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All the way…

By Ian Nance - posted Tuesday, 27 February 2018


This may be because our declining standards of English grammar, comprehension, and expression, have been the outcome of a radical move some decades back to change English teaching methods.

There is strong evidence of this on the part of those who really should be able to communicate properly and accurately – young television and radio journalists who seem unable to string words together correctly as they struggle to express a thought or describe an event, very often making flawed grammatical construction the norm, and by linguistic osmosis, skewing their audiences towards incorrect usage.

Then there are clichés, those convenient shortcuts around properly structured, swiftly expressed, ideas. Clichés are not solely Australian in nature, but their use is probably because of shortcomings in our own language study and teaching.

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Perhaps our sphere of education is a little smaller than that of the perceived epitome of word use, the United States.

What about the subtleties and nuances of U.K.English? It has a verbalisation form which is difficult for many other world languages to emulate.

I have a keen interest in languages, thanks to my high school years where I was fortunate to have teachers who enjoyed applying their excellence in Latin, French, German and splendidly in English, to awaken the researcher in me.

I studied enthusiastically, discovering not only the grammatical structure of the language I was learning, but also reinforcing my evaluation of English syntax. As well, it opened my understanding of the cultural bases on which other languages are formed.

I am enjoying a similar process now as I learn Mandarin, with its vast malleability of tonal changes signifying different expressions, but also the historic form on which is built written characters.

Yet I wonder how fellow Mandarin students would cope with the proposition of the changes of meaning and perception conveyed by the grammar and tonal expression possibilities in the phraseology of Cole Porter's memorable melody, "What Is This Thing Called Love?"

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That clever American left open the use of inflection and pausation to express this song title as:

What … Is this thing called love?

What is this thing called, love?

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About the Author

Ian Nance's media career began in radio drama production and news. He took up TV direction of news/current affairs, thence freelance television and film producing, directing and writing. He operated a program and commercial production company, later moving into advertising and marketing.

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