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That sentence took me back to my Class VII when I started learning from my Father the verb inflections for various tenses. If I recall my grammar right, that is an example of:
"Future Perfect Continuous Active Voice of Lead"
I don't know if that piece of knowledge has ever enriched me in my reading and writing English...but it was fun alright.
English was, is, and will be a foreign language for us Indians. And teaching a foreign language by laying stress on grammar from Day 1 is as obsolete nowadays as 16" (33 1/3 RPM) gramophone records. But that was how it was during my time in school. And Grammar was a scoring topic.
We started with 'conjugation' of 'eat': eat, ate, eaten...perhaps it was needed. But it could as well be imbibed from reading stories and fables in good English. But it was fun to conjugate 'lay' in its various manifestations and meanings:
1. lay...laid...laid
2. lie...lay...lain
3. lie...lied...lied (for good measure)
In addition to the past participle "laid", we have the present participle: "laying".
That was in school.
When we graduated to College, we were told that the "ing" thing need not always be a present participle...it can at times be a "gerund".
Let me cook up an example:
"I am running the race well"
Here, 'running' is a present participle. Take now:
"Running the race well is what I am doing"
Here, "running" is a gerund...and "doing" is the present participle.
Are we any wiser? But there it is!
In our school, we had to learn Hindi for all of six years. Fortunately, we didn't have to pass the exam...sitting for it would do. And the marks in Hindi were not added to the grand total in School Final...the marks were permanently recorded though in our SSLC Register for shaming...I got 34/100...second rank...English 85/100...first rank.
But I was keen on learning Hindi since it was our Rashtra Bhasha and I was then a patriot. But our Hindi Teacher knew only bookish Hindi...and our books were horrible...ask RKN. Our Teacher was not imported from UP or MP...the folks there loved to impose Hindi on us Southees but never agreed to come to Muthukur, stay there with family, and teach us good Hindi. So, we had an out-and-out local man who couldn't pass English and so became a Hindi pundit...posts were there for the asking. So, he would start from Hindi Grammar as soon as he could. And when I came to the seven inflections of the past tense I gave up. I still recall one of them:
"Hetu hetu mat bhuta kaal"
And the conjugations of the wicked "ne" pratyay....
And even our Teacher never knew if kitab was male, female or neuter...he had to look up.
Prof BCB stayed 14 years in England and did his schooling and Aeronautical Engg Degree there before returning to India and taking up a job at IIT KGP. And he was friends with me although 15 years my senior. I once asked him if I could ever speak English like an Englishman. And he was dubious. He said:
"Indians would tend to say: 'My dog is brown. It is a bloodhound'. But for an Englishman his dog is never an 'it'...either 'he' or 'she'..."
So much for grammar and usage.
And then we had this thing called figures of speech. The most wicked ones were the Metonymy and Synecdoche. The two animals were so alike that everyone was confused. Simply put, synecdoche is 'part for the whole'.
Let me rake up an example from a real-life scenario in the 1960s. In Delhi there was a procession of Communists and their Weekly rag boasted:
"Forty thousand feet were marching and shouting slogans"
Here, 'feet' is the part and it stands for the whole, i.e. 'men' and 'women'...obviously feet can't shout nor march on their own...a typical synecdoche. The Commies implied that the procession was twenty thousand strong but 'forty' looked a better force multiplier.
The Bharatiya Jan Sangh Organ retorted:
"Forty thousand feet need not imply twenty thousand humans"
(meaning many quadrupeds were also participating)
Not everyone agrees it is a synecdoche though...it could as well be a variant of metonymy.
Talking of metonymy brings us to Thurber's piece:
which starts like this:
And Miss Groby's forte was figures of speech. And she defined Metonymy as:
"Container for the thing contained"
like:
"That was a sweet cup"
Thurber was excited when he discovered the inversion:
"Thing contained for the container"
and gave an example to Miss Groby:
...Posted by Ishani
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"...Others will wonder what more there is to say about Cameron given that by 2015 he will have been leading the party for nearly 10 years..."
...James Forsyth The Spectator in DC, Edit Page Friday 11, January 2013
That sentence took me back to my Class VII when I started learning from my Father the verb inflections for various tenses. If I recall my grammar right, that is an example of:
"Future Perfect Continuous Active Voice of Lead"
I don't know if that piece of knowledge has ever enriched me in my reading and writing English...but it was fun alright.
English was, is, and will be a foreign language for us Indians. And teaching a foreign language by laying stress on grammar from Day 1 is as obsolete nowadays as 16" (33 1/3 RPM) gramophone records. But that was how it was during my time in school. And Grammar was a scoring topic.
We started with 'conjugation' of 'eat': eat, ate, eaten...perhaps it was needed. But it could as well be imbibed from reading stories and fables in good English. But it was fun to conjugate 'lay' in its various manifestations and meanings:
1. lay...laid...laid
2. lie...lay...lain
3. lie...lied...lied (for good measure)
In addition to the past participle "laid", we have the present participle: "laying".
That was in school.
When we graduated to College, we were told that the "ing" thing need not always be a present participle...it can at times be a "gerund".
Let me cook up an example:
"I am running the race well"
Here, 'running' is a present participle. Take now:
"Running the race well is what I am doing"
Here, "running" is a gerund...and "doing" is the present participle.
Are we any wiser? But there it is!
In our school, we had to learn Hindi for all of six years. Fortunately, we didn't have to pass the exam...sitting for it would do. And the marks in Hindi were not added to the grand total in School Final...the marks were permanently recorded though in our SSLC Register for shaming...I got 34/100...second rank...English 85/100...first rank.
But I was keen on learning Hindi since it was our Rashtra Bhasha and I was then a patriot. But our Hindi Teacher knew only bookish Hindi...and our books were horrible...ask RKN. Our Teacher was not imported from UP or MP...the folks there loved to impose Hindi on us Southees but never agreed to come to Muthukur, stay there with family, and teach us good Hindi. So, we had an out-and-out local man who couldn't pass English and so became a Hindi pundit...posts were there for the asking. So, he would start from Hindi Grammar as soon as he could. And when I came to the seven inflections of the past tense I gave up. I still recall one of them:
"Hetu hetu mat bhuta kaal"
And the conjugations of the wicked "ne" pratyay....
And even our Teacher never knew if kitab was male, female or neuter...he had to look up.
Prof BCB stayed 14 years in England and did his schooling and Aeronautical Engg Degree there before returning to India and taking up a job at IIT KGP. And he was friends with me although 15 years my senior. I once asked him if I could ever speak English like an Englishman. And he was dubious. He said:
"Indians would tend to say: 'My dog is brown. It is a bloodhound'. But for an Englishman his dog is never an 'it'...either 'he' or 'she'..."
So much for grammar and usage.
And then we had this thing called figures of speech. The most wicked ones were the Metonymy and Synecdoche. The two animals were so alike that everyone was confused. Simply put, synecdoche is 'part for the whole'.
Let me rake up an example from a real-life scenario in the 1960s. In Delhi there was a procession of Communists and their Weekly rag boasted:
"Forty thousand feet were marching and shouting slogans"
Here, 'feet' is the part and it stands for the whole, i.e. 'men' and 'women'...obviously feet can't shout nor march on their own...a typical synecdoche. The Commies implied that the procession was twenty thousand strong but 'forty' looked a better force multiplier.
The Bharatiya Jan Sangh Organ retorted:
"Forty thousand feet need not imply twenty thousand humans"
(meaning many quadrupeds were also participating)
Not everyone agrees it is a synecdoche though...it could as well be a variant of metonymy.
Talking of metonymy brings us to Thurber's piece:
"Here Lies Miss Groby"
which starts like this:
"Miss Groby taught me English composition thirty years ago. It wasn't what prose said that interested Miss Groby; it was the way prose said it. The shape of a sentence crucified on a blackboard (parsed, she called it) brought a light to her eye. She hunted for Topic Sentences and Transitional Sentences the way little girls hunt for white violets in springtime..."
And Miss Groby's forte was figures of speech. And she defined Metonymy as:
"Container for the thing contained"
like:
"That was a sweet cup"
Thurber was excited when he discovered the inversion:
"Thing contained for the container"
and gave an example to Miss Groby:
"..The next day in class I raised my hand and brought my curious discovery straight out before Miss Groby and my astonished schoolmates. I was eager and serious about it and it never occurred to me that the other children would laugh. They laughed loudly and long. When Miss Groby had quieted them she said to me rather coldly, 'That was not really amusing, James.' That's the mixed-up kind of thing that happened to me in my teens.
In later years I came across another excellent example of this figure of speech in a joke long since familiar to people who know vaudeville or burlesque (or radio, for that matter). It goes something like this:
A: What's your head all bandaged up for?
B: I got hit with some tomatoes.
A: How could that bruise you up so bad?
B: These tomatoes were in a can.
I wonder what Miss Groby would have thought of that one..."
...Posted by Ishani
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