On a light note before the festive season: a sentence heard on a travel report update for the UK the other day has left me wondering about the threshold of entry into English by anyone who takes things too literally. It must be set very high indeed. A member of a gritting crew interviewed for the programme said:
We are putting down salt to help ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
Is there a language in the world, I wonder, where this translates word for word? How much of what is in this sentence is eliminable or perversely complicated? Starting from left to right one could proceed to obtain:
We are spreading salt to help ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt to ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt so that the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt so that there is no snow and ice on the roads.
Why do we need four verbs in the original sentence, on a conservative count, where there are, by any measure of reality, only two activities: ‘gritting’ and ‘being’ (or more specifically ‘there being not’)? The English love their verbs and like to confuse the foreigners at every turn.
And why is an object lacking a quality said to be ‘staying’, the which verb is then modified to suit the purpose of the speaker (‘free’), rather than saying that that particular quality is absent from the object (‘no snow on the roads’)? Not to mention that ‘putting down salt’ is a funny way of saying that the roads are being covered by it.
We are putting down salt to help ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
Is there a language in the world, I wonder, where this translates word for word? How much of what is in this sentence is eliminable or perversely complicated? Starting from left to right one could proceed to obtain:
We are spreading salt to help ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt to ensure the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt so that the roads stay free of snow and ice.
We are spreading salt so that there is no snow and ice on the roads.
Why do we need four verbs in the original sentence, on a conservative count, where there are, by any measure of reality, only two activities: ‘gritting’ and ‘being’ (or more specifically ‘there being not’)? The English love their verbs and like to confuse the foreigners at every turn.
And why is an object lacking a quality said to be ‘staying’, the which verb is then modified to suit the purpose of the speaker (‘free’), rather than saying that that particular quality is absent from the object (‘no snow on the roads’)? Not to mention that ‘putting down salt’ is a funny way of saying that the roads are being covered by it.
No comments:
Post a Comment