More greengrocer’s apostrophes

Happy New Year to all my reader(s), if I have any left after my total neglect of this blog over the last half a year or more.

At Christmas I was delighted to be given a copy of the 1815 reprint of John Walters’s famous English–Welsh dictionary of 1740. As with any good dictionary, you can lose yourself in it for hours. And it’s a particular joy, for those of us who get a bit weary of the golden age mythology of the Tedious Trussite Tendency, to see that it comes complete with the reviled “greengrocer’s apostrophe” on almost every page.

Pimp your vocab, chaps

New from Anova Books, publishers of the smash-hit non-fiction blockbuster Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?, comes Pimp Your Vocab by Lucy Tobin, a “terrifying dictionary for adults”. It’s a sort phrasebook of the yoof slang of today. Er, cool beans and all that sort of thing. The Guardian offers some sample items and even a test-yourself quiz.

These things are always good for debunking any self-deluding idea that you might sort of vaguely understand young people’s, er, jive talk, even if you don’t actually speak it yourself. It is, as promised, a little scary.

Strangely, one of the items quoted by the Guardian is snap, an old old dialect word meaning a snack or packed lunch. It’s tempting to think it must be the same word as snack, though apparently much older; from OED: 3. A small piece or portion; a scrap, fragment, or morsel. 4. A slight or hasty meal or mouthful; a snack. Now dial. or spec. Also in Comb., as snap-time, -tin. [...] 1935 A. J. CRONIN Stars look Down I. ix. 67 ‘Come on, ye old beggor, and have yer snap,’ Tom called out with his mouth full of bread and cheese.

Is da yoot really sayin dis bro? (Gosh, I’m good at this. Innit, tho? Or should that be “is it tho”? Oh dear.) Coincidence, shome mishtake, or has an old local word somehow been generalised and revived?

Seventeenth-century bankers apostrophe’s

The other day I happened to be looking at the founding charter of the Bank of Scotland, which is an act of the (old) Scottish Parliament dated 17 July 1695. It “allow’s a Joint stock” of so many thousands of pounds, blah blah blah, “and farder Statut’s and ordain’s...” and so on and so forth. Poor Lynne Truss, I wonder if she has spent the last six years having her nose rubbed in things like this. Or perhaps she still fondly imagines the reviled “greengrocer’s” apostrophe was invented in the late twentieth century. Luckily the document was in a glass case, so the Punctuation Taliban couldn’t get to it with their Tipp-Ex.

Pedantry and politeness in pop

A lexicographer friend blogged recently about “collocational errors” in songs written by non-native speakers in Eurovision songs. It’s hard to put your finger on what’s wrong when someone sings about “longing for someone’s care”, and we can see what it means, though it does sound slightly odd.

But that hardly compares with Macca’s deathless line “in this ever-changing world in which we’re living in”. I don’t think it’s pedantic to find it pretty surprising that a native speaker could come out with that and think it was OK.

Stan Freburg did valuable work in correcting “Old” Man River. “He doesn’t plant potatoes, he doesn’t plant cotting, because those that plant(s) them are soon forgotting…”

And don’t get me started on factual inaccuracy! Katie Melua was at least 1.7 billion light years out in her song about the bicycles in Beijing. She actually had to go back and re-record the song.

Incorrect song lyrics are a menace. As Mr Tweedly points out, the home is a classroom. Come along chaps, speak properly! “I can’t any satisfaction.” “Slap my bitch up please.”

You’re quite welcome, I’m sure.