No, they don't...

In case I have cast you in to a den of confusion, the title is meant to follow on from the last post (no pun intended). "The more things change..." and you had to supply:"The more they stay the same). Well, they do not.  My current green ink frenzy is stirred up by the use of an adverb when there is no connecting verb. You will know at once what I mean: 'importantly', as in 'more importantly, the English language has no need of this mistake'. By all means: ' the English language is ( the verb) importantly accent-free', clumsy as my over-stretched example may be. Do you follow a calendar? It no doubt shows you fixed events/chores. Some of us still have a diary: a note of daily obligations not a map of months, weeks and days, full moon and High Holy days included. For those of you who follow an itinerary it seems no transport is required. We can just distort the root of the word.

Recently, I fell foul of an audiologist to whom I had complained that my hearing aids made my voice sound to me as if it was coming from outside. "Oh," quoth she, "you mean there is an echo". No, I don't. I mean my voice sounds as if it is coming from outside, not that it is sounding twice in my ears: echoing, you could say. However, it seems that in the world of audiology, an echo doesn't mean an echo, it means your voice sounds to you as if it is coming from outside. After my exasperated "you are not listening to me", you could say our relationship fell apart, or, more important, I was sent off with hearing aids that didn't work as they had been paid to do. In a restaurant it has been my misfortune to hear "can I get a whatever?" I am sure the orderer is not offering to stand up and precure a bread roll for her/himself. She/he means she/ he would like the person whose job it is, to bring one to the table, subsequently - more important - to be paid for. 'Not spicy' now means 'will hurt my tongue'. 'Spicy' means red chilli and acute intestinal discomfort. 'I'll catch you later' ceases to mean 'if you fall down'. It means ' I will communicate with you later.' There is currently an advertisement for a firm of solicitors - yes, officers of the court - which suggests that if something has been mis-sold to"you and I" this firm will sue on your behalf, (or, maybe, prosecute). Would you trust your court experience to a firm that is not sufficiently educated even to instruct its advertising agency in nominative and accusative? No doubt they are thrilled by the attention the mistake has arouised. Any publicity is good publicity. However, I would be very surprised if this publicity did more than cause a few derisory chuckles, and, more important, no new clients. There will a mass of you out there wondering why on earth it should matter. Language evolves. So it may, but, more important, it also represents clarity and boundaries, form and harmony in our entire way of being in the world. Do you enjoy the wrong notes played in a piece of music? Do they strike your eardrum with shock and horror? That is how a  mistake in the spoken phrase may effect some of us. But how important is that? I ask myself. I ask you.  Nos da

The More Things Change...........

It ocurred to me that, in some ways, the world, or rather, the people in it, is going round in circles. I asked the Guru what an emoticon was. It seems it is a sort of picture to describe an emotion. Well, our ancestors were conveying information via drawings on their walls quite a bit before emoticons were 'invented.' Aboriginal communication, as I understand it, depends on messages going, as it were, through the ether.  Remind you of anything?  Whenever I grumble to the Guru about something lost on my laptop he explains, sometimes with more patience than others, that stuff is stored in cyberspace, not physically on the computer. Aboriginies, you have been right all along: bush telegraph by any other name...

Is there really that much difference between woad and tattoos? Isn't there  merely a change in geography when babies are currently carried strapped to a parent's tummy as opposed to strapped to the back of ancient women working in the fields or around the house? Taking to the sea when you  believed the earth was flat and you might fall off the edge would seem a familiar adventure to men - or women, of course - flying in to space.  Maybe Colonel Glenn and Vasgo de Gama did have a thing or two in common. I was in labour with number one when the first man arrived in space. Other than the officious nurse who stopped me leaning forward to pick up the sticky new arrival - not sterile - I had done nothing, (indeed, the baby and I), that had'nt been done  for several millenia before us

I am tempted to go on with this. It's fun thinking of more 'nothing's new' examples, but I feel I have to tell you, now, why there has been such a gap in transmission. It has been scarlet swim-suit time. The Guru and I went off for our annual look at the sea in foreign parts and it has taken me longer than the time we were away to get back in to my routine life. Before we left I treated my feline boss to a spa day, (so that his minder wouldn't have to worry so much about his physical care, silly). He had a sauna, (dry shampoo bath), a hairdo, (thorough brushing, nether parts included), and a pawdicure, (self explanatory). He came home looking like a picture book cat and immediately started grooming himself, presumably to show how it should be done.  The more things change.... Bore da