You know folks: When you take to correct others of errors in the 'Queen's
language,'you should atleast be mindful of your own fallability. Take for
instance, the following "daily sub-servant's" editorial and pay attention
to the irony it entails, exemplified in the last paragraph of all places:
 ==========================================================================
Mind Your Language

The Daily Observer (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
8 May 2007
Posted to the web 8 May 2007


If poetry represents the highest tide of the creative arts, then some of
the illiterate signs we all too often see in our public places, must
represent the lowest ebb.

Poetry gave itself the licence to take liberties with conventional forms
for tonal effects, but in kind of parody of 'poetic licence', we have some
of these signs which ignore conventional forms, not for any effects, but
simply out of ignorance: not a case of bad art; simply, no art at all.

The convenience store on New Town road, Bakau, for example, with its
double-pronged error: ' convinient store' on its fascia, is fairly
representative of the slipshod use of language exhibited on some of these
signs; which necessarily draw attention onto themselves, because of the
immediately felt distaste they leave on the brain.

We must of course allow for the fact that a sizable number of our
population are illiterates or semi-literates; still, this cannot quite
explain why at a prominent bank, where apparently all the employees and
management have had at least 'o' level English, or its equivalent, we have
this howler inflicted on its doors: 'keep the door close'! a directive
which could have quite appropriately elicited the response: ' only if you
affix them on wheels'. 'Keep the door close' can mean 'keep the door
nearby', and if we have to move from one place to another in doing our
job, the only way we can 'keep the door close' is when we have them on
wheels-- a rather surreal scenario, indeed. The expression is 'keep the
door closed', and it isn't high grammar at all; it is as banal and
straightforward as 'goodbye' and 'thank you'.

The icing on the cake of this comedy of errors, however, must be the
letter, from a school where the 'privilegentia' send their kids,
soliciting the largesse of parents for the formation of a 'girl's club'.
As a parent, the idea of a single girl forming a 'club' is such a sad
prospect that we all should shudder at the thought of this 'solitary
confinement' of innocent girls! we must by all means support a 'girls'
club', but not a 'girl's club'. This solecism coming from a 'reputable
school' is quite simply unacceptable.

The terrible fact about these errors in that they are not even breaches of
the subtler points of grammar, but are elementary oversights, which
portrait an unflattering picture of the employees and management of the
places where these illiteracies are exhibited.

This is not stupidity, only carelessness. And our pointing out the errors
is not pedantry, only carefulness. In our peripatetic age, people move
about a lot, and our country receives thousands of tourists and visitors
yearly; to have such illiteracies casually displayed in places like banks,
or on shop fascias, and billboards, is to invite snide gossip about the
quality of our national literacy.

The importance of the accurate use of language is well understood by
lawyers, as it can determine the life and death of an accused (the case of
the man 'hanged an a comma' comes to mine), but even in less penal
circumstances, we must still show a 'passion for exactitude', and replace
the linguistic infelicities with their correct forms.

In fact there ought to be a law stipulating that all public notices must
conforn to the rules of grammar; and a minimum of ten years with hard
labour for all offenders. But since this is unlikely to happen, we will
simply appeal to people's sense of 'intellectual pride', and warn the next
person tasked with writing such notices: mind your language.

 ==========================================================================


-- 
BambaLaye
Radio Free Gambia
www.freegambia.net

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