LET'S SPEAK ENGLISH:
Broadcast: Wednesday, March 02, 1938 at 21:30 PM

Eleventh Talk - Vocabulary

OUTLINE

I.Use of so-called English words in Palestine:
a) MAGAZINE instead of SHOP
b) MANUFACTORY instead of FACTORY
c) BUTCHERY instead of BUTCHER
d) GALANTRY instead of HABER-DASHER
e) A COFFEE instead of A COFFEE-SHOP, or A COFFEE HOUSE or even A CAFE.
f) PENSION instead of BOARDING-HOUSE

II. The difference between:
a) VERBAL and ORAL
b) SCRIPTURE AND HANDWRITING
c) INTERFERE and INTERVENE

III. Words that should not be used in Palestine :
a) PROTECTZIA
b) COMBINATZIA.

TRANSCRIPT: ELEVENTH TALK - VOCABULARY

The previous week l gave you a few idioms. This evening I am going to talk about a number of English words that are incorrectly used in Palestine.

When you next go down the street, keep your eye on the shop signs. Some are in Hebrew; others in Arabic. Many have translations into PINGLISH; our third official language.

The other day I saw a sign with the word MAGAZINE. What the owner meant was a SHOP. A MAGAZINE in English is a store-house for ammunition or explosives. So if you have a grocery, don't put the word MAGAZINE over the door. Some policeman might take you seriously.

A MAGAZINE is also a weekly or monthly publication with articles by different writers. It's a sort of a literary store-house. In Palestine we've got several political MAGAZINES. They're also full of explosives.

Now the word MAGAZINE comes from the French word MAGASIN. The French word MAGASIN itself comes from the Arabic word MAKHSAN, meaning a store-house. But in English, the proper translation of MAGASIN and MAKHSAN is SHOP.

A SHOP's a place where you can buy things - a toy-shop : a book-shop. In the Old City of Jerusalem there are lots of shops. Some of them must be almost as ancient as the City itself. My wife once bought a pair of mittens there for a fancy dress dance. Mittens are fingerless gloves and have been out of fashion in Europe for fifty years. I wish I could have dug down deep into the old stock in that shop in the Old City. I'm sure I could still find Crusader underwear and even Roman night-gowns.

You can also use the word SHOP for a place where things are made or repaired: an engineering SHOP, or an ordinary WORKSHOP.

The word WORKSHOP is often shortened to WORKS, You don't talk of a glass WORKSHOP, you say a glass WORKS. If you're a PING, you probably say a glasses WORKS. That's wrong. You must always use the singular, not the plural : a motor WORKS, not a motors WORKS.

If a workshop is very big you usually call it a FACTORY: a silk FACTORY, a paint FACTORY. In Palestine you often hear it called a silk MANUFACTORY, That's rather old fashioned: the modern name is FACTORY. To MANUFACTURE things originally meant to make thing with your hands. But you MANUFACTURE many things today by machinery. The place where you MANUFACTURE them, however, is a FACTORY, not a MANUFACTORY. I suppose that, at present, the chief articles manufactured in Palestine are plans for Partition, of all kinds of shapes and sizes.

Now the word FACTORY comes ultimately from the Latin word FACERE, meaning to do, or to make. A FACTORY is where you make one thing out of another. There are FACTORIES that make cigarettes out of tobacco and others that make soap out of olive oil. Sometimes Palestinian laundries call themselves FACTORIES. That's wrong. A laundry is a place where they wash clothes. They don't make things. Of course some laundries make holes in your shirts; but that's no reason why you should call them FACTORIES.

In England you'll often see a man's trade written up over his shop - GROCER: TAILOR: BUTCHER It isn't necessary to add SHOP - a GROCER'S SHOP: a TAILOR'S SHOP. The man's trade is sufficient - 'Jones, GROCER': 'Brown, TAILOR': 'Smith, BUTCHER'.

Sometimes there's a. special name for such shops. If you're a GROCER, you own a GROCERY. Not that that means very much nowadays. No-one ever pays his grocer's bills in Palestine. Most of the grocers I know are so much in debt that they're having a free holiday in a nice Government prison. But although a GROCER owns a GROCERY, a TAILOR doesn't own a TAILORY and a BUTCHER doesn't own a BUTCHERY. BUTCHERY is an abstract noun meaning the needless slaughter of animals or people. In Spain, hundreds of children are being killed by aeroplane bombs. That's BUTCHERY. But the harmless and necessary shop where meat is sold should be called a BUTCHER'S SHOP or just plain BUTCHER, the name of the owner's trade.

There used to be a shop in Jerusalem called 'The International BUTCHERY', You can only talk about International BUTCHERY when there's an European war.

Many people make a living by selling fancy goods - lace, buttons, gloves. If they're PINGS they write over the door of their shop the word GALANTRY, Now GALANTRY comes from the German word GALANTERIE which is a shop where fancy goods are sold. The German word GALANTERIE originally came from the French. But you can't translate the German word GALANTERIE into the English word GALANTRY. In English GALLANTRY. (with two L's) usually means bravery. A soldier receives a medal for GALLANTRY. The shop-keeper who tries to sell fancy goods in Palestine during this depression also deserves a medal for GALLANTRY. That may be the reason why he puts the word up over his shop; just to remind us.

Talking about shops that sell things for women, reminds me of a ladies' dress-maker in Jerusalem. She has a notice in her shop, 'Ladies have fits upstairs'.

The old English name for a shop where fancy goods are sold is a HABER-DASHERY. And the man who sells fancy goods is a HABERDASHER. No-one seems to know where that word comes from. Or if they do know, they won't say. Perhaps HABERDASHERS are all members of a sinister secret society.

Another familiar word in PINGLISH is a COFFEE. A PING invited me the other evening to meet him after the cinema at A COFFEE. Now that's an attempt to translate the French words UN CAFE into the English words A COFFEE. But it can't be done. You can drink a cup of coffee - or, colloqially, you can drink a COFFEE. But the place where you drink it is A COFFEE-SHOP or A COFFEE-HOUSE. You can even use the French word CAFE in English although there are few real CAFES in England. The reason is that coffee is not the national drink in England. It's tea: and if you want a place to drink coffee when you're in England you must ask for a tea-room.

The last trade name I want to discuss is A PENSION. In PINGLISH a PENSION is often used instead of the proper word BOARDING-HOUSE. PENSION is a French word. To live EN PENSION means to live at a fixed rate. But you can't translate the French word PENSION into the English word PENSION. A PENSION is the payment made by Governments or employers to retired employees. It's quite true, of course, that most people who are on PENSION can only afford to stay at a PENSION and not at a hotel. But if you have to stay at a PENSION, please call it a BOARDING-HOUSE.

Talking of PENSIONS, the Brighter English League is starting a PENSION fund of its own. We're going to give PENSIONS to elderly teachers of English. I've come to the conclusion that, if all the elderly women who teach English were pensioned off, all the teachers who were left would be young, pretty and irresistible. The effect'd be astonishing and the whole world'd be speaking English in no time.

Now another common mistake in English, as well as in PINGLISH, is the use of the word VERBAL in place of the word ORAL. You often hear someone talk about delivering a VERBAL message when they mean an ORAL message. ORAL means something to do with the mouth - from the Latin word os, ORIS. An ORAL message thus means a spoken message. But VERBAL means anything to do with words - from the Latin word VERBUM, a word. But a written message and a spoken message are both made up of words. So a VERBAL message can be either written or spoken. If you want to talk about a spoken message, it's better to call it ORAL.

Talking about written messages reminds me of a mistake many people make when they write the names of countries or languages. When you write the word 'England' you normally write it with a capital E. But you must also use a capital E when you write the word 'English' either as the language - ENGLISH -- or as an adjective - an ENGLISH woman. The trouble is that in France you write 'un Francais' with a small F. And in German you used to write .'der deutsche Kaiser' with a small D but a very large K. But in English you can never write, for example, 'Japanese' with a small J, however much you may disapprove of them.

Whatever you write you must he careful about your HANDWRITING. You must he careful, too, to call it HANDWRITING and not SCRIPTURE as one member of the Brighter English League did in his letter to me. Now it's true that the word SCRIPTURE comes from the Latin word SCRIBERE, to write. But the word SCRIPTURE in English is confined to sacred literature and, in particular, to the Bible. So you can't call my HANDWRITING SCRIPTURE.

In general, you must be careful in English not to shock people by using words that have a purely sacred meaning. A German refugee and his wife who were living in London got into a motor-bus. There wasn't room for both of them downstairs, so the husband went up on top. The conductor soon came to collect the fares. The wife had no money and knew little English, so she tried to explain that her husband was upstairs and that he would pay. She thought hard and then said, 'Ze Lord is above'.

Now you often read in religious literature about divine intervention. The word INTERVENTION means to come between two forces. YOU can INTERVENE in an argument: or you can INTERVENE on someone's behalf. But PINGS always talk about INTERFERING on someone's behalf. To INTERFERE means to meddle. INTERFERENCE is something which is resented, but INTERVENTION is generally permissible; except, of course, in Spain.

In PINGLAND, if you INTERVENE on someone's behalf, it's called PROTECTZIA. If you're a PING and you want a job, you wouldn't dream of writing out an application yourself. You'd find some amiable old notable and persuade him to write you a letter of recommendation, That's PROTECTZIA. It doesn't matter if the old notable's never heard of you before. He'll write you a lovely letter. He'll say how gifted and honest you are and that your appointment would give him great satisfaction. Why you should be appointed for the sake of giving him satisfaction has never been quite clear to me. But everyone in PINGLAND believes that PROTECTZIA's essential if you want to get on. Most of the notables in PINGLAND spend their whole time writing letters of PROTECTZIA. You can always know who's a notable there because he wears a letter block and fountain pen on a string round his neck. So if you don't want to be called a PING, I suggest that you leave the word PROTECTZIA out of your vocabulary.

Another word that I suggest that you leave out of your vocabulary is COMBINATZIA. That's another favourite word in PINGLAND. If you go to to a wedding and at the same time lease your house to one of the guests, that's a COMBINATZIA. Or if you buy land on the strength of a bank loan you've been promised, and then get the bank loan on the strength of the land,that's an ideal COMBINATZIA. In England you sometimes do something which has two results at once. That's called killing two birds with one stone. In PINGLAND you can easily kill a dozen birds with one stone if you're an expert in COMBINATZIA. But COMBINATZIA isn't always something to be admired. Simplicity is often much better. So I advice you to abandon the word COMBINATZIA, also.

Good night.