Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (27 page)

I have just returned from a week in Tenerife. Whenever abroad, I am always interested in the ways in which foreigners try and get their heads around this tricky and troublesome language of ours. In the toilet at the hotel in which we stayed was a large notice which read: ‘In the event of fire evacuate immediately and leave the premise.'

Over the years, on my travels abroad, I have collected a fair number of amusing, inventive and ambiguous instructions and notices. Here are a few:

 

Would you like to ride on your own ass? (Egypt)

Special today – No ice-cream (Venice)

We take your bags and we send them in all directions (Sweden)

It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man (Bangkok temple)

A special cocktail for ladies with nuts (Tokyo)

If this is your first visit to Moscow you are welcome to it (Russia)

Specialist in women and other diseases (Rome)

English well talking (Majorca)

You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid (France)

Our wines leave you nothing to hope for (Lisbon)

Drop your trousers here for best results (Nanjing cleaners)

Ladies have a fit upstairs (Hong Kong tailors)

You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursdays (Moscow monastery)

 

Of course, we indigenous speakers of English have a few problems with our own language:

 

PLEASE LEAVE HEATHER FOR ALL TO ENJOY (Peak District)

Bargain Basement upstairs (Harrogate shop)

Children may not skate on the frozen water unless passed by the head teacher (on school staff notice board)

The management is looking for a mature person to cook (Doncaster café)

Tek Care! Lams ont road (Wensleydale)

Labrador for sale. Eats anything, fond of children (newspaper advertisement)

Toilet for sitting down customers only (Sheffield café)

Playground fine for littering  (children's playground in Halifax)

Lions, please stay in the car (safari park)

Guillotine wanted for playgroup (newspaper advertisement)

Do not use as a hair dryer (instruction on heat gun)

Wearing this item does not enable you to fly (on child's Superman costume)

Caution! Water on road when wet (A1)

For sale Braille dictionary. Must be seen to appreciate (newspaper advertisement)

 

The last words must go to our American cousins. Oscar Wilde once said that ‘we share everything with the Americans except the language'. Here is President George W Bush, on proposed education reforms: ‘You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.'

But my very favourite are the words reputedly spoken by David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Language in the United States, answering a question about the necessity for a commercial nation to be multilingual.

‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ,' he allegedly stated, ‘then it's good enough for me.'

Nicknames

I met a colleague of my father-in-law recently.

‘How is Legs these days?' he asked.

My father-in-law has been known by the nickname ‘Legs' Bentley since the war, when, as a sprinter in the RAF, he won many a trophy.

‘Do you know,' continued the friend, ‘in all the years I have known Legs, I never did find out what his real name is.'

‘Walburga,' I told him mischievously.

A nickname might be no more than a contraction of a given name: ‘Holloway' becomes ‘Ollo', ‘Docherty' becomes ‘Docko', ‘Montgomery' becomes ‘Monty', ‘Patterson' becomes ‘Pat', ‘Godfrey' becomes ‘Goff'. My friend, Richard Fairclough, is called by all who know him (and that includes his wife and daughter) ‘Fairy', a nickname given to him when he was a pupil at Silcoates School. I should imagine when he was playing rugby, the call down the bar of ‘Oi, Fairy!' raised a few eyebrows.

A nickname might be based on an association with a famous (or infamous) character or television personality. I remember a boy at school called Craddock, who was burdened with the nickname ‘Fanny' (after the celebrity chef, Fanny Cradock), and another called ‘Percy' (after the television gardener, Percy Thrower). I never did discover what the first name was of a boy whose surname was Moss. We all knew him as Stirling, after the racing driver Stirling Moss. My eldest son, Richard, attended the first formal dinner at Durham University in a new grey tight-fitting suit with small lapels. Thereafter he was known as ‘Reg' (after one of the notorious Kray brothers).

Nicknames are thrust upon us by colleagues, friends and family, and sometimes represent us as others see us. They can serve as thumbnail sketches or short illustrations of quirks of personality, reflecting our physical and social endowments such as bodily shape and skin colour, accent and manners. Nicknames can be closely bound up with our sense of identity. A nickname is not always just a label or a mere neutral referential device, it can be rich in connections and the effect of the name may last a lifetime.

Some nicknames given by pupils to their teachers are very inventive. A teacher called Gardener was known as ‘Weed', a Mr Canning as ‘Tin' and Mr Nelson as ‘Horatio'. A head teacher, Mr Arrowsmith, was know as ‘Twang', another, a Mr Lancaster, was known as ‘Bomber' and a third, Dr Nottingham, as ‘Sheriff'. Many a head teacher, swirling down the corridor in his black academic gown, is known as ‘Batman'. Such nicknames are rather affectionate but others, based upon some physical characteristic, are particularly unkind and hated by the recipients. Children can be delightful but also corrosively cruel in labelling others. I have come across children in schools referred to as ‘Dumbo', ‘Beaky', ‘Hippo', ‘Blobby', ‘Barrel', ‘Squeaker', ‘Snorter', ‘Rabbit', ‘Ape', ‘Porky', ‘Goggle-eyes', ‘Acne' and ‘Bandy'. I could go on. When I once discussed, with a teacher, the use of a derisive nickname given to a boy by his peers, the reply surprised and saddened me.

‘It's all part of growing up,' he told me. ‘It's not meant to be hurtful, and children, in my experience, learn to cope with it.'

I wondered if he would have taken it in good part had he been given the nickname ‘Snot' or ‘Scab' by his pupils. Those unfortunate children labelled with pejorative nicknames realise only too well that such labels make them objects of derision, and are in themselves stigmas, primed for joking and taunting.

On a more light-hearted note, I was told this anecdote by the eminent vulcanologist, Professor Bill McGuire, whom I met at the Dartington Literary Festival. He was asked to visit Eton College to talk to the boys and, following his lecture, was approached by a polite and good-humoured young man who wished to ask him a question. He informed the professor that he was known in the college as ‘Prog', a nickname based on his initials.

‘Ah,' said Professor McGuire, ‘you have rather a long name, do you? Peter Robert Oliver Gordon, or something like that?'

‘No, no, sir,' replied the young man. ‘Prince Richard of Gloucester.'

What's in a Name?

I was speaking to teachers on the themes in some of Shakespeare's plays in the town of Shrewsbury.

‘It's a pleasure to be here in Shrewsbury,' I told my audience.

‘It's pronounced Shrowsberry!' chorused the audience.

‘Thank you for that,' I said, and continued: ‘I shall be considering in my talk one or two of Shakespeare's plays, including
The Taming of the Shrow
.'

How foreigners cope with some of our English place names, I have no idea. Well, I do actually – many of them don't.

I was walking through Harrogate one day, at a time when I worked in that beautiful spa town, and was approached by an American tourist.

‘Excuse me, sir,' he said, ‘could you possibly tell me where Wet Herbie is please?'

‘I've never heard of him,' I said, thinking this may be the lead singer in the latest chart-topping pop group – ‘Wet Herbie and the Evergreens'.

‘No,' he said, ‘the town near to here called Wet Herbie.'

It then dawned upon me that he was referring to Wetherby.

A colleague in the Harrogate office related to me how he had been asked, by a young man with two small children in tow, if the theme park – Flaming Go Land – was near the town. He meant Flamingo Land.

My brother, Alec, who lives in Galway, overheard a conversation in the Keys Inn in that magnificent city, between two American tourists who were poring over a small guidebook.

‘Do you think we'll see any of these Lepreecians?' asked one.

I guess he meant leprechauns.

In my time, I have been approached by a number of our Atlantic cousins at stations, asking for directions to Logboroo (Loughborough), Stratford Youponovon (Stratford-Upon-Avon) and Scarboruff (Scarborough).

George W Bush was often held up to ridicule for his misuse of language. One laugh at his expense has been the discovery that he has a phoneticist (or, if you prefer, a phonetist), who helps him pronounce difficult words. On the president's autocue are names like Mugabe (Mu-GAA-bee) and Harare (Haa-RAA-ree), displayed to help him. I must say that I feel a certain sympathy with the former president because there, but for the grace of God, go many of us. Until we are told how to pronounce a place name, we have to make a stab at it and then, when we get it wrong, we are barracked by people in the know who make us feel something of an idiot. I was speaking at the village hall in Chopgate, in North Yorkshire, and raised a laugh with my pronunciation.

‘We say Chopyat up 'ere, love,' I was told by a woman in the front row.

So let's show a little tolerance to those of us who get it wrong. I mean, how many people, unless they have heard a local pronounce it, would be able to get right first time such towns and villages as Leominster, Bicester, Bacup, Lewes, Towcester, Rawstonstall, Towton, Todwick, Warwick, Alnwich, Bohuntine and Blenheim. How many, I wonder, would guess that Mousehole in Cornwall is pronounced Muzzle, Mytholmroyde in Lancashire is pronounced Mythemroyd, Slaithwaite in Lancashire is pronounced Slowitt or sometimes Slathwaite, Lympre in Kent is pronounced Lim and Woolfarisworthy in Devon is pronounced Woozy? And that's before we go north of the border to Kircaldy (Kircoddy), and into the Principality, with places an English person has little chance of pronouncing correctly.

In ‘Shrowsberry', the vote of thanks was given by a Mrs Cholmondley, who informed me that the name was pronounced Chumley. Now, there's another thing – the way people pronounce their names: Sidebottom, Onions, Cockburn, Denziel . . .

Getting it Write

Last year, a family friend died. His widow, a former teaching colleague and close friend of my wife's, was understandably devastated, and viewed arranging the funeral and the reception with great trepidation. I agreed to read at the funeral, and for Christine, my wife, to arrange the reception to be held at our house. The deceased had been a well-loved man and there was a large turn-out at the crematorium and at the reception.

One man arrived at my house and his first words were: ‘I've read your book and did you know there was a mistake on page 69?' I felt like escorting him to the door but, since it was a solemn occasion, I merely smiled (not a pleasant smile I might add) and thanked him so very much for pointing it out to me. John Humphrys, in his excellent book,
Lost for Words
, writes:

 

Pedants are the people who can't pick up a copy of
The Times
without wanting to write about some solecism they spotted on page 17. They think there is only one thing that matters: observing the rules. Every transgression is an outrage. They will avoid a split infinitive however convoluted the resulting sentence may sound. They will cling to the rules until their fingertips bleed and believe that any other approach will lead to anarchy. They cannot see a dangling participle without wanting to hang it in the right place. Solecisms are scars on their backs.

 

Humphrys defines good English: ‘Clear, simple, plain and unambiguous. Those are the essentials. It should be easy to read and to listen to.' None would argue with this, but the fact is that English is a tricky and troublesome business and we all of us, at times, come a cropper.

One reader of the
Yorkshire Post
took exception to my misuse of the word ‘aggravate'. He informed the newspaper in his letter that the correct word I should have used was ‘irritate', since you can only ‘aggravate' a disease, condition or situation and not a person. The
Collins
dictionary states that ‘aggravate' is often used informally to mean ‘to annoy, exasperate, especially a persistent goading'.
The Oxford English Dictionary
states that the word ‘aggravate', which dates back to the seventeenth century and comes from the Latin word
aggravat
– ‘to make heavy' – is in widespread use in modern English to mean ‘annoy' but that it is still regarded as incorrect by some traditionalists.