From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: English and its Mutilation
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 08:47:46 GMT

In article <1683213469.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU>, JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
|> In article <9207282034.AA09794@nms.netman>
|> kartik@hls.com (Kartik Chandrasekhar) writes:
|>  
|> >
|> >To top it here is an example which appeared as a 3 inch headline in the
|> >San Jose Mercury News during the heady days of the Bush presidency.
|> >
|> >"Why Bush cannot be beat". (Instead of .... cannot be beaten).
[more of the same deleted]

|> There is an irony here I shall not dwell on when a foreigner who cannot
|> spell 'their' or 'columns', who doesn't know how to represent possessives,
|> whose control of definiteness (and thus the article), tries to preach
                                                       ^ is lacking?
|> "correct" English to native speakers!  He need not have told us that he
|> is ready to, "accept any flaws," in his argument.  Since his post is full
|> of flaws, we shall assume he accepts them, although we do not.  Perhaps
|> he, and others who propound "correct" English need to be reminded that
|> the should consult a good English grammar (say that of Sir Randolph Quirk)
      ^  ahem!  "they", no doubt
|> and a good English dictionary (say the OED), before presuming to pontificate.
|> And of course, as is so commonly the case, his bugbear of a past participle
|> "beat" was English in England, long before it was used on the west of the
|> Atlantic....

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what does it mean to be a "foreigner" in
terms of a language with native speakers in about 100 countries?  See Mr.
Goerwitz's reply, as an antidote.


To Kartik:

Nevertheless, you are looking at this with a certain bias.  If you had learned
colloquial American English first, you'd have just as strong a reaction, no
doubt, to the English spoken in England.  I'm continually amused by the
differences in expressions I see on British TV programs:

   Right, what are you on about?   or
   Second door, just along the corridor.

Translated, that is to say: "Okay, what are you upset about?" and "Second door,
just down the hall."  You need to be spot on in your criticism.  Maybe these
                                     ^^^^^^^
comments will help:


"Why Bush Cannot Be Beat"

If you said "Be Beaten", you would be talking about security at the Oval
Office.  That is to say, it would imply the impossibility of physical violence
to the President, not whether he can be bested in an election.

Was this headline also a pun on "beating around the bush"?


"I did not get the invite"

We are a lot more informal than the English and an invite sounds more inviting
than an invitation.  Consider this an invite to get into American slang.


"Don't do drugs"

I presume your objection is to the usage of "do".  The phrase treats drugs as
an experience, which is something one does.  You can "do" something, that is to
say, you experience it.  If you _do_ Dallas, as say, Debbie does, then you
experience it, you don't just visit it.

My objection to the phrase has to _do_ with the government _doing_ me, by
invading my privacy, but that's not a linguistic objection.

(And don't drop the apostrophes, please.  I'd object, too, if there were
billboards all over the country saying "Dont do drugs"!)

Not that you're all wet.  There are plenty of examples of bad press.
If you think those examples were bad, you should see some of the newspaper
clippings Jay Leno shows regularly on the Tonight Show!  Or just read the
Enquirer, where you get headlines like (I'm not kidding, I actually saw this
once):

    Scientists Invent Human Being!


--Rich Wingerter
With "do" apologies to all.
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.cognitive