It’s time to challenge the notion that there’s only one way to speak English

From the start, it has been my intention to someday lure Linda Thompson to blog for The Hobbledehoy. Her Facebook posts – frequently hilarious, always intelligent – might be the best reason to have Facebook (second only to unfriending one’s racist aunt or poisonous pastor.) Linda is mentioned in this recent article nicked from The Standard.
The topic is one I’ve debated with friends quite a bit lately. I mean, like literally every minute. [- Johnny Foreigner]

Linda Thompson, admired for her work in the folk-rock genre, occasionally delivers magisterial rebukes to those guilty of sloppy or ugly expression. Robin Little/Redferns

After the terrible accident that killed four people on a ride at an Australian theme park last Tuesday, an official spoke these words to the media: “They sustained injuries that were incompatible with living.”Oddly enough, it took a French woman to draw attention to such a strange and inelegant example of what the English writer George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, might have called officialspeak.

Flossie Malavialle, a singer who lives in the UK and performs exquisitely in English and French on the British folk music circuit, posted on Facebook that it seemed a “really weird” way of saying four people had been killed.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE FROM THE STANDARD

Leave a Reply