lexicon
The language doctor
Deepti

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OFFICIAL letters written to the government are often written just to complete a formality; the writer sometimes doesn’t realise that the language reads like nonsense. These samples collected by Richard Lederer (Anguished English, 1990) amply illustrate: ‘I am glad to report that my husband who is missing is dead’, ‘You have changed my little boy to a girl. Will this make a difference?’ ‘I am forwarding my marriage certificate and three children, one of which is a mistake as you can see.’ and last but not the least, ‘In accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope.’

Words can often act as physicians when they diagnose the ills of the people who create them and use them. One latest creation that should ring alarm bells is ‘hurry sickness’. It refers to a state of mind in which a person always feels short of time, tends to perform every task faster and gets flustered with any kind of delay. Coined back in the 1950s when the cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman were researching personality types, they had by 1959 modified this into the physician’s now-classic Type A personality, a key element of which was a ‘harrying sense of time or urgency’.

The article ‘the’ has always played tricks on learners. An interesting rule is that ‘the’ is not used before the name of a country like ‘Africa’ or ‘China’ but it is placed before the name of any country that includes ‘state’, ‘union’ or ‘kingdom’ etc. in its name. So, U.K. is the United Kingdom.

One of the first things affected by hurry sickness is the food we eat. Here, too, the neologisms ring a warning bell. The list is long but these samples can suffice: dashboard dining or eating a meal while driving, desk fast or breakfast eaten at the desk and QWERTY tummy or a stomach illness caused by a germ-ridden keyboard. Where alfresco or dining in the open air was the privilege of the refined, al desko or dining at the desk has become the norm in the corporate world.