OUR MOTHER TONGUE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22909, 11 December 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR MOTHER TONGUE

By PROFESSOR ARNOLD WALL

Random Notes and Little Problems

> fiO ■ presence." Is the-re any I such verb as this? The quesJ- ti on i s put to me by one who has heard it, with a shock, from the pulpitpresence thyself with us." He goes on to ask if there is a verb ■'to absence" and suggests that if such verbs are permissible they aie clumsy and ugly. Tho answer is, of course, that no such verbs exist, and their use is a solecism. Upon these questions follows another of much wider import. " Must we use an ugly or difficult pronunciation when another is more to the ear and thus more natural?" Ccrtainlv we are. not obliged to use the uglier of two synonymous terms but undoubtedly we are often compelled to use a term which offends our ear because there is 110 other offering. Our language abounds in words which are hard to pronounce and not euphonious, such, for instance, as " temporarily," " horse-shoe," and " congratulatory," for which no satisfactory substitutes are to be found. They are a part of the price we pay for the privilege of being born British. Originally American " Taken ill " and " took ill." These two, about which I receive queries, arc not at all in the same boat. "Taken ill " is an old and very natural usage, recorded in the seventeenth century, while " taken blind" and " taken lame," now v disused, were even older. Hut " took ill " or " had taken ill," quoted from a daily newspaper, is rather a vulgarism though it stands 011 record as used by a few writers, including Trevelyan, since tho eirrly nineteenth century. " Took ill " is indeed very commonly heard but is not used, 1 think, by any speaker who has any sense of tho proprieties of our language. "Throw a fit." This is a colloquialism, now very common in English, but, according to the Oxford Dictionary, originally American. I cannot say how old it is in the United States and it does not appear to derive naturaly from any senso of the standard " throw." A humorous extension of it is " throw a party," also American, and dating, in English, according to Partridge's Dictionary of Slang, from about 1920. It does not seem to mo that Our Mother Tongue is appreciably enriched by either of these idioms.

" Jesus ' " or " Jcsus's." The question which of these two forms is correct may be most conveniently answered by n quotation from Fowler's Dictionary of English Usage: " It was formerly customary, when a word ended

in s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, for example, -Mars' Hill. In verse, and in poetic or reverential contexts, this custom is retained, and the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case, for example, Jesus' or of Jesus, not Jesus's. But elsewhere we now add the s and the syllable.. Jones's, James's, and so on. Matter of Convenience As the name Jesus requires always# a reverential context it follows that it is always written " Jesus' " in the possessive,'or "of Jesus," and "Jesus' " has two syllables only. The " rule " in cases like this is of course simply a matter of convenience or general agreement which often over-rules mere logic. " On the street." A critic objects to the use of " on " in certain phrases where he would prefer "in." His examples are " on a ship," " on a train," " on the street," and " on the Strand" (London). He observes that no naval officer would even speak of "on a ship." The objection is much too sweeping. " On the street " and " 011 the Sthmd " are Americanisms, and I should think that no Englishman could use them without being conscious of that fact.

But " on a ship " and " on a train " are familiar and lawful English idioms in all ordinary senses. Certainly a naval man prefers to say " in a ship " but ho has not the right or the power to dictate to the landsman who has to use the phrase almost as often as the sailor does. It is of course easy to sec that " on " and " in " sometimes give different senses in phrases of this kind. For example, you travel " on the road" but find a shilling "in the road," you may have a job " on the road," but you get "in the road;" women " in the streets " are not necessarily " 011 the streets." An Odd Hame " Stiffkey." A correspondent, having been told that this peculiar surname is pronounced " Stuckey," writes to ask if he is to take this .information seriously or not. To the best of my knowledge the name is pronounced usually as spelt, but the traditional pronunciation of the village name (in Norfolk) which it represents is " Stowky," not " stuckey."

1 think it quite likely that "Stuckey" has also been current as a variant of this, and that some persons bearing the name have used this legitimately. .The name, by the way, means " island with stumps of trees," from the AngloSaxon " styfic," "a stump," and "eg," " an island." This same " styfic " appears under various disguises in the names "Steetley," "Stewkley," "Stukeley," " Steventon," and some others.