Guardian’s Plain English Prob – ‘Priestesses,’ Please!

It was just a week ago that I drew attention to some common media English errors…

BBC? It CAN Get Something Right? 

…but, sad to say, some media ideologues evidently don’t read my blog.

..

….

Why are female clergy cheering for a bishop who doesn’t believe in female priests?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/14/female-clergy-church-of-england-ordination-bishop

What’s most annoying is that the author of the rant is herself a priestess, a Church of England vicaress, to be precise.

Anglicans can argue all they want – up to them, as I’m not Anglican.

But if they like ordaining women, they should use proper English.

We don’t refer to princesses as princes, do we?

Besides, as noted before, an event advertised as being convened by a priestess, rather than a priest, might well attract a bigger crowd.!

Depends on how vivid your imagination is!

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Five-Star Hotel Hooker Horror – Jakarta Post Grammar Probe?

Prostitution has been there since my childhood but we have hypocrite and posed not to know about it,” kompas.com quoted him as saying here on Monday.

That’s allegedly Jakarta’s Governor Ahok speaking, about a ‘high-class pimp’ story hitting headlines here.

He also said he did not know the number of ublic officials using sex workers’ service but many have abused their power to pay the high tariff.

• 

• He admitted he had difficulties to eliminate prostitution, including the online one, in the capital city.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/05/11/ahok-not-shocked-arrest-high-class-prostitution-pimp.html

I am content to grant that the word ‘ublic’ is just a misprint for ‘public.’ Thanks be it was not misprinted as ‘pubic!’

But the abominable standard of English must surely make the newspaper a laughing-stock, not least among those who, like myself, have in the past described it as part of the ‘English-language media.’ 

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•  Ahok
• ———————

• Ahok of course did not use those words attributed to him – he would have spoken in Indonesian and the bizarre rendering of his quote is entirely down to whichever English-language ‘expert’ translated it and the ‘editorial’ staffer who approved it.

Perhaps some of my former students who spent most of class-time playing with their hand-phones?

It’s early morning here and I’ll check out other media later, hoping to uncover the interesting parts of the story – e.g. the name of the posh hotel, never mind the celebrity slapper – carefully concealed.

But I remain convinced nothing will be quite as shocking as that grotesque grammar!

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Grovelling Gramedia’s Book–Burning Bonanza – Appeasing Fanatics 

I’m reading the ‘online one,’ of course, not the paper edition, so don’t yet know if that shares the short-comings.

If so, will Gramedia, who own the JP, recall all today’s copies and subject them to the book-burning process for which they are notorious?