men’s language was a group of swear words and expressions which could only be uttered by men and then, usually, by men of the lower orders. Polite society never used them and did not recognise their existence, or would not admit to knowing them. I’m talking of course about the infamous trio:  f**k, c**t, t**t. Even now, with them all covered in asterisks, I find it shameful to write them. There are others, but these three are at the top of the tree and in ascending order of horribleness. Women’s language doesn’t exist in this context; the expression is used simply to countervail men’s language. Women’s language has the value of all that is correct, acceptable and pleasant to hear. Well, that’s how things were, Jane Austen-y I suppose.

The OED not only admits to knowing about this trio, but gives full-blooded definitions and etymologies. Even the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary shows them, with remarks like “taboo, slang” and “offensive” somewhere in the definition. Fifty years ago, these words would not have been published, anywhere, there would have been an instant hue and cry. How many, today, remember the prosecution of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act for having published D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover? The trial was held at the Old Bailey in 1960 and a unanimous verdict of not guilty was returned. It was seen as a test case opposing modern progressive culture and public morals and decency. Modern cultural expression won and so began the Permissive Society. The result of this trial is the presence in dictionaries of this trio. Today, almost any vocabulary is printable. Philip Larkin recalls this case, with his inimitable “serious” humour, in his poem Annus Mirabilis:

“Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(which was rather late for me) -

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles' first L.P.”

And in This Be The Verse his famous first line: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” would never have been published a dozen years earlier, but both were published in High Windows in 1974.

Today, in the age of feminism and equality of everything for everybody, these “men’s” words are now used by everybody, men and women alike. Young women now share laddish behaviour and violence, get drunk and fight outside pubs on a Saturday night; why shouldn’t they use these words? They are now banal.

That being said, I should recommend that they not be used by learners of English. In fact, I should recommend that they not be used by anybody in normal, polite, conversation or writing. When learners use them, it doesn’t ring true; there’s a conflict between a lack of mastery of the language and the native-speaker ability associated with these words. One final indication or test of fluency is the native-speaker ability to insert f***king between an adjective and its noun or between two nouns: “I hate the noise of a Harley f***king Davidson” or “not warm f***king beer!" This takes skill and it’s not quite the same as “f***king warm beer”, so be warned!

As I often say, standards only go in one direction, downwards.

Advice on the kind of English to learn and use

The Complete OED

Below, there are two paragraphs. The first is written and inspired using the clichés and fashionable jargon of business and financial reporting. The second is the same paragraph rewritten in what I think is more usual, more acceptable English. Both versions have the same number of words.

Downside is quite a common expression, but the way it is used here makes absolutely no sense to me. Today, there is no Authority for English language usage. There never has been an English Academy like the French or Spanish ones, but in the past, there were Fowler, Gower, the Society for Pure English and the Committee on Spoken English of the BBC. Alas, they are no more. The BBC can no longer claim to set any standard. The Oxford English Dictionary is perhaps all we have left, and its standard is that of vocabulary, for which we should be thankful.

The challenge facing learners of English is whether to learn this type of buzzword and, if yes, whether to use it. Depending on your level, my advice would be to be aware of these words but not to use them in writing, and definitely not to use them in spoken English. Used by native English speakers, they offend my ear, used by non-native speakers they sound wrong, out of place, out of register. It’s better to concentrate on more standard usage and vocabulary in the early stages. When you attain mastery, you can do whatever you like. When you begin learning English, your teacher and your course books are the Authorities and I hope they are not using this style of English.

It could be said that these buzzwords have value in the sense [note the correct use of sense here] that they add something to the meaning, they provide nuance. Sometimes this is true, but mostly it is not. Basis points adds nothing that standard fractions and percentages do not already have, and will, therefore, very probably disappear before long. It’s a question of training and experience, but data just screams plural. I have a suspicion that Latin plurals may be on the way back, owing probably to the many people interviewed on television using referendum-a after Brexit. Football stadium-a also seems to be making a comeback. Anyway, I hope you enjoy thinking about this and watching out for other examples in your daily life.

Paragraph 1

The government's numbers give no sense of the true numbers involved. There is an uptick, sure, but this is one of multiple upticks; there have also been multiple spikes and hikes. Stability is not about to return anytime soon to the markets. Investors will continue to be hit by this volatility until companies pivot their growth away from European markets and deliver value for money. Airlines that operate intra EU routes will probably be secure post Brexit but there are significant risks to the downside going forward. There is no chance the data over the next few weeks is going to suddenly improve and losses will continue to increase big time. Any increase over 25 basis points would negatively impact companies. (121 words)

Paragraph 2

The government's figures give no indication of the true numbers involved. There is clearly a slight increase, but this is one of several; there have also been numerous larger increases. Stability is not about to return to the markets in the near future. Investors will continue to suffer from this volatility until companies move their growth away from European markets and provide value for money. Airlines that operate routes within the EU will probably be secure after Brexit but there are significant future risks […to the downside???]. There is no chance the data are suddenly going to improve over the next few weeks and losses will continue to escalate. Any increase above one quarter percent would have a negative effect on companies. (122 words)

Pointless, Harry Potter and passports

A quiz program I watch regularly is Pointless. I like the concept of the game and I am an admirer of the presenter Alexander Armstrong and his “assistant” Richard Osman, both of whom are cultured and speak decent English. My admiration diminishes every time Alexander Armstrong says: “All of our questions were asked to 100 people…” and invites contestants to:  “...please step up to the podium”. I’m sure they’ve received countless tweets and emails about this:  …were asked of / were put to, would be better and a podium is generally a raised structure, whereas the prop they use is more like a lectern. If they don’t like this, they could simply say: …please step forward. I’m sure they’ll forgive me for this pettiness. Another thing that strikes me when I watch is that the majority of (younger?) contestants only know the answers to literary questions because they have seen the film based on the novel. Very few seem to have read the book.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

For some reason, this makes me think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone versus Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone which is the title of the American edition. I have always thought that one of the most valuable aims of books for children was to introduce them to new words and ideas, to increase their vocabulary and knowledge. Is this not valid in America? J.K. Rowling, although agreeing to this change, is said to have regretted it later. The title change brought the following comments:

"Sorceror" sounds exciting, "philosopher" sounds boring, and nobody in America knows what a philosopher is.

Famous title changes to take account of the incredible ignorance of the average American include "Licence Revoked" which became "Licence to Kill", when over 70% of those polled didn't know what "Revoked" meant, and "The Madness of King George III", which had to drop the "III" because it was realised that Americans would be uninterested in the film since they'd obviously missed the first two films of the trilogy”, and

 “Perhaps it was thought that an American readership wouldn't pick up on the mystical connotations of "Philosopher's Stone", and

“American kids (and parents) are far less likely to have heard of the Philosopher's Stone”, thus depriving American children and their parents of the following information concerning the said Philosopher’s stone:

“A reputed solid substance or preparation supposed by the alchemists to possess the property of changing other metals into gold or silver, the discovery of which was the supreme object of alchemy. Being identified with the elixir, it had also, according to some, the power of prolonging life indefinitely, and of curing all wounds and diseases”. OED.

                                                                                                                          

In France, H P and the Philosopher’s Stone became Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers (HP at Wizard’s School). I’m not sure why as the French have la pierre philosophale  and the same historical references. The Spanish do much better with: Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal.

This then made me think of that statistic about the number of Americans who have a valid passport. According to the State Department, the answer to this, as of January 2014, was about 46%. So, all the stories about only 10% of Americans having a passport are false, but were true around 1994. That settles that, then.

To finish on a couple of my hobby-horses, Norman Smith, one of the BBC's finest, has now started to sprinkle the awful Americanism big time over his reports in addition to overworking his most favourite awful Americanism, …give us a sense of what’s happening in Westminster. Talking of Westminster, I was delighted to hear Mrs May saying at her first Prime Minister’s Questions: I'm going to meet Mrs Merkel... and not meet with. Perhaps we can now look forward to the English language being used more carefully, more elegantly, in Parliament at least.

Learners of English – BEWARE

Because you hear it on the BBC’s Today programme or said by the Prime Minister’s spokesman doesn’t make it acceptable English. John Humphrys, one of the presenters on the BBC’s Today programme has written at least two books on the English language: Lost For Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language’ insists that laBeyond Words’. He is a much-respected journalist and broadcaster, he’s Welsh and therefore knows a thing or two about language. All this does not stop him from using a bunch and stuff as well as give us a sense of. I wish he wouldn’t. One of his colleagues, Sarah Montague, when asked the other morning: how are you? replied: Good. I really wish she wouldn’t. John Humphrys is guilty of using sloppy Americanisms and Sarah Montague of using sub-standard English. I should like them to be role models for what used to be known as the Queen’s English, to be people that learners of English could use as a reference.

nguage should be simple, clear and honest, and ‘

By drawing attention to the following points, a few among many, I hope that learners of English will resist the temptation to imitate the unfortunate habits of rather a lot of native speakers who don’t care or who don’t know any other way of expressing themselves. They follow verbal fashion and are often difficult to understand. I know that sounds conceited, but that’s because I feel strongly about good English. An (*) indicates an incorrect form, a solecism.

Fewer / less

*The less people who know, the better. *He made less mistakes in the previous match.

This one is a marathon-runner; it just keeps on going. In 2008, Tesco raised the hackles of many people by putting up a sign at a till saying *10 items or less. They chose to replace it by “Up to 10 items” rather than “10 items or fewer” on the grounds that it was easier to understand. I suppose this might be called dumbing-down and may explain why a lot of people have a problem with this distinction.

It's interesting to note that "The less people know, the better" is grammatically a perfectly good statement. So it's not simply a question of collocation.

Figures / numbers

It is now fashionable among some financial journalists and analysts to talk about “the numbers” and nothing but the numbers. There are stock market numbers, companies publish their numbers, numbers are good or bad. Figures are disappearing. Why? This is American influence again. Perhaps they think it sounds more professional or with it to say numbers all the time. Numbers are mathematical symbols. When they have been processed in some way, they magically become figures. Companies publish figures or why not results? Numbers are things you dial on a telephone, or they identify the house in the street where you live.

Station / train station

More transatlantic influence. There is a concept known to linguists as “marked / unmarked terms”. It’s a most useful idea, beautifully illustrated by this present pet hate of mine. In British English, Station is unmarked, it’s neutral, it's the place where you go to catch a train. Marked forms of station are bus station, power station, police station. If you want to use a marked term to make sure there’s no misunderstanding about where to meet somebody, why not call it a railway station like we always have done.

Queue / Stand in line

This is moving in at a rapid pace. Admittedly, queue is a funny one to spell but is that an excuse for everybody to stand in line?

*For John and I

This is said by people who care about the language, who have been taught at school that there’s something to be careful about here but have forgotten what it is. What they were told is that John and I are great mates, but they don’t like John and me. They explained this to John and me, but we didn’t understand. After a preposition or as the object of a verb I becomes me. It happens with the other pronouns, too: he/she/we/they become him/her/us/them. It doesn’t drive me mad, but when I hear it used correctly, I always mentally give the speaker a couple of gold stars. A current TV advert for mis-sold insurance claims, includes the following:..that have been sold to you and I.

Out there

Out there is a very frequently-heard thinking-stopper. It means everything and nothing. Its precise meaning is what its two words indicate and no more. It’s best to leave it out.

Stuff

What can I say about “stuff”, except “ouch”, another thinking-stopper. It seems to have completely taken over from “things”, our own British home-grown thinking-stopper.

How are you? – *good

Another one moving in fast under American influence. The cost of this type of fashion is that a pair of words, in this case good/well, is reduced to one. The other one disappears in a relatively short space of time and we have permanently lost a useful shade of meaning.

Meet with

Nobody meets anybody anymore, but they constantly meet with somebody. This has now got its feet under the table. When I hear that somebody has met somebody, I pause for a few seconds and give thanks.

Basis points

The British fashion-oriented financial brigade ought to sort this one out. It's been around for a while, but some of them still seem to think it's smart to use this American mumbo-jumbo. Do 50 basis points better or more clearly express one half percent? Are 30 basis points 0.3% or not? Is it supposed to be simpler? It's nothing but another useless layer of jargon

Sense

I am now finding the use of sense enervating: give us your sense of the situation, which has the value of understanding or feeling, is as annoying as give us your take on the situation, another horror. If this continues much longer the verbal use of sense: do you sense that this situation is getting out of control? and the nominal use: common sense, the five senses, what sense are you giving to this expression? are going to become confused. People will begin to hesitate and possibly even avoid using the word.

If you listen to journalists, there are specialists of the “one sense fits all” school, like Norman Smith on the BBC. His excellent reports and analyses contain lots of my sense of the situation, which is a pity. This usage is taking over at the BBC.

To Grow a company

Growing companies now happens all the time. Tomatoes or potatoes, yes, but companies, no.

Deliver

Everything is now delivered, including education, policing and government. Provided? Nothing at all?

Impact

Earnings were impacted by the decline in oil prices, hit or affected will do the trick. French needs this verb and has taken it. English doesn’t. Used as a verb, there is a sense of physical contact, collision.

Bunch

A bunch of grapes, bananas, even a bunch of fives or hooligans, but not a bunch of files, companies or books.

Key

When I was at school, we were not allowed to use the adjective nice, felt to be lazy, over-worked and almost meaningless, and we had to find another word. I feel the same way now about the adjectival use of key. It has traditionally been used attributively as in key player, key industries, key factor. It began to be used predicatively around 1970 and, like knotweed, is now all over the place. Everything is key, factors are key to our success, the use of military force is key in this strategy. Hardly anybody says vital or crucial any more. These two adjectives are under threat.

To gift

27 per cent said they had gifted their items in the last month (given away?)

To Pause

As a precaution the UK's A400M aircraft are temporarily paused (grounded?)

Referencing

Referencing Conservative pledges to cut the welfare budget (regarding?)

Post

Post 1945. Post bellum, post hoc. But, Post the EU referendum? Post lunch?

Multiple

It’s everywhere, multiple sandwiches, multiple buses, multiple pairs of shoes. This used to be very restricted in use: multiple injuries, fractures etc. Several and many are going to disappear.

Firefighters

Firemen have disappeared.

First responders

Emergency services says it so much better.

Shooter

This is slightly ridiculous; makes me think of pea-shooter or the dated slang word for a pistol. Have Americans forgotten the word gunman or sniper?

It’s all about a lack of elegance, style. Standards unfortunately only go in one direction, South, and that’s another one that should be on my list.

The referendum – where to Guv?

The shock wave

There is a frenetic rush to bring out the next horrendous story in this British cataclysm. The Telegraph reveals a French plot to topple the City. The Guardian recounts that Standard Life has shut its property fund. Why the UK is plunging towards an economic nightmare, clarions another. These are testing times, agreed, but in the midst of all the noise, the thinking process has begun.

The BBC reports that “lawyers acting for a group of business people and academics, said it would be unlawful for a prime minister to trigger Article 50 without a full debate and vote in Parliament ...because they would be overriding the 1972 European Communities Act that enshrines UK membership of the EU ...constitutionally only legislation can override legislation and an act of Parliament is required to give the prime minister legal authority”. Or, again, will Britain have to invoke Article 50 before starting to negotiate terms as a European commissioner has suggested? The details of our new relationship are going to take years to settle; what we don’t need is interminable legal debate about whether we are in or out.

Agree or disagree with the referendum result, we need a government and we need an opposition, asap. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are no longer candidates for anything. The Tory leadership election is underway. The Brexit worthies in the party seem to think that only a candidate who supported leave can do the job; that is probably Mr Gove or Mrs Leadsom. I don’t follow this; it’s an odd kind of logic. The future leader and Prime Minister will do what is best for the country and must be chosen on merit. Are they saying that a candidate who voted to remain is somehow going to commit only half-heartedly to the job or might even sabotage Britain’s negotiations? Is this an example of Mr Gove’s superior intellectual powers of which we hear so much? Mrs Leadsom no doubt has many qualities, but I know nothing about her;  mea culpa I’m sure. Mrs May has far more experience at home and abroad than all the others put together. Mr Corbyn’s Labour party will eventually re-organise, with or without tears. Sooner would be better than later because Her Majesty’s opposition is a vital part of our government process.

While we get our house in order, as we shall, we should remember that our European allies have their own problems. Belgium’s Le Soir says it all; the whole of Europe is feeling the shock waves from Brexit. Frau Merkel has her own immigration sword of Damocles to dismantle. France has so many concerns, it doesn’t know what to deal with first. Apart from terrorism, unions and an egregious unemployment rate, among others, Monsieur Valls is currently having his own spat with the European Commission about the Bolkestein Directive, voted in the European Parliament in 2006, which France has always hated. It began with the Polish plumber and in 2013 Ryanair was fined by the French government because its Marseilles operation was using Irish contracts to save on social charges. France has very high costs to employ, so it doesn’t like cross-border provision of services where a European employer toes the line on the minimum pay and health and safety regulations of the host country but pays the lower social contributions of the service provider’s country. The Le Figaro newspaper said yesterday that it would cost less to employ a French worker on the national minimum wage than a Polish worker. Just in case anybody has forgotten, Europe has its own troubles to sort out.

The status of EU citizens living in UK and vice-versa has also rightly drawn attention. They must not be used as pawns in any negotiation, this is self-evident and I’m sure they will not be. But negotiations will take place and this provision for continued, unchanged residence will have to be ratified. In this context, Germany has proposed dual nationality for British citizens. This type of solution is pleasant but nugatory.

Britain needs Europe and Europe needs Britain. The task now is one of re-design and both Europe and Britain will have to rethink some of their tenets. The word negotiate derives from two Latin words for not and ease. Lines are drawn, there is much posturing and sucking of teeth. Hand-wringing and hair-tearing are not acceptable. We have lots to negotiate with and the future is unwritten. We shall be involved in something like a game of chess where checkmate will never be reached. Only a draw.

The referendum, some days later

Those English! How they dynamited Europe.
Why they don't do anything like the rest of us.

The referendum has predictably brought its lot of anger, recrimination, confusion, despair but also its lot of wishes for a successful outcome from many quarters, if not from the European Commission. The New Zealand government has offered to second some of its highly experienced EU trade negotiators to London which may or may not be practicable, but it’s a most kind and encouraging offer which shows that we are not without friends.

Emotions are still running high and some of our politicians are not setting the highest of behavioural standards. Nigel Farage’s baiting of MEPs in open session in Brussels shows why he is not a suitable person to take part in domestic UK politics at any decision-making level. I don’t often say this, but I felt embarrassed - by his taunting manner, particularly given that what he said about MEPs’ work experience was clearly not true and vindicated those who accused him during the Brexit campaign of telling lies. The other person who disappointed me was the Prime Minister who railed against the leader of the opposition, in the Chamber, telling him to resign, to go. I have a lot of time for David Cameron, it’s a pity he’s leaving; I suppose that the heat of the moment got to him.

Referenda are very unpredictable events. They are simple matters with fiendishly difficult questions. They are expressions of participation in the democratic process, yet the questions asked are usually so technical that only top flight specialists could hold a reasoned opinion. The mass of voters end up relying on their intuition or, usually, their emotions. In the present referendum, everybody knew the consequences of voting the status quo, but nobody knew what leaving would entail, not the experts, not the government, not the Brussels technocrats, nobody. You would be forgiven for thinking that the government simply wanted to off-load responsibility for the decision onto the electorate. You would likewise be forgiven for asking why the referendum was called in the first place. David Cameron bears this responsibility. I understand his motives and if he is to be condemned for anything, it must be his judgement; he was too sure the result would go his way, but so also was half the nation.

Yet it was always going to be a close run thing. It was fairly clear that the élite, those with money, would vote remain, that those less well-off would vote leave; the educated, remain and the uneducated, leave; those in the London area, remain and those in the North, leave; the upper classes, remain and the lower classes, leave; the young generation, remain and those who grew up before 1973, leave; those who went skiing in the French Alps or clubbing in Ibiza, remain and those who went on holiday in the UK, leave; Scotland and Northern Island would vote to remain. It was all very binary. It was always going to be a close call. The unknown and unfathomable is what difference the large numbers of people living and working in Europe and who were disenfranchised would have made had they voted.

Britain has always been accused of having only one foot in Europe, of being an unruly and disruptive element, yet one of her great contributions to the European project has been to ask difficult questions, openly oppose what she did not think right and fight for change. She has fought for a rebate and she has fought for opt-outs. Sometimes these positions have provoked acrimony and sometimes official enquiries and change have been the result. Once again, she has asked difficult questions, but this time it’s: how does Article 50 work? and how do we negotiate our place outside of the European Union? One doesn’t have to be gifted with divine foresight to predict that the European institutions will now reflect on the reasons this has happened and on the need for change. For once, foresight and hindsight are both perfectly aligned and on target.

British European Union referendum

I couldn’t not comment on this referendum. The country is split in two with 1.3 million votes separating them. The leave-supporters are pleased and the remain-supporters are desperately unhappy. Most people expected the result to be the other way round. Another group which is hugely discontented is that of the Brits who have been resident in Europe for more than fifteen years, and have been disenfranchised by Mr Cameron. The reason for this is not clear and seems difficult to defend since these Brits are in the front line, living and working in countries of the EU. There are said to be some two to three million of us and if this is the case and we had been able to vote, then the referendum result would have been reversed. This is therefore a vote which leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is not ‘job well done’.

There is a petition which is trying to influence this result, called: EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum. The head is: We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum. When I looked a few minutes ago, there were 3.75 million signatures; it will therefore have to be debated by Parliament. The Scottish government says it is trying to block the Brexit. Others are saying that a referendum is only consultative, that Parliament is not obliged to heed the result. Britain is held by most to be the home of parliamentary democracy; it would be extremely malodorous if our legislators chose to override the vox populi. It looks very much as if out is out, as the European Commission likes to put it.

Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty is the mechanism for leaving the EU; unfortunately, there are no explanatory details in the treaty. Despite Mr Juncker and others saying that Article 50 must be invoked without delay, it remains Britain’s decision when to announce that she is leaving. There is nothing to be gained by doing things precipitately. These are uncharted waters and Britain has chosen to be the guinea-pig. Before formally invoking Article 50, the Tory party has to choose a new leader and the Labour party will very likely have to do as much.

Immigration is said to have been the main theme of this referendum, the power behind Brexit. But I think that an even more powerful factor was the unelected nature of the European Commission, that unelected functionaries can tell elected members of Parliament what their laws must be, what they can and cannot do, whom they can or cannot extradite –  this has always been a major sticking point. When Katya Adler, the BBC’s European editor, asked Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission president, if this were the end of the EU, he growled “No” and with a scowl left the press conference. This was exactly the kind of arrogance that the British abhor in an unelected representative. Other Europeans are even blaming him for Brexit as he pushes for “more Europe” including a European army which Britain is dead-set against. Juncker is a divisive force; his election was opposed by Cameron and he is on record as saying that Brexit will not be an amicable divorce.

Of course, it didn’t help the Remain cause that the world and his wife were telling the British voters that if they voted to leave, World War Three would start the following day. President Obama, Christine Lagarde and the hundreds of eminent scientists, economists, church leaders, Nobel Prize winners, blue-chip company bosses all saying sign here, not there, doubtless provoked a backlash.

Sovereignty and take back control are powerful concepts in a campaign. They won the day. Now, cool heads and time are needed. Festina lente.

France, its companies and its trade unions

The unions are still putting the French government under pressure and when I say unions, I’m referring mainly to the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). The CGT wants to hold a full-blooded march in Paris this Thursday. The authorities say that given the current state of emergency they will only allow an assembly and not a march of protestors. The CGT rejects this idea, so there is stalemate. Given that all public demonstrations attract ultras, what the French call casseurs, they are high-risk events. A nationally known childrens’ hospital was damaged by ultras last week, to public outcry, yet given the terrorist threat and the football crowd control, the police are stretched to the limit and still the government does not dare forbid outright the CGT’s march with the risk that they might have to prosecute the organisers and impose fines or imprisonment as laid down by law.

The French public are greatly inconvenienced but there is still this feeling that the CGT has a right to strike, that’s the way things are. They forget that the union represents a small minority, is defending the privileges of a few and does not have the right to stop others from working.

The French are still very much ambivalent about trade unions and the companies they work for. There is still a very strong them and us culture. The patrons (bosses) are still seen as exploitative and the lines of cleavage are everywhere. Who will protect the worker against the patron? Yes, there are bosses who exploit workers, but certainly not all of them do. Yet the French give this impression that a patron is by definition an exploiter of employees. This belief has been underpinned by the Code du Travail, the code of labour law which exists to protect the employee against the employer’s excesses and is very often an administrative nightmare for the employer. The bigger the company gets, the more time and money it has to devote to making sure it is not infringing any of its articles of law. The number of employees determines the level of complexity: 10, 20 and 50 being critical. For example, if a company employs 11 people, it has to organise elections for representatives of the workforce (délégués du personnel); if it employs 51 people it must set up a works council (comité d'entreprise). These are significant additional changes to the workload and responsibilities of the owner or manager, to such a degree that the owner of a small company will often refuse to employ that eleventh person. This is a considerable obstacle to national growth and one of the reasons why French unemployment figures have been above 10% for the last 35 years or so.

It often seems as if salaried employees don’t see the relationship between their company, their customers and their monthly payslip. The company owes them employment and a living and these rights are enshrined in law, everything the patron does has to be measured against the Code du Travail and if somebody spots that something is not being done by the book, there may well be an outcry. This does not make for company loyalty. The owner often feels alone, without support. The workforce forgets that the patron who started the company and created employment probably had to get a bank loan or re-mortgage his home to do it; the element of risk-taking is often unknown or forgotten.

Because of this, it often seems that doing business in France is extremely difficult, but let’s not forget that France manages with this system and so do many foreign companies which set up businesses here. This doesn’t mean that things would not be better if this legal strangle-hold were not eased. This strangle-hold is partly applied by the unions. What would happen, I wonder, if the trade unions had to function within the constraints of their own finances, that is that they were responsible for their own income, with no subsidies from public funds? I haven’t heard the government suggest that, or perhaps I missed it.

Mrs Thatcher, Monsieur Hollande and the unions

When observing the current difficulties that President Hollande and his socialist government are experiencing with their labour unions, mainly the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), it’s difficult not to think back to Margaret Thatcher’s world-famous battle with the unions in the 1980s which followed her world-famous victory in the Falklands war in 1982. Those were indeed heady times with strong, decisive political leadership.

In 1974, Ted Heath, the Conservative Prime Minister fought an election with the slogan: "Who governs Britain?" The result was that Labour's Harold Wilson became prime minister. It’s this kind of question that many people are asking in France today.

Those of us who were around at the time still remember names like Vic Feather, Joe Gormley, Jack Jones, trade union leaders who had great power and influence. Today, it is difficult to understand just how powerful they were. The strikes were never-ending, all sectors were affected: the steel industry, the car industry, the Post Office, the ferries, transport, power generation, and most famously or infamously, the coal industry. There was also Derek Robinson, known as "Red Robbo", who regularly brought the production lines at British Leyland to a standstill.

The Labour party had traditionally always been close to the unions, claiming that these good relations enabled it to keep them in line. The Conservatives, on the other hand, constantly suffered at the unions’ hand. But the unions, with such repeated strike action, now became an embarrassment to the Labour party.

In the first three months of 1979, the then Labour government ran slap-bang into the "winter of discontent". Public sector workers went on strike, chaos ensued and the effects are remembered to this day. Labour couldn’t handle their union “allies”. At the General Election in May 1979, Mrs Thatcher was returned to power with a majority of just 30. It is fair to say that the unions loathed Mrs Thatcher, but she was on a mission: the "British disease", strike fever, had to be cured and she had the treatment.

She appointed Norman Tebbit as Employment Secretary. Norman Tebbit is now Lord Tebbit, and still a force to be reckoned with. Before becoming a politician, he was an airline pilot and used to be leader of BALPA, the pilots' union. In 1978, Michael Foot, at the time deputy leader of the Labour Party, famously called Norman Tebbit in Parliament a "semi-house-trained polecat". Just the man for the job.

He began by removing legal protection from the unions. “Flying pickets” described at the time as “the shock troops of industrial warfare” were banned; they could no longer blockade factories, fuel depots, refineries, ports, railway stations, public buildings and more. Strike ballots were made compulsory. “The closed shop” was made illegal; this forced anyone trying to get a job to join a specific trade union.

It is a matter of history that the final “battle” was with the miners’ union, led by Arthur Scargill. Large numbers of police officers were brought in to ensure that the pits remained open and there were many very violent clashes, but the miners were finally beaten. By 1985, it was all over. The unions went into a steep decline. Power, influence, membership, much of their legal protection, melted away.

Mr Sarkozy said yesterday that he would make the unions liable for any damage caused during demonstrations organised by them. Mr Hollande said he might go so far as to ban union marches during the state of emergency. It will take more than that to bring about the worthwhile and lasting changes in labour relations that France so desperately needs.

French unions and the CGT

The French CGT union (Confédération Générale du Travail) is seriously slowing the country down, disrupting daily life and calling into question who really runs the country. To say it has almost brought the country to a standstill is a bit of an exaggeration but it’s moving that way. The leader of the public service section of the CGT was interviewed on radio this morning by a polite and knowledgeable presenter, Jean-Michel Abatie; the union man kept referring to the majority of the French public who supported them. This is what they do, keep repeating the same thing over and over until they acquire a kind of legitimacy. The one thing the interviewer didn’t point out was that the CGT represents 3% of workers and should then have asked him to justify his claim to have the support of the French public. The interviewer suggested that the Union considered itself to be stronger, more representative, more legitimate than the democratically elected government, to which the union man said that the current mess was all the government’s fault.

Not only is the fuel supply disrupted, so are the nuclear power stations, the national rail company (SNCF), the Paris underground, airport services, domestic waste collection in Marseille and Paris is affected with rubbish bags beginning to appear on the streets, all of this against the background of torrential downpours and flooding in many parts of the country.

Tomorrow, the Euro 2016 football competition begins. Hundreds of thousands of people will be trying to travel to the different venues and the police, security and other emergency services will be doing their best to make sure that everybody is kept safe. The CGT says this is all the fault of the government for not backing down on their recent watered-down employment legislation initiative.

The government has not exactly got a lot to be proud of in its handling of this situation. Not only has it eviscerated the original employment law, trying to pacify the unions, but it also intervened behind the scenes with the SNCF management’s plan to get its own specific reforms accepted by the unions. The SNCF is a publicly owned enterprise and the government forced the chairman, Guillaume Pépy, to give way to the unions in the hope that this would defuse the industrial action against the new employment law. It didn’t. Monsieur Pépy threatened to resign. He didn’t.

How are unions financed in France? That’s a very simple question which has no simple answer. Union finances are best described as complex or opaque in the sense of not transparent. Only since 2008 has it been a legal requirement for unions to produce certified accounts and to publish them. Statistics are difficult to find and not up-to-date. According to figures on Wikipedia, only 8% of people in France are paid-up members of a union compared to 29% in Britain and Germany, 65% in Belgium and 83% in Sweden. Given this very low membership rate, it is surprising that France has the highest number of union officials as a percentage of union membership. Its subscription income is quite modest and thus inadequate to meet its needs.

Where then does the money come from? The government website Vie Publique, lists them as being: subscriptions, company funding (legal requirement), local authority funding (public and company money), public subsidy. Certain taxes levied on companies by local authorities go towards financing union activities. Most small companies don’t realise this and they would be galled to know that they are footing part of the bill for unions to strike with the ensuing disruption often causing their own businesses to fail. If French unions had to exist on their membership subscription income alone, they would all fail. As it is, they are financially well-endowed, enjoy many privileges and are well protected by law. Why on earth should they put up with any government which attempts to take any of this away from them?

National Curriculum SATs, French labour relations

Given my proclivity to criticise standards of spoken English and to reminisce about the Universities’ Test of English taken by students applying for a university place in the 1960s, I thought I’d look at what was being tested in the SATs tests in England and Wales. I did a short sample paper entitled: “KS2 English Tests - Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation - level 3-5, Short”, which happened to be the grammatical section. This test is the Standard Assessment Test used in the National Curriculum. It covers the period from age 7 to 11 in junior school.

I must say that I found the questions far more taxing than I anticipated. This is, in my opinion, a very good standard indeed to face at age 11. I hope English teaching maintains the same high standards throughout secondary education. Here are the questions:

.What does the word others refer to in the passage below?

.Tick one box to show how the modal verb affects the meaning of the sentence.

.Find the adverb in the sentence below.

.In this sentence, is the word after being used as a subordinating conjunction or as a preposition?

.Which sentence uses the past progressive?

.Tick the option that shows how the underlined words are used in the sentence. (My baby brother was born in the hospital where my father works.)

.Tick all the sentences that contain a preposition.

.Tick all the determiners in the sentence below.

The UEFA Euro 2016 football championship begins in France on June 10^th. At the moment, France is still in turmoil owing to the continuing labour disputes between unions and the government about changes to employment law which have recently been forced through the National Assembly without a vote. Will the Euro have to be cancelled? Good question. In an editorial in Le Figaro on 27th May, a number of points were made. Public sector workers work fewer hours than the private sector. A good percentage work less than the official 35 hours. This has been shown in numerous official reports over the years and nothing has ever been done. The government has just voted an increase in public sector pay. How can the national budget ever be balanced? Whose interests are best served by the current social upheaval, by trying to stop all reform of employment law? Answer: those who work less than the others, have a job for life and generous pensions. These people fight tooth and nail for the status quo. The irony is that these people are not in the least affected by the recent changes in employment law. It affects the private sector.

The union which is leading the fight is the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). It is a left-wing union which goes back a long way (1895). It’s something of a union dinosaur whose preferred method of negotiation is conflict. In the current stand-off, union representatives can be heard claiming legitimacy by saying that the majority of the French people support their stance. According to the Le Monde newspaper, the CGT represents as at April 2016 less than 3% of French employees. Another major union, the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), founded in 1919, is the largest in membership terms. Nowadays, it is less conflictual than the CGT and is beginning to view labour relations more in the British or German way, change through debate, discussion and by offering alternative solutions to the resolving of disputes.

Membership of unions is nowadays very low, which leads to the question of how they are financed. Union finances in France are opaque, not to say a bit of a mystery. More on this next time.

Percentages, to remember, French labour disputes

Percentages seem to be on the move. One in 10 is the new 10%. The Mirror of 20th May ran the following: “one in seven of all card transactions are now contactless, compared with one in 16 a year ago”. Is this more dumbing down? I must admit to knowing quite a few people for whom percentages are a complete mystery, but I’m not sure if one in 16 is easier to comprehend than 6.25% or a little over 6%.

The French seem to be doing something similar but are also using fractions. This doesn’t seem to be dumbing down because, as you can see in the following quote, they’re using all three methods; not bad really, or are they just confused in their sub-editing: “Près des 2/3 des hommes appartiennent au groupe 1 et 1/3 au groupe 2. Pour les femmes, le groupe 1 rassemble une femme sur deux et l'autre moitié se répartit de façon à peu près équilibrée entre le groupe 2 et le groupe 3. Qu'a donc de si particulier ce groupe 3, dans lequel les hommes n'entrent pas, et qui est loin d'être négligeable puisqu'il concerne près d'une femme sur quatre (23%)?’’

I may give the impression that English is undergoing rapid change in isolation. Not so. French is also changing; the old normative grammar, which used to be so powerful, is under threat. For example, traditionally the French have always made the distinction between “je me rappelle cette personne” and “je me souviens de cette personne”, both meaning “I remember this person”, but there is a grammatical difference, the first uses a direct object, the second an indirect object. Nowadays, it’s very common to hear: “je me rappelled DE cette personne”; it seems that people can’t remember or are not bothered about this difference. But there is an underlying reason. If you want to say to someone: “do you remember me?”, “tu te souviens de moi? Is fine, but you can’t use “se rappeler” in this example, it just won’t work. “Tu te rappelles moi?” or “Tu te me rappelles?” are both not possible, but “Tu te rappelles de moi?” does work, or rather it doesn’t if you want to be grammatical about it. This difficulty is quite clearly described by Maurice Grevisse in his Le Bon Usage, the definitive French grammar, first published in 1936. It’s therefore an old problem which people tut about today as if it were new. It’s worth noting that despite the Académie being Française, Maurice Grevisse was a Belgian grammarian.

In France, the new law aiming to modernise employment legislation, has developed into a real battle with the unions. Refineries are mostly blocked by demonstrators and fuel supplies are not getting through to garage forecourts. There is a very serious risk that the national economy will soon be brought to a standstill. Outsiders find it difficult to understand why such modest changes could lead to this kind of combative reaction. The unions, with possibly one exception, are similar to those in Britain some forty years ago, won’t be pushed about and always ready for a fight. French labour law, in the shape of the Code du Travail, has always given them clout, they have always punched above their weight in defence of their own rights and special interests despite the fact that their membership is nowadays small.

An example of acquis sociaux. Martine Aubry, when Labour Minister in the late 1990s, gave her name to a law which limited the working week to 35 hours. Her theory was that this would lead to a need to hire more people. It didn’t work out like that and no other country in Europe followed France’s example. It is now generally held to be holding back the economy and it is proving extremely difficult to get the unions to budge on this and to move towards a longer working week. Another current issue, Sunday working. The unions are reluctant to sign up to it and because of the way negotiations are structured, nobody seems to ask the shop-workers for their opinion. 

Queue, bunch, more French labour law

Linguistically speaking, what’s been exercising me this week? I think it must be “first responders”. I must apologise to my American friends for picking on American expressions, but there are an enormous number of words and expressions which are queuing up waiting to be used by speakers of British English. First responders have always been called emergency services just as train stations have always been called railway stations or simply stations.

These usages are quite noticeable. President Obama recently said in support of Prime Minister Cameron’s position on staying in the EU that, when it came to negotiating trade terms, Britain would go to the back of the queue if it chose Brexit. The President said queue instead of the more usual American choice of line. There was much jumping up and down, shouting and gesticulating by his British audience of vote leavers who said that his speech must have been written by Downing Street as his own White House speech writers would never have said that. See how important the choice of words can be? Although I wouldn’t build a court case on that evidence alone!

That’s quite a light-weight example when compared to the following: "borrow a bunch of money and undertake a bunch of big investment projects" Mathew Yglesias, Vox.com 11.05.16.  I don’t know whether the writer was joking but I tend to think not. Can people really say or write things like that in real life? It makes me think of the tweet ascribed to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth: There is no such thing as 'American English'. There is English and there are mistakes. (Elizabeth Windsor on Twitter). Language is to be taken seriously!

I have to keep reminding myself that tourism was much frowned upon in the 1950s and that typewriter for many years referred to the person who operated the machine before giving way, probably owing to the confusion or amusement that ensued.

In France, violence, particularly involving young students, continued this week in reaction to the proposed changes to labour law practices. Lacking the necessary support, the law has had to be forced through the National Assembly by the use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution, what in Britain would be a decree or a statutory instrument and what American legislators call an executive order. The new law is a watered-down version of what the government needed to do which is basically lower unemployment and increase productivity. But, as General de Gaulle said: Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage? – how do you govern a country that has more than 246 different cheeses?

For the people on the streets and the unions this is a matter of les acquis sociaux, the collective rights that workers have obtained often by social conflict and which they will not give up. This term, in the form of les acquis, is in common use in Brussels in the administration of the EU. France has two main economic structural problems its governments have never been able to get on top of. Sovereign debt, no government budget has been in balance since 1974. Unemployment since 1980 has rarely fallen below 8%; it is currently over 10%, close to the European average. Unemployment in Britain, USA, Holland, Germany is around 5%. In France, unemployment among the young, 15 to 25 year-olds, is pushing 25%. Despite these extremely worrying figures, there is still great resistance to change. People still want to be civil servants and have a job protected for life or, if they can’t work in the public sector, they still want a job for life. All this against a back-drop of unions and others who keep warning: “don’t accept any change to employment law, this is the bosses trying to dupe you; they want to abolish the 35-hour week, they want you to work longer hours for less pay; they want to be able to sack you more easily when it suits them.” Both sides are spinning like mad. One thing is sure – it’s high time things changed, and for the better.

Correcting other people’s grammar

On April 20, Monica Chalabi, The Guardian’s data editor opined that correcting people’s bad grammar is racist. Before you ask, I don’t know what a data editor is. I wondered idly if there was anything one can do nowadays which is acceptable or permitted by law. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that making disobliging remarks about someone’s lack of mastery of language was in any way commonplace. Just shows you how wrong you can be. But, surely this is just someone goading us, engaging in the present-day sport of dumbing-down? The OED defines this as: to simplify or reduce the intellectual content of, especially, published or broadcast material in order to make it appealing or intelligible to a larger number of people.

Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars and Chris Menahan, of Information Liberation, take her to task.

Apparently, according to Monica Chalabi, grammar rules were invented by wealthy white people and therefore non-whites should be free to ignore them without being criticized.

“The people pointing out the mistakes are more likely to be older, wealthier, whiter, or just plain academic than the people they’re treating with condescension,” states Chalabi. “All too often, it’s a way to silence people and that’s particularly offensive when it’s someone who might already be struggling to speak up,” she adds.

Chalabi argues that rather than correcting bad grammar, people should just shut up and listen.

“We should spend more time listening to what others have to say and less focusing on the grammar what they say it with,” she asserts.

Chalabi claims that wanting a “set of rules we can all understand” is an attitude shared only by “grammar snobs” who “overlook the fact the rules they’re talking about aren’t commonly held at all, they’re just their rules.”

The message is clear says Menahan: ” Don’t strive to improve yourself, accept mediocrity.”

I understand what Menahan is saying, but I’m not sure what Chalabi is trying to say. She believes that grammatical rules are used by wealthy, educated white people to suppress the rights of less well educated non-white people to express themselves and be heard, especially if they are non-native speakers who have an imperfect knowledge of the language, is that it?

Maybe I don’t get around enough, it’s a distinct possibility, but are there people who stop others from speaking by saying things like: “hey, you, your English is rubbish, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Why don’t you move along and come back when you can speak properly”. Somehow, I think not, unless we’re talking about rallies where public order is likely to break down, or a heated argument in a pub. Correcting other speakers’ grammar is usually a mental process, it’s a reaction, a judgement which is not expressed. Unless among friends and family, to express this openly would be socially unacceptable; normal people just don’t behave like that, I hope.

Chalabi doesn’t like sets of rules that we can all understand. Yet, without rules of some kind, we wouldn’t be able to speak to each other at all or, at least, not efficiently. Without these sets of rules, people wouldn’t be able to learn a foreign language, even. I think I’d better just accept that Chalabi is trying to make a point and, whatever her point, she seems to come into contact with an awful lot of rude people.