Moanlish

It wouldn’t be a trip to England if I didn’t have a moan about English...

“The ball probably hits the bar; it comes down to Nugent who taps it in!”

So … erm … goal, GOAL, GOAL!!!

Well, no actually … this is just a brain-dead ITV football commentator who has never learned that it can be quite handy to use conditionals when you speak English if the things you want to talk about didn’t actually happen. The only concession to the conditional tenses is the adverb “probably”. That is a bit of a giveaway … but not enough.

What actually happened was that the keeper tipped the ball over the bar preventing Nugent from getting the chance to score and what this illiterate doughnut of a commentator wanted to say was, “the ball would probably have hit the bar (if the keeper hadn’t tipped it over), and then it just might have come down to Nugent who could maybe have tapped it in.”

This berk was the “expert” teamed with a match commentator who kept on saying, “that’s the sikth corner of the game … we are in the sikth minute …” another one of my long-term bugbears (see: Sick of Sikth)

In the Sunday Times this sentence jumped out at me:

“The universe runs on nuclear power, why not us?”

It made me blink that one, and I had to think about it – I mean you can’t say, “… why not we?” but you could say, “… why can’t we?”

And that’s the Sunday Times!!! And the BBC is by no means immune to the kind of Stephen-King-horror-grammar that makes you jump in shock.

BBC1 News reporting on Prince Harry/William (can never remember which is which) who is in the army and who might have to go with his squadron to Iraq:

“… so, it could be that Prince Harry/William’s squadron and him will now be sent to Iraq …”

Him? HIM!!!??? His squadron and HIM!!!?????

Still the choicest bloops come from the footy commentators. Last night as Man Utd ripped Roma to pieces the “expert” had this to say about Ronaldo:

“Well, Ronaldo certainly bears comparison with the incomparable George Best…”

Ho hum.