Tuesday June 12, 2012
One of many
By FADZILAH AMIN
Can the word ‘Nigerians’ be made to work ‘too hard’?
ONE of the eggs mistake” was among the ten common errors my English teacher listed on a piece of paper and pinned to the classroom wall when I was in the School Certificate Class (precursor of today’s Form Five). It was the error of saying, for example, “one of the girl” instead of “one of the girls”.
After so many decades, I can’t recollect the equally imaginative names she gave to the other errors. But I remember clearly, when anyone in my class committed one of them, she would ask the class, good-humouredly: “What error was that?” And we would happily chorus the answer.
I realise now that the “one of the ____s” structure can be more complex than we were aware of at Form Five level. It is not just a matter of remembering to use a plural noun after “one of”, but of deciding whether to use a singular or plural verb after the phrase.
When the sentence is simple, the answer is simple. For example, we say: “One of the girls is a good badminton player.” There is only one girl who plays badminton well, so we use a singular verb to agree with the singular noun phrase, “one of the girls”.
But what if the sentence goes: “She is one of the girls who has/have taken part in an international badminton match.”? Do we use “has” or “have” in the relative clause? Logically, we should use the plural “have” because the subject of the relative clause is the relative pronoun “who”, standing for “the girls”, not for “one of the girls.” The one girl is already taken care of in “She is one of the girls…”
A sentence of this sort is the subject of another question from reader Zuraida. She had found it in an exercise in Reader’s Digest, in which she had to choose the right verb. The sentence read: “That is one of those setbacks that really is/are unavoidable”. She chose “is” and found out that the correct answer was “are”. Here, the relative clause begins with “that”, and “that” stands for “those setbacks”, not “one of those setbacks”.
However, there are times when a writer uses the singular verb in the relative clause of such a sentence.
Robert Burchfield (editor of the 4-volume Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1972-1986), in his largely rewritten 3rd edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1996), recommended a plural verb in the relative clause, but said that “exceptions occur when the writer or speaker presumably regards ‘one’ as governing the verb” in the relative clause.
He gave examples from the writing of some of the best modern writers who did this. Here are two of them:
1. “Perhaps you were one of those fellows who sees tricks everywhere.” (from Australian-born novelist Peter Carey, who won the Booker Prize twice)
2. “Don’t you think,” said Bernard, “that Hawaii is one of those places that was always better in the past?” (from David Lodge, novelist, scriptwriter and retired professor of English)
There is another usage of “one of” that I encountered recently in a newspaper. The news item is about the arrest of 15 Nigerian men and a Malaysian woman who were suspected of cheating another Malaysian woman of a large sum of money.
The following sentence, towards the end of the report, is about the Malaysian suspect:
“The local woman is believed to be one of the Nigerians’ girlfriend.” This sentence is not incorrect, but it sounds awkward and the reader takes some time to work out its meaning. It would be better to write:
“The local woman is believed to be the girlfriend of one of the Nigerians.”
In the original, the word Nigerians’ is made to work too hard. It serves as the plural noun of the phrase “one of the Nigerians” as well as the possessive form of that phrase.
In the next part of this article, I would like to discuss a couple of expressions that Malaysians seem to have trouble with. Reader Paul Chan asked me whether he could use the word “that” after “rest assured”, because he could recall his English teacher forbidding him from using it.
My answer to that is there is nothing wrong in using “that” after “rest assured”. The OALD, in its entry for this idiom, gives us a choice, by writing “rest assured (that…)”. And its example uses “that”: “You may rest assured that we will do all we can to find him.”
What one shouldn’t do, however, is to write “be rest assured”, a phrase I often found in students’ writing. Perhaps the phrase is a conflation of “rest assured” and “be assured” which means “be certain” and is often used in advertising, as can be seen in the following sentence on the Internet: “You can be assured at Gales of independent advice and expertise over a wide range of legal services.” (from the website of Gales Solicitors)
Another very common Malaysian error is to use the word “commensurate” as a verb, instead of the adjective that it is.
The job advertisement sections of our newspapers are full of this misuse of the word: “Salary will commensurate with experience.”! The correct sentence is: “Salary will be commensurate with experience.”
Let me end by pointing out something I recently discovered in the use of English by the British mainstream media. It is the use of the phrase “royal fans” to mean “fans of royalty”.
This phrase came up a lot during the recent celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. I had thought at first that it meant “fans who are royal”. Here is an example of its use from the BBC website, which had a video as well as an article called Diamond Jubilee: Royal fans gather at Tower Bridge:
“Royal fans have been gathering at the prime spot of Tower Bridge in London, where the pageant is due to finish.”
When I read this, I looked out for various members of the British royalty, but could only see the British rakyat.
■ Fadzilah Amin used to teach English literature at university, but now enjoys the luxury of reading it in bed. She’s a believer in life-long learning. Mind Our English is published once a week on Tuesdays. For comments or inquiries on English usage, please contact the writer at fedela7@yahoo.co.uk
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