re: Eats, Shoots & Leaves page 8

(snip)

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast chunks, the topics that were discussed were: - whether glass flows ... work of nonfiction that are colorful and memorable but not true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Several of Bryson's books can be searched using Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" feature, including Made in America and A Short History of Nearly Everything (but not Mother Tongue ). Here are the two relevant passages from Made in America :
Blimp arose from its official designation,
"Dirigible: Type B-Limp". (p. 297)
(No qualifications on this one.)
More often, however, we are left with words and phrases that seem to have sprung from the blue and do not appear to signify anything in particular even steven, fit as a fiddle, easy as a lead pipe cinch, to take a powder, to peter out, to paint the town red, to talk through one's hat, to josh, to roog hog or die. Explanations are frequently posited but all too often on unpersuasively flimsy evidence. (p. 71)
(I wonder if the one about the pot and the kettle "appears to signify anything in particular" to Mr. Bryson!)
Here's another one from Made in America , apropos of a recent thread here:
The modern name ("hot dog") didn't arise until a
popular cartoonist named T.A. "Tad" Dorgan drew a picture of a dachsund in an elongated bun in the early 1900s and the term caught on in a big way. (p. 198)
The Dorgan story is debunked here:
To be fair, Dorgan has long been given the credit for "h

(Sorry, I sent the last post prematurely.)

(snip)

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast chunks, the topics that were discussed were: - whether glass flows ... work of nonfiction that are colorful and memorable but not true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Several of Bryson's books can be searched using Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" feature, including Made in America and A Short History of Nearly Everything (but not Mother Tongue ). Here are the two relevant passages from Made in America :
Blimp arose from its official designation,
"Dirigible: Type B-Limp". (p. 297)
(No qualifications on this one.)
More often, however, we are left with words and phrases that seem to have sprung from the blue and do not appear to signify anything in particular even steven, fit as a fiddle, easy as a lead pipe cinch, to take a powder, to peter out, to paint the town red, to talk through one's hat, to josh, to roog hog or die. Explanations are frequently posited but all too often on unpersuasively flimsy evidence. (p. 71)
(I wonder if the one about the pot and the kettle "appears to signify anything in particular" to Mr. Bryson!)
Here's another one from Made in America , apropos of a recent thread here:
The modern name ("hot dog") didn't arise until a
popular cartoonist named T.A. "Tad" Dorgan drew a picture of a dachsund in an elongated bun in the early 1900s and the term caught on in a big way. (p. 198)
The Dorgan story is debunked here:
http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-hot1.htm
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhotdog.html
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorh.htm
To be fair, Dorgan has long been given the credit for "hot dog". But Bryson could have qualified this one if he didn't have a firm attribution. He seems to take the work of other popular writers (e.g., John Ciardi) at face value without bothering to fact-check anything. (His publishers, of course, could also do some fact-checking.)

(cut considerable chatter) (cut)

Fair enough. I that "no question mark" and "as" are the desirable usages.

"In the category with" is a perfectly reasonable way to say the same as "In the same category as". Random ... Don't even try to put me in the category with a bunch of liberal pundits that think with conventional wisdom.

None of the above seem 'proper' English to me; most scream out for the addition of 'same'. With a few of them, I could just about accept 'a category', but I wouldn't like it. I have no objection to your usage of question marks, since I frequently do the same thing.

Rob Bannister

Thanks, Donna. I accept that mistakes and some occasional sloppiness occur in his books, but when you consider just how much ground he covers for a non-academic readership I do think he gets the majority overwhelmingly right.

I have only read two of his books - both were a sort of travel book about countries I know well. I can't say that they contained an enormous amount of rubbish, but there was certainly enough to put me off reading anything else by him.

Rob Bannister

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast chunks, the topics that were discussed were: - whether glass ... work of nonfiction that are colorful and memorable but not true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the heading "4. Words change by doing nothing":
"Simeon Potter notes that when James II first saw St Paul's Cathedral he called it amusing, awful, and artificial, and meant that it was pleasing to look at, deserving of awe, and full of skilful artifice."

If James II didn't actually say those words (which seems intuitively likely) you can't criticise Bryson. It may be that he has paraphrased Potter rather too tightly, but at least Bryson gives us the reference in his notes (Simeon Potter, Our Language , Penguin Books 1976) so that we could check it in fact, it would be very useful to do exactly that, if anyone has Potter's book.
You're right that such tasty little nuggets quickly lose their caveats, but I don't think you can fault Bryson, writing for his intended audience, to do other than write what he wrote.
Matti

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast ... true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the ... don't think you can fault Bryson, writing for his intended audience, to do other than write what he wrote. Matti

I must disagree. If Mr Potter 'notes' it, then Bryson believes it is fact and makes reference to Potter's imprimatur. If Bryson has reason to doubt Potter's asseverance, then he should write 'Potter claims...', 'Potter alleges...'.
One thing this thread has emphasised to me is that not only does Bryson get it wrong more than an author with pretensions to respectability should, but that he almost certainly knows when he either gets it wrong or has under-researched and like the weaseliest of weaselly politicians (Hi Tony Blair!) expresses himself in language which seems at first to say one thing but can later be shown to exonerate him personally from error. I just scanned the first few pages of 'Mother Tongue' and note 'it sometimes seems', 'results are sometimes mixed' 'it would appear' 'as it were' 'almost every Briton' 'that may be' 'it is often said'. And that's just to the bottom of page three.
When he does speak unequivocally, it's as likely to be crap as anything else. Page three : 'For non-English speakers everywhere, English has become the common tongue.' I see a picture of a Lapp reindeer herder meeting a Finnish customs official or a Filipino fisherman encountering a Chinese coastguard. 'Good day. My Grandmother has been struck by lightning.' 'Sincere greetings. Was it ball lightning or chain lightning?') Oh, I just caught sight of this on page 5: "Meanwhile, the Arabs are said (a little unbelievably, perhaps) to have 6,000 words for camels and camel equipment".
You could do your Doctoral thesis on that sentence alone. Do we like the commas? Can things be 'a little' unbelievable? Could we with confidence identify 'The Arabs'? Do 'The Arabs' all speak the same language? The same dialect? Do we love that 'and camel equipment'? Could it be there are three words in Arabic for 'camel' and 5,997 for things you can load on* camels (saddles, reins, halters, packs, bags, hoods, spades, buckets, grain, sacks, kits, wives...) or *use on camels (laxative, jollop, whips, nailfiles, mascara, guns, tranquilizer darts, tooth-picks ...)?
John Dean
Oxford

I have to be really blunt and say that "in the category with" is not only "not quite idiomatic", but ... the question mark at the end of Donna's bizarre sentence is utterly superfluous and is not, therefore, even remotely "defensible".

Superfluous as the question mark was, is 'utterly superfluous' more superfluous than 'superfluous' or could 'utterly' be deemed superfluous?

Charles Riggs
My email address: chriggs/at/eircom/dot/net

Rats! It's a new outbreak of mnemonic plague.

Speaking of rats, there are hundreds of hits for "bubonic plaque", but not a one for "mnemonic plaque".

(one for the Australians present)
Ooh, it does get in!

Redwine
Hamburg

I gather that something similar is now happening in Dutch. (But I don't speak Dutch, so I welcome corrections.) The ... would have been correct. With the genitive case fallen into disuse, it appears that people are spontaneously reinventing a genitive.

My Dutch is rusty but.
As far as I can recall, "Jans hond" is still ok.
If the dog belongs to Marie, it's "Marie d'r hond", which is "Marie her dog". But I don't know whose dog it really is.

-ler