By Victor Ochieng’
(0704420232)
‘Are you the English teacher?
‘Yes, I are.’
Dear readers, perhaps you saw this meme spreading like wildfire on social media sites. The conversation must have been between a school principal exchanging pleasantries with a new teacher who was expected to disseminate knowledge in English as a subject.
Many people laughed with might at the response of the preceptor, not bearing in mind the question posed by the principal. Both sentences had grievous grammatical goofs and that served as my inspiration to write about ambiguity as a good grammatical goof.
In the whole scheme of things, learning of a language entails three things: vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar.
Contrary to popular belief that vocabulary is about new words, the term focuses on words that make up a particular language. Proficiency in English behoves the user of this foreign language to build a rich word bank which can only happen when one is a passionate hunter of vocabulary. This in turn enhances self-expression in written and spoken forms. One who yearns to shine like bright light in English must purpose to read the texts carefully crafted by best writers of this language more so when it comes to pronunciation.
Pronunciation pitches tent on how words should be puffed. Proper enunciation and articulation of English words enhances clarity in speech. In case there is no proper pronunciation, the meaning of a word can be lost or there might be confusion.
For instance, think of the words ‘pundit’ and ‘bandit’. There is a small difference that makes a big difference. ‘Pundit’ and ‘bandit’ are minimal pairs, which Phonetics and Phonology of English describe as pairs of words or phrases in a particular language (in this case, English) spoken or signed that differ only in one phonological element such as phoneme, toneme or chroneme yet they have distinct meaning.
They are used to demonstrate that two phones are two separate phonemes in the language. Therefore, a ‘pundit’ also written as ‘pandit’ in some popular parlance, is an expert. For instance, you can say that the late Philip Ochieng was a pundit in matters related to grammar and its usage.
Bandit, on the other hand, is an armed robber. Therefore confusion of the two consonants – /p/ and /b/ – can create a vast chasm.
Another case in point are the words ‘won’ past tense of ‘win’ and ‘wan’ which means ‘pale’ or ‘ashen’. ‘Won’ is pronounced as [wʌn] and ‘wan’ is pronounced as [wɒn]. There is absurdity in this case just like there is the verb ‘run’. The verb run has the same pronunciation both in present and past tense. Therefore, ‘run’ and ‘ran’ are pronounced as [rʌn].
Grammar and its usage form the central plank of this write-up. Grammar focuses on a raft of rules that govern a particular language. English as a language has eight parts of speech namely nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. It also has the definite article ‘the’ and indefinite articles ‘a’ and ‘an’. We have quantifiers like ‘few’, ‘a few’, ‘little’ and ‘a little’, et cetera.
When I was in school in Kikuyu learning English and literature, our professor taught us that when writing or speaking, we must adhere to the rules that govern grammar and its usage because failure to do so culminates to travesty of language.
The response to the question ‘ are you the English teacher ?’ should have been “Yes I am.”
The phrase’ English teacher’ (conflation of two words) is syntactically right but semantically ambiguous. In grammar and its usage, a phrase is a small group of words functioning as a meaningful unit in a sentence.
Syntax focuses on the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language while semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.
The two main areas are logical semantics and lexical semantics. Logical semantics is concerned with matters of sense and reference and presupposition and implication while lexical semantics is concerned with the analysis of word meanings and the relationship between them.
This implies that semantic(s) focuses on the meaning of a word, phrase, or text while ambiguity is the inexactness of a sentence.
It is ambiguous to refer to a tutor teaching English subject as an English teacher. Over and above, English is associated with England, which is part of the United Kingdom or Great Britain (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales).
English teacher in this case has three meanings, which therefore renders it ambiguous.
The first meaning is that English teacher refers to any preceptor that hails from England. Whether s/he teaches Physics, Math or Geography, by virtue of coming from England, it is right to call him/her English teacher. The second meaning could be, a teacher who specifically teaches people from England. The third one could be used to imply the teacher who teaches English as a subject. Therefore, to avoid this ambiguity it is right to just say teacher of English.
The writer rolls out English Improvement Programmes.
