Suella syntax

I love the English language. It’s versatile, poetic, adaptable, complex, intriguing. And difficult. By comparison, the German language is easy. It’s rule-driven; there are lots of rules and they are applied and obeyed consistently. Well, it is German. Once you get used to the fact that in certain circumstances some verbs go at the very end of the sentence, and other verbs separate and only the first part goes at the end of a sentence, it’s a doddle. Mark Twain would disagree. He hated German and even made some money out of his loathing.

As with many other languages, all German nouns are designated male, female or neuter. I would have made a joke about the wokerati looking to banish such non-inclusive language, but Cambridge University has stolen my thunder by already teaching non-gendered German. Hello! It’s not Cambridge’s language to bastardise. In any event, I thought the woke* were only too ready to shout ‘cultural appropriation’ at the drop of a hat. Well, Cambridge has dropped a whole millinery down the toilet with this one.

Although the English language doesn’t have gendered nouns, i.e. we only have one set of articles (a/an/the), we do have gendered pronouns for the different sexes. Males – born with male reproductive organs – are he/him/his; females – born with female reproductive organs – are she/her/hers. You want to break that rule? Go ahead. But in return you shouldn't criticise me for sticking with it.

English also has rules, but they can be broken or ignored if the sentence sounds less clumsy and makes more sense when it’s ‘wrong’. As for French, it’s all idiots idioms.

The flexibility of English can also be its downfall. Take the other day, for example, when I was in a pub (a normal day then) ordering lunch for me and Hubby. I ordered starters of crab terrine for him and devilled chicken livers for me, and two grilled haddock for mains.

“Is that altogether?” asked the lady behind the bar with the piercing through her nose.

“Yes please,” I responded, handing over my credit card to pay for both me and Hubby ‘altogether’ as opposed to separately.

Some minutes later, the lady with the piercing through her nose brought the starters.

“Do you want your mains now?” she asked.

“Er no thank you,” I said hesitantly.

“Well, you said you did but I thought that was odd. I’ll go tell the chef.”

Putting our previous exchange into context, I ordered two starters and two mains. Our table was right there in front of the bar so she could see we were just a couple and not a foursome so why would she ask if it was ‘altogether’ as in all the dishes brought out at the same time? No wonder I misunderstood her. Maybe the piercing through her nose had also pierced her brain.

That misunderstanding, courtesy of the English language, is puerile compared to my next salvo.

One word led to the death from suicide of a wonderful headteacher: ‘inadequate’ – a judgement by Ofsted inspectors to a previously outstanding school. In some contexts, the word is accurate and harmless. For example, the number of chips with my fish is inadequate. Or, her explanation for her rudeness was inadequate. But in an Ofsted report, it means ‘failure’. To a dedicated, caring, conscientious professional, it’s devastating. 1) Is the English language at fault? 2) Was the assessment of ‘inadequacy’ wrong? 3) Is Ofsted’s assessment scale wrong? From newspaper reports, it sounds as if 2) and 3) are the culprits, mainly 2). The four Ofsted rankings are: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate. ‘Requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ mean the same thing to all intents and purposes. But the former engenders some hope: the latter, despair.

It's alleged that the ‘inadequate’ ranking was prompted partly by the sight of kids ‘flossing’ (it’s a dance, not a teeth-cleaning ritual) and the inspectors deemed this to be evidence of the sexualisation of children, which means the school was failing in its safeguarding duties. And some paperwork hadn’t been completed correctly. No hope for anyone then. I wonder if the poor teacher despaired, not just because of the inadequate rating, but because of the reasons for the rating, which were so inadequate that she couldn’t see how she could possibly dig herself and her beloved school out of the hell-hole to which they had been consigned. I’m all for schools and teachers being independently assessed, but not brutalised. And I’m pretty sure the Ofsted inspection team who, in all innocence, ranked the school as inadequate also feel brutalised. They were doing their job, following guidelines. The rot runs much deeper than individuals.

Someone else who must feel brutalised but to a lesser extent is poor old Suella Braverman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sticking up for her because she’s trying to stick up for Blighty by defeating the people smugglers. Has she got it right? Perhaps not, but at least she’s looking at it through the lens of realism and pragmatism, not pies in Disneyland skies. It’s not her policy preferences that have attracted all the ire. It’s her use of language. I really don’t understand the horrified reaction to the terms ‘swarm’ and ‘invasion’ when describing boatloads of unidentified and unidentifiable illegals arriving here. A bit hard-hitting and maybe not the most diplomatic words in context for a Home Secretary to use, but certainly not a call to arms to the far-right as has been claimed. Crazies don’t need incitement. They’ll do their crazy stuff whatever.

The English language is full of colourful words that mean different things at different times, like ‘inadequate’. Other words can be borrowed from their usual context and applied poetically elsewhere. ‘Swarm’, as in bees, is an appropriate example. Sometimes these poetic applications don't work; sometimes they do. Sometimes it's a bit in-between. What if an ordinary resident on the south coast or Skegness had used ‘swarm’ or ‘invasion’, calling it as they saw it in a shovel-is-a-shovel kind of way? Would they be rebuked as much? We need to be careful when and at what volume we criticise anyone for using the English language in a way that doesn’t sit perfectly with the same-old-same-old, because that’s a further erosion of free speech: not only limiting what we can discuss, but limiting how we can discuss it. People who deny others their freedom of speech, what are they afraid of? Being proved wrong? Yup.

It actually gets worse for poor Suella. She’s been crucified for her body language as well as her spoken language. She had the temerity to laugh in Rwanda. From the photo it looks as if she’s sharing a joke with her hosts. No one other than they know what they were laughing at. Perhaps someone farted. I had a fit of the giggles at a funeral once when my cousin nearly fell into her mother’s grave because her skyscraper heels wobbled in the soft ground. Who knows when the humour fairy is going to strike. Suella’s detractors have lost the argument, if not the plot, when they resort to criticising her laughing and don’t know what she’s laughing at.

She's been in trouble before because of her language. According to Wiki, in 2019 she said, "We are engaged in a battle against Cultural Marxism". Her use of the term Cultural Marxism was initially condemned as hate speech by other MPs, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate, amongst others. Suella stood her ground then as well, denying that the term was an antisemitic trope, saying, "We have culture evolving from the far left which has allowed the snuffing out of freedom of speech, freedom of thought. ... I'm very aware of that ongoing creep of Cultural Marxism, which has come from Jeremy Corbyn." (She could have said, I’m very aware of that ongoing creep Jeremy Corbyn.)

After meeting her afterwards, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said that she is "not in any way antisemitic", adding that it believed that she did not "intentionally use antisemitic language", while finding that she "is clearly a good friend of the Jewish community" and that they were "sorry to see that the whole matter has caused distress".

As Suella, a barrister, would say: I rest my case. M’Lud.

*I'll re-publish my old-regime blog at some stage, in which I explain the meaning(s) of the term 'woke'. In a nutshell, I subscribe to the Doyle / Titania interpretation.

*Now republished here