Nicky Grieshaber - Wordguru - Language Communication Specialist

18/10/2020

"It’s going to be the festival of the year, beams Darryl David! 'It might very well be the only festival of the year, but boy will it make up for the many that we missed!'"

18/10/2019

On Thursday, October 24 Shân Cade Training & Consulting (https://www.facebook.com/shancadetraining) are celebrating their 10th anniversary and have invited a few speakers to share in the day through some talks. I will be giving the first talk, titled "Language barriers in the workplace", and am very pleased and honoured to have been asked to participate in this way.

And Keys Alive (https://www.facebook.com/Nicky-Grieshaber-Keys-Alive-558869964160280) will be there too! I'll be making music when I can to add to the festivities.

Your first-class training provider, caring for the individual and bringing growth to the organisation

21/01/2017

Good advice ... Oh, and while you're at it, don't misspell words in your subheadings, especially important ones. [By the way, I'm pretty sure the error is not the author's ... If I'm right, guess whose, then.]

21/01/2017

Good advice ... Oh, and while you're at it, don't misspell words in your subheadings - especially important ones.

22/12/2016

You may or may not have noticed that "Notes on Afrikaans usage" is taking a break.

Have a wonderful and blessed festive season, which I hope will include a decent break from the year that was 2016 and some super-recharge time for the opportunities and demands that 2017 will bring. May you prosper in every significant way in the new year. Blessings to you and your families.

Nicky

07/12/2016

NOTES ON AFRIKAANS USAGE (5)

As in the case of the English words “amount” and “number”, the words “hoeveelheid” and “aantal” (or “getal”) are not interchangeable.

“Hoeveelheid” is used only when non-countable things are involved, e.g. in “‘n klein hoeveelheid rys; groot hoeveelhede energie/water/geld”; for countable things, use “aantal” or “getal”.

It is incorrect to say “’n groot hoeveelheid mense” or “net ’n klein hoeveelheid R50-note”, just as one cannot say “a large amount of people” or “just a small amount of R50 notes” in English. It has to be “’n groot aantal/getal mense” and “’n klein aantal/getal R50-note” - the equivalents of “a large number of people” and “a small number of R50 notes” respectively. (And these are the only correct options!)

(On “number” and “amount”, with the same points applying in essence to “hoeveelheid” and “getal”/“aantal”, please see my blog article “Numbers and amounts” at http://nickynotes2.blogspot.co.za/ .)

02/12/2016

NOTES ON AFRIKAANS USAGE (4)

“Daarteenoor” and “daarenteen”, while similar in meaning, are not interchangeable syntactically, i.e. as far as their position in a sentence is concerned.

“Daarenteen” cannot, may not, should not, ever, under any circumstances, like never ever, nooit, ooit be placed at the beginning of a sentence or clause.

So this is wrong:

“Humor wek ‘n gevoel van deernis, dalk ‘n kopskuddende laggie. Daarenteen is satire bedoel om ongemak en spanning te skep.”

(Through-the-ceiling aaargggghh!!!ometric count.)

Retaining “daarenteen” in the above example would require starting the second sentence with “satire”, the word with which you want to contrast “humor”:

“Humor wek ‘n gevoel van deernis, dalk ‘n kopskuddende laggie. Satire, daarenteen, is bedoel om ongemak en spanning te skep.”

Done.

** By the way, the “aa” in “daarenteen” is one of only two or three exceptions to the normal rule of having just a single vowel letter to indicate a long vowel sound in an open syllable in Afrikaans. (I explain the rule in my “Diacs and quirks in a nutshell”, ch. 11.)

22/11/2016

NOTES ON AFRIKAANS (and English, today) USAGE (3)

Interestingly, many first-language Afrikaans speakers often use “aanvaar” ("accept") in contexts where it should unquestionably be “aanneem” / “neem aan” ("assume"). It's somewhat surprising, since there is obviously a very clear difference in meaning, and the two are definitely not interchangeable. (Could it simply be because of the common element “aan-”?)

As jy Afrikaanssprekend is, is dit iets om op te let – dit gebeur klaarblyklik nogal maklik.

Which reminds me ... Here's an error that sometimes occurs in English: Have you noticed that people will sometimes say “incidences” when they mean “incidents”?

Statements like these by roving news reporters have been fairly common lately: “There have been more incidences of vandalism on XYZ campus this week”, instead of “There have been more incidents of …”

“Incidences” isn’t even a word; only the form “incidence” is correct, e.g. “There has been a high incidence of bag-snatching in the car park in recent weeks.”

15/11/2016

NOTES ON AFRIKAANS USAGE (2)

The Afrikaans equivalent of the English phrase “in her/its/his own right” is not “in haar/sy eie reg” or even “in eie reg”, but “UIT eie reg” (with no pronoun).

And that’s it! Short ’n sweet this time.

In my experience the wrong preposition is used far more frequently than the correct one. The influence of English on Afrikaans is immensely powerful.

10/11/2016

NOTES ON AFRIKAANS USAGE (1)

And here we go, as promised last week ...

WHEN SPEAKING AND WRITING AFRIKAANS, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T DO THIS …

Don’t (ever!) use OPDATEER for “update”.

The fact that many mother-tongue Afrikaans speakers (including academics and journalists) use it nowadays does not make it right.

Although it does appear in the online version of WAT (Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal), (i) it is clearly labelled as being “from English ‘update’”; (ii) the contextualised examples are almost all relatively late (1990s); (iii) it is not found in any of the main dictionaries in Pharos Online.

Traditional, idiomatic Afrikaans words and phrases for “update” include “bywerk” and “op datum bring”.

Further options can be found in good Afrikaans resources and English-Afrikaans dictionaries.

(At a purely subjective level: this one sends my aaarrrggg!!ometer instantly into the red zone!)

04/11/2016

Some of you may know that I used to write a regular column ("The Write Stuff") about mainly English language issues for the "Witness". Several of these mini-articles can be found on my blog (largely inactive nowadays), titled "Write thinking", at http://nickywrites.blogspot.com, in case you're interested in seeing them. I think regular readers of the column at the time would agree that I usually tried to make the articles interesting and entertaining as well as informative.

Now ... I've had some bees in my bonnet about some Afrikaans language issues for some time, and I think my WORDGURU page might be a good place to let those bees out and give them some air. This will NOT happen in the form of 300–400-word articles – these will be much shorter notes which will get the issue over and done with in a few sentences. I'll start next week sometime.

The first word I will deal with is the absolutely awful "opdateer" for "update". Aaarrgggh.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Language-related articles to promote right thinking for better writing. I hope you will find the articles helpful and enjoyable.