Thursday October 29, 2009
Buy more house?
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED by FADZILAH AMIN
IN the Oct 12 issue of Time Magazine, there is a sentence which reads, “Subsidies tempt people to buy more house than they would otherwise, a wasteful use of capital.” Is it correct to use the singular “house”, after “more”? More food, yes, that I can understand, because food can be an uncountable noun. But more house?
However, I do appreciate that subsidised prices may tempt one to buy another house (i.e., one more, in addition to the house one already owns), but it is very unlikely that subsidies would be so large as to make one buy two or even three additional houses. I can understand that the writer of the article probably could not bring himself to say “houses” in place of “house”.
To get around that problem, I suppose he could have said “accommodation” instead of “house”. But, of course, why bother, if “house” is okay to use in the context in question. Is it? – I. Ho
At first I dismissed what I.Ho noticed as a typing error, but then I thought, good writers could make ONE error in typing a common word like “houses” but when we see two occurrences of the word “house” where we expect “houses”, something must be going on in the use of English in the United States. After all, Time Magazine is not exactly a tabloid, and even tabloids don’t make such mistakes.
So I decided to look up “more house” in other reputable publications in the United States like New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and lo and behold, there were other occurrences of “house” that make one wonder if the word can be an uncountable noun in American English. But the American dictionaries I consulted did not suggest that. Perhaps they haven’t caught up with usage yet. Let me quote from the above publications before I go on:
“Too many people bought too much house for too many years ... But the roots of the mortgage contagion lie with all of us and our desire to own just a bit more house.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/your-money/mortgages/12money.html
Likewise, don’t divert retirement savings to buy more house than you can afford, expecting to make up the shortfall later through a jump in home values.
http://www.beaconeconomics.com/people/press/LATimes080308.pdf
In fact I looked at more than the above, and came to the conclusion that what the writers meant by “more house” is really “a bigger house”, while “too much house” means “too big a house”.
“House” in fact, is used in these current expressions, as an uncountable noun, like “land”. This meaning is made clearer in an online newspaper article from the Silicon Valley area. The heading says:“Much more house for the money, good schools and picturesque hills” and one of the housebuyers says, “... we were just getting so much more value in terms of the size of the house ...”
http://www.mercurynews.com/where-we-live/ci_8747809?nclick_check=1
Perhaps Grant Barrett can shed more light on this usage.
Jump-starting is right
IN a story with the headline, “Kien Keat, Pei Tty ready to shine again under new programme” published in The Star on Oct 14, there was a sentence which read: “Kien Keat is also looking forward to jump start his partnership with Pei Tty.”
We always say, “We are looking forward to seeing you in the near future”. Is it correct to say that “Kien Keat is also looking forward to jump-starting his partnership with Pei Tty?” – Teh
Yes. You are right that “jump-starting” ought to be used instead of “jump-start”. “Jump-starting” is spelt with a hyphen, though. The sentence should therefore read: “Kien Keat is also looking forward to jump-starting his partnership with Pei Tty.”
Reporting verbs
DIRECT and indirect speech still confuses me. How would you correct my narration?
“I asked them whether I could keep them as pets. Unfortunately I know/knew (I still know) my mum is/was not an animal lover. Then I remembered that I have/had a cousin, Chris who loves/loved dogs. It would only take me ten minutes to get to her house.” – James
Collins Cobuild English Grammar (p.327, 7.49) states: “... when the reporting verb is in a past tense, a past tense is also usually used in the verb in the reported clause even if the reported situation still exists.” But it goes on to say, further down the page: “A present tense is sometimes used instead, to emphasize that the situation still exists.”
In the case of your narration, there is no problem with the first sentence. The reporting verb, “asked”, is in the past tense, and you use the past tense “could keep” in the reported clause.
In the second sentence, you are talking about what you “knew” at the time you were talking to “them”, not what you know now (even though the two are the same), so “knew” would have to be used as your reporting verb. (Here you are reporting your thoughts at the time.) You then have a choice in the reported clause, whether to use “is” or “was”. So your second sentence would read “Unfortunately I knew my mum was not an animal lover.” OR “Unfortunately I knew my mum is not an animal lover.”
In your third sentence, you rightly use another past reporting verb, “remembered”. You then have a choice, as you did in the second sentence, whether to use a past tense or a present tense for the two reported clauses. Your third sentence would then read: “Then I remembered that I had a cousin, Chris who loved dogs.” OR “Then I remembered that I have a cousin, Chris who loves dogs.”
Food and language
MY schoolmates and I were having a conversation when one of them said: “There is no such thing as an Indian language. Only Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam etc.
Similarly, there is no Chinese language. Only Han, Manchurian, Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan etc.
He also said that there is no Chinese food. Only Cantonese, Fujian, Hakka, Sichuan, Shanghainese, Huhan, Peking food, etc.
Also, since Bahasa Malaysia is the main language in Malaysia, can English be termed a second language? Can you clarify? – SK Ong, Kuala Lumpur
I answered a question similar to your first one some time in August this year. I agree with the statement that “There is no such thing as an Indian language – only Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam language, etc.” Hindi, however, is the official language of India, as far as I know, although India’s many other regional languages, as well as English are used quite a lot.
With regard to languages in China, as far as I know, the official language is Mandarin. I am not sure whether the other languages you mention are considered different languages or dialects. You will have to consult an expert on languages spoken in China.
As to the variety of food of Chinese origin, the layman from outside China would just refer to it as different or regional varieties of Chinese food. Since I am not a Chinese food expert, I can’t say any more. Perhaps some other readers may be able to help you.
Bahasa Malaysia is both our national language and our official language, but I imagine that in dealing with other countries (with the exception of perhaps Brunei and Indonesia), we use English, which is now the world’s lingua franca.
English is considered our second language, but there are also languages that are the mother tongues of various groups of people in our country, like Cantonese, Hokkien, Tamil, Punjabi, Iban, Kadazan, etc.
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