Of commas and of punctuation

It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.

A grammatical blunder may force a certain Canadian telecommunications company to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritime Provinces after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation.

The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation.

The telecommunications company thought it had a five-year deal with a utility line company to string their cable lines across thousands of utility poles in the Maritimes for an annual fee of $9.60 per pole. But early last year, it was informed that the contract was being cancelled and the rates were going up. Impossible, the telecommunications company thought, since its contract was iron-clad for three more years and could potentially be renewed for another five years.

Armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation, the utility line company disagreed. The construction of a single sentence in the 14-page contract allowed the entire deal to be scrapped with only one-year's notice, the company argued.

Language buffs take note that page seven of the contract states: The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

The telecommunications company’s intent was to lock in a long-term deal of at least five years. But when regulators with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) parsed the wording, they reached another conclusion.

The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point: the second comma in the sentence.

Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn't have applied to the first five years of the contract and the telecommunications company would be protected from the higher rates it now faces.

“Based on the rules of punctuation,” the comma in question “allows for the termination of the contract at any time, without cause, upon one-year's written notice,” the regulator said.

The telecommunications company was dumbfounded. The company said it never would have signed a contract to use roughly 91,000 utility poles if it could be cancelled on such short notice. Its lawyers tried in vain to argue the intent of the deal trumped the significance of a comma. “This is clearly not what the parties intended,” they said in a letter to the CRTC.

But the CRTC disagreed. And the consequences are significant.
In one of several letters to the CRTC, the utility company called the matter “a basic rule of punctuation,” taking a swipe at telecommunications company’s assertion that the comma could be ignored.

“This is a classic case of where the placement of a comma has great importance,” the utility company said.

One and a half billion …. and counting

My students often ask whether British English is ‘better’ than American English. This is probably not a very wise question to ask a native speaker of American English, but overlooking that, what about the assumption behind their question? Is one variety of a language better than another or all the others? Ask a linguist and the answer will be, “Of course, not!” Ask the average citizen on the street, and maybe the answer isn’t so clear. As in most things, we are so quick to say something is better or worse instead of simply different. If we assume there is a “best” or “preferred” English, what would it be?

Would it be that found in the mother country, the Queen’s English? Should the choice be based on the number of speakers, meaning Indian English as the standard? Perhaps the standard would be chosen based on the relative prestige associated with the dialect. British English again, perhaps? Or should we select the dialect that has the greatest intelligibility worldwide? Would that mean American English? Whatever the choice, the language of millions of English-speaking people would be slighted. And believe it or not, there are more than 50 countries in which English is either an official language or a major one. This means a much greater variety of dialects and accents than one generally imagines.

Of all the linguae francae of the centuries, it is English, more than any other language, which has earned that title. There are estimated to be more than 400 million native speakers of English and according to David Crystal, author of “English as a Global Language,” non-native speakers now out-number native speakers 3 to 1. International organizations of all types, including the UN, the Council of Europe and the Organization of Islamic Countries, generally depend on English as at least one of the languages of communication. Even World Cup officials must be able to speak and write English. Global companies, too, have adopted English. One of my former students, a native of Japan, uses English to communicate with his Spanish-speaking subordinates in his company located in … Mexico. And on a personal level, English is probably the best language to know when traveling if you don’t speak that of the country you are visiting. Moreover, consider the predominance of English on the Internet and in the world of science and technology. Love it or hate it, English is the language to know.

Instead of pondering which variety of English is best, my students would be better off simply saying that the best language to learn is English, whatever the accent. English? It’s all good!

Ecirp Nelle Hada and translating literature

I was born with half of my brain dried up like a prune, deprived of blood by an unfortunate fetal mishap. Doctors called it first Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasia but later concluded that my condition is hemiplegia. As a result, I do not speak as well as I think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.

When I finish reading a book from front to back, I read it back to front. It is a different book, back to front, and you can learn new things from it. It from things new learn can you and front to back book different a is it? You can agree or not, as you like. This is another way to read it, although I am told a normal brain will not grasp it: Ti morf sgniht wen nrael nac ouy dna tnorf ot kcab koob tnereffid a si ti. The normal, I understand, can see words my way only if they are adequately poetic: Poor Dan is in a droop.

My own name, as I am accustomed to think of it, is Erirp Nelle Hada. Sometimes I write it this way without thinking and people turn up startled. To them I am only Adah or, to my sisters sometimes the drear monosyllabic Ade, lemonade, Band-Aid, frayed blockade renegade, call a spade a spade.

The above excerpts are from Barbara Kingsolver’s book The Poisonwood Bible which was published by Harper Perennial in 1999. I offer them to illustrate some of the difficulties in attempting to translate literature. For example, the rhyming of words, such as Ade with lemonade, may be lost in translation. Some words need not be translated in that they are names, but brand names, such as Band-Aid, are only known in some countries. Likewise, idioms create problems. To call a spade a spade is a phrase that originated in 1500’s and is rarely used in modern English. There may not be an equivalent expression in the target language that captures not only the meaning but also the time period of its use. Even more problematic is Kingsolver's use of the palindrome "Poor Dan is in a droop." It is extremely unlikely a palindrome, a word or phrase which reads the same in both directions, can be translated and remain a palindrome. Here is another well-known palindrome in English: " A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." Examples of single word palindromes in English are “radar”, “level” and “racecar.” The word “redivider” is supposedly the longest single word palindrome in English. In Finnish two long examples are “saippuakauppias” and "solutomaattimittaamotulos." The former is translated as a “soap seller.” The latter means the result from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes, although technically it is a compound of four words. As you can see from the last two examples, while translation is possible, the word play is lost.

With such obstacles it is no wonder that in real life many good translators of literature are well-known writers themselves. I have recently read several books by the Finnish author Tapio Koivukari. He is a master in describing the lives of the seafaring people and fishmongers in his native coastal town of Rauma in Finland. The words and phrases, especially those related to the sea, in his writings are chosen from the time period of the events and are intimately known and used only by the people rooted in the peculiarities of the locally spoken dialect, many of whose words originated from Swedish. No wonder then that Mr. Koivukari himself has translated no fewer than eighteen books from Swedish and Icelandic to Finnish.

When the West was wild

What is the official language of the USA?

There is a persistent myth that German almost became the official language of the United States. The sentiments against imperialist England and the English language were so strong that supposedly in a vote in 1776 German lost to English by just one vote. This same year the country declared its independence. However, the population of Americans of German descent never exceeded 10%. Furthermore, even to this very day there is no such thing as an official language in the USA. Such legislation is presently pending in the Congress. If enacted, it would designate English as the official language of the U.S. government. You may think: “It is about time!”

Go west

There are expressions in use in the American English that relate to the early days of the nation. One of them is “Go west.” It was used during World War I of the fallen British and Allied soldiers who had died in service in Europe. Death was associated with going west, where the sun died at the end of the day. However, there is another manner in which this expression is used. John Soule wrote in a newspaper editorial in 1851 “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” As the young American nation was expanding westwards there was opportunity and adventure to be had for young men of the time. This is the only way the term is used today.”Go west” now means going to a new land in search of better life and new opportunities. And this western migration never stopped. Today California is the most populated state in the USA with 34 million inhabitants.

Indian giver

When I was living in a small, rural town in southern Canada I had Indian friends. They were mainly Mohawks. They teased me about “Indian givers.” This, like many other expressions, must be learned by living in the culture. The interpretation is two-fold: it can mean that the gift giver expects an equivalent for a gift; or that the giver expects to receive his gift back in a while. Some consider this expression racist and inappropriate for use today. Unless you are on good terms with Indians, as I am.