[ARC5] Some nonsense about drifts and the English language. (Was bearings for DM-28 dynamotors)

[Brian Clarke]

Unfortunately Les,

There is one further error to add to your terrorist English teacher's
armament - the pathetic fallacy. Inanimate concepts, such as
'governments' do not do anything except exist. And the statement to
which you refer is not a piece of existentialistic philosophistry.
Only people can sign or choose not to sign anything. So, to exclaim
that any two governments signed anything is meaningless. 

Now for Neil, we have a present danger with respect to the adding of
'er' and 'ee' to verbs. We seem to have mastered 'employer' and
'employee,' but the dweebs who write minutes of meetings seem
hell-bent on insisting that the people who attend meetings be called
'attendees', and object, emptily of course, when I insist on calling
them 'attenders'.

73 de Brian, VK2GCE 

On Wed, 26 Nov 2014 16:05:51 +1100; you said:

 Hi Neil, I suffered hours, nay days, of terror at the hands of my
 English teacher, (Mrs) Nancy Collis. This was well before the time
when
 'Ms' was fashionable, so it's a long time ago. Mrs Collis was the
sort
 of English teacher who demanded precision in language.

 For example, recently I heard an A.B.C. news-reader, who said, "This
 afternoon the Chinese and Australian governments officially signed
off
 on a free-trade agreement."

 OMG! If Mrs Colliss heard this she'd ask the news-reader, "Do
 governments sign agreements that are unofficial?" No news-reader
 worth his salt would dare answer the question in the affirmative, and
 after a few moments of embarrassed silence Mrs Colliss might say, "In
 your sentence, the word 'officially' adds nothing to the meaning.
 Leave it out."

 After that, she'd say, "You used the word 'off' after 'sign, so
whatever
 the government signed had been, it seems, 'on' something. 'Off' is a
 preposition. Prepositions denotes position or movement. Do you intend
to
 convey information about position? I don't think so! A preposition
after
 'sign' adds nothing to the meaning. Leave it out!"

 Having established that the word 'off' has is out of place, it's
obvious
 the same applies to 'on'. If we don't sign, 'off', there's no point
in
 signing 'off-on' something.

 So the sentence, according to my terrorist-English-teacher, would
 become, "This afternoon the Chinese and Australian governments signed
a
 free-trade agreement." It's now 40 years since Mrs Colliss terrorized
 her English classes, but she taught effectively. Sometimes she would
 play with words, in the same style as the great Spike Milligan does
(or
 did) in "The Goon Show".

 One problem remains. Mrs Colliss demanded more than a precise use of
 language. She demanded factual accuracy, and the document referred to
by
 the news-reader was a statement of intent only, not a free-trade
 agreement, as reported. OMG! OMG! :-(

 Now, the 'thingy' used to separate the bearing and the shaft - is it
a
 drift, a punch, a pin-driver or a podging tool? It's not the
'hit-ee',
 so it must be the 'hit-ter'.

 If I'm wrong the ghost of Nancy Colliss will appear at the foot of my
 bed around mid-night, and terrorize me.

 73 de Les Smith vk2bcu at operamail.com

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