An Assortment of Letters to CBSE & Other Organizations

Written on 12 October 2014

Dr Sadhana Parashar
Director (A,R,T & I)

CBSE

Dear Dr Parashar

An error in the Hindi translation of your letter of 25^th September, 2014 titled Swachh Bharat-Swachh Vidyalaya Campaign Expression Series on

Mahatma Gandhi and Sanitation from October 2^nd to October 15^th, 2014, available on http://180.149.247.102/sbsv/circular/Hindi.pdf reinforces one’s belief that the CBSE needs to improve not only its English but also its Hindi, understandably the mother tongue of your official translator.

Please refer to the expression in the subject : ... श्रृंखला ....  This is the wrong spelling of the word. Since gmail devnagari phonetic input tool doesn’t have the provision of the exact required font, I can’t exactly demonstrate the correct spelling here. However, I can explain that the way the word in question has been spelt more or less amounts to  श्रृं  =  श्+र+ऋ+ ङ्   whereas the first correct letter of the word should comprise only श् +ऋ + ङ्    

Please consult with a Hindi expert from either Kendriy Hindi Nideshalay or Agra-based Kendriy Hindi Sansthan (both under MHRD) or else an expert from Rajbhasha Vibhag (under the Ministry of Home Affairs) and let them make sure that the Hindi fonts software used by the CBSE has got the provision of writing the words like Shrinkhala and Shringaar correctly. Your spelling of the first letter (sanyuktakshar) of the word श्रृंखला can be used only for writing words like श्रीमान , श्रीमती, etc.

In order that the PM’s dream of good governance is realized, it is imperative that there is pursuit of excellence in all domains of governance.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely

H. Pd. Singh
http://eduspiritual.blogspot.com/

Written to Mr M C Sharma, Controller of CBSE Examinations on 3 April 2014

Dear Mr Sharma

While it is good to see that the CBSE has made the necessary corrections in the spelling of class 12 students’ roll numbers written in words on their exam Admission Cards, I regret to bring similar errors to your notice, which are words like ‘lakhs’ and ‘thousands’ that appear on the answer script front pages. These two words should be purged of the superfluous ‘s’, which is at present wrongly used.

I also take this opportunity to point out that your Class 12 Board Exam admission cards did not show the name of the exam that the students took in the month of March, which is All India Senior School Certificate Examination (AISSCE).

Please make sure that for the 2015 Board exams, the admission cards bear the name of the exam ‘All India Senior School Certificate Examination (AISSCE)’.

Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Yours sincerely

PS: Unlike Class 12 exams, your class 10 Board exam admission cards do show the name of the exam ‘All India Secondary School Examination (AISSE)’.

My Letter to Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK

Dear Sir / Madam

It is heartening to see that the correction suggested by me has been effected in the 8^th edition of the OALD. [con·cerned adjective 2. concerned (about / with sth) interested in sth: They were more concerned with how the other women had dressed than in what the speaker was saying—corrected form—…than with what the speaker was saying.

However, you must permit me to draw your kind attention to the following errors and anomalies that have come to my notice in recent months while using the new edition (online):

raja noun (also rajah)

Comment: Please note that the variation of the common Hindi word “Raja” is not “Rajah” but “Rajan” (pronounced as rɑːdʒən), which is basically a Sanskrit word also commonplace in Hindi texts. Your consultant on Indian origin words must be told that as a fundamental rule of the Hindi language (and virtually all Indian languages) what is written must be pronounced and what is articulated must be spelt. The relevant point here is that there exists no variation or derivative of either the Sanskrit word Rajan or the Hindi word Raja, that has an h sound in it—which though is usually true about many Sanskrit words. This h sound is technically called Visarga in the Sanskrit phonology. Thus, “Rajah” should be replaced with “Rajan”(rɑːdʒən).

 

shock noun (informal) Losing in the first round was a shock to the system (= it was a more of a shock because it was not expected).

Comment: I think the bracketed sentence it was a more of a shock… should be “it was more of a shock”—without a between was and more.

give verb

PhrasAl verbsrasal

give out 2 to stop working One of the plane's engines gave out in mid-Atlantic.

Comment: I think it is desirable to insert the article here, making it …the plane’s engines gave out in the mid-Atlantic.

credulous adjective

too ready to believe things and therefore easy to trick

SYNONYM gullibility

Comment: Obviously, the correct synonym will be gullible rather than gullibility.

 

affair noun

relationship

3 [countable] …usually when one or both of them is married to somebody else

Comment: Because of the conjunction or the correct expression should be …usually when one or both of them are married…

 

eye nounof storm

7 [singular] a/the eye of a/the storm… 

Comment: As the word eye starts with a vowel sound the correct expression will be an/the eye…

 

Apparently there appears to be ample scope for further improvement of the OALD.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With regards

Yours faithfully

Hareshwar P Singh

http://eduspiritual.blogspot.com/

Reply from the Principal Editor, Oxford ELT Dictionaries, Oxford, UK

Dear Mr Singh
Thank you for your list of queries concerning the 8th edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Let me take them in order.

raja NOUN (also rajah): I do not dispute what you say about the correct forms of this word in Hindi; however, OALD is concerned with the way words are used in English, and it is a fact that English borrows words from many languages without always respecting the rules of the languages from which it borrows. According to the 2-billion word Oxford English Corpus, this word is generally spelt 'raja' in English (over 3,000 citations); it is also occasionally spelt 'rajah' (but the 'h' is not pronounced, according to the rules of English phonetics), but this is rare (63 citations). The word 'rajan' does not appear in the OEC except as part of someone's name. So the entry in OALD8 is correct as it stands, but would probably be more correct if it indicated that 'rajah' is a 'rare' or 'less frequent' spelling, and we will certainly consider amending this when the dictionary reprints.

shock NOUN - you are quite correct that there is a redundant 'a' in the example that you cite. We will correct this when the dictionary reprints.

give out PHRASAL VERB: I think either is probably acceptable. (Actually, they both sound a bit odd; I think it should probably be changed to 'gave out in mid-air' or 'gave out in mid-flight' - both definitely without 'the'.)

credulous ADJECTIVE: You are quite right that the synonym should be 'gullible'. We will correct this when the dictionary reprints.

affair NOUN: This is a very awkward construction, whichever way you phrase it. It should be 'one of them is or both of them are' but that is very clumsy. It might be better to change 'is' to 'are' as you suggest, but it would still be grammatically incorrect.

eye NOUN: Actually, this expression is not used with the indefinite article and 'a' should simply be deleted; we will correct this when the dictionary reprints.

bow1 VERB: The example that you cite is correct as it stands. Your alternative would also be correct, but not quite so idiomatic.

bow NOUN: The example is acceptable as it stands. 'a slight bow to her head' sounds odd, as does 'gave her head a slight bow'.

I hope this answers your queries satisfactorily and that you continue to find the OALD a useful resource.

Yours sincerely
Diana Lea
Principal Editor
ELT Dictionaries
Oxford University Press
-----Original Message-----
From: hareesh505@gmail.com [mailto:hareesh505@gmail.com]
Sent: 19 January 2011 17:58
To: ELT Enquiry
Subject: ELT Website Contact Form (Worldwide)
Name : Hareshwar P Singh
Country : Indonesia
School : Texmaco DPS International School Address : #^36 Texmaco Colony, Klari Payung City : Karawang timur Postcode : 41300 Telephone : +62-89655822433

Postscript: The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary incorporated the corrections pointed out by me in its 9^th edition published on 19 January, 2015. They had earlier included my correction of one serious prepositional error in their 8^th edition (for the entry concerned, sense No. 2 in its sentence example.)

Correspondence with editors of Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Dear Sir / Madam

Browsing through your dictionary while preparing teaching material for my GMAT class on “faults in parallel construction” I came across the following sentence in your dictionary under the entry “academic’:

“He was offered a teaching job and decided to return to academic life.”

As in the first clause “he” has been used in the passive voice whereas in the second clause in the active voice, I wonder if the above sentence is elegant enough and conforms to the rules of parallel construction. With all humility at my command I suggest the following alternatives:

1. When he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life.

2. Soon after he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life.

3. On being offered a teaching job he decided to return to academic life.

4. With the offer of a teaching job he decided to return to academic life.

In order to avoid violating the rules of parallelism the simplest solution is inserting an extra “he” after and, before decided:

“He was offered a teaching job, and he decided to return to academic life”

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards

Hareshwar P Singh

Reply from the associate editor of Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Dear Hareshwar P Singh,

Yes, technically the sentence "He was offered a teaching job and decided to return to academic life" provides an example of faulty parallelism. This kind of construction is, however, quite common, even in published, edited prose. You can certainly make the sentence more technically correct by adding "he" after "and" if you like, but in all but the most formal writing the sentence as it is will be fine.

Your first three suggestions all continue the use of the passive voice, so they will not correct the faulty parallelism. The fourth might be made workable in a sentence like "With the offer of a teaching job on the table, he decided to return to academic life."

Sincerely,
Emily Brewster

My Reply to Ms. Brewster

Dear Ms. Brewster

Thank you very much for your kind response. Please forgive me for claiming a little more of your valuable time.

You write, “Your first three suggestions all continue the use of the passive voice, so they will not correct the faulty parallelism.” My position is that my first three suggestions, in spite of using the passive voice, don’t contain the faults of parallelism.

You have apparently contradicted yourself in your letter. You write “You can certainly make the sentence more technically correct by adding "he" after "and" if you like”—in which case the revised sentence will read as “He was offered a teaching job, and he decided to return to academic life.” For all practical purposes, the first part / clause is in the passive voice while the second one is in the active voice. If it is acceptable to you, then why do you object to the first of my suggested solutions, “When he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life”? Please note that conforming to the rules of parallelism I have used the conjunction “when” to separate one “he” in the passive voice and another “he” in the active voice. Needless to say, my above sentence can also be written as “He decided to return to academic life when he was offered a teaching job.”

Now let me take up my other two suggested solutions. The first is:

“Soon after he was offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life.”

Please note that just like my first sentence, I have here separated the two he’s by using the conjunction “after”.

My next suggested solution is:

“On being offered a teaching job, he decided to return to academic life.” This is a standard English construction which starts with a participle clause. Let me quote the following sentence from Michael Swan’s Oxford Practical English Usage (411.6):

“On being introduced, British people often shake hands.”

Let me quote another sentence from John Eastwood’s Oxford Guide to English Grammar (135.6)

“Not having been informed, we were completely in the dark.” Such constructions using a participle clause are grammatically correct and don’t involve the violation of the rules of parallelism.

I do not claim to be a scholar of English. Only, I want to learn correct English to be an English teacher worth my salt.

With regards

Hareshwar P Singh

Reply from Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Dear Hareshwar Singh,

I apologize: I'm afraid I answered your previous e-mail too hastily. The alternate sentences you propose do indeed correct the faulty parallelism in the original sentence.

For your interest I include below an article from our usage dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.  

Sincerely,

Emily Brewster

_______________________________

Emily A. Brewster

Associate Editor

Merriam-Webster, Inc.

www.merriam-webster.com

www.wordcentral.com

www.learnersdictionary.com

www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com

www.merriam-websterunabridged.com 

Yet Another Issue with editor of Merriam-Webster Dictionaries

-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Cislo
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 8:30 AM
To: Michael Belanger
Subject: FW: [Copy of E-mail sent to mwsales@m-w.com] New Inquiry Submitted

My Original Letter
Please refer to 'tone' in your online thesaurus.
Why not include 'note' as one of the synonyms of 'tone' as the vice versa has been done in your entry 'note'?
Your own example is:
<spoke with a note of irritation in her voice>
Another example: "There was a note of irony in his voice."--Oxford Dictionary
Thanks
HP Singh

Their Reply to Me

Dear Mr. Singh:

Your query was forwarded to me, and I am happy to respond. Sorry about the delayed response.

Your suggestion has merit, as the word groups to which "tone" and "note" belong certainly have some overlapping of meaning. For reasons that are too complicated to go into right now, I am going to present the two word groups as they appear in the print version of the thesaurus. In an effort to spare the online user the burden of clicking on links, the online version splices information that would force the book user to flip between pages. In the book edition of the thesaurus the word groups are at the entries for "aura" and "style":

Aura

a special quality or impression associated with something <the monastery perched high on a mountaintop had an aura of unreality and mystery about it>

Synonyms: air, ambience (or ambiance), aroma, atmosphere, climate, flavor, halo, karma, mood, nimbus, note, odor, patina, smell, temper, vibration(s)

Related Words: aureole (or aureola), mystique, romance; genius loci; feel, feeling, sensation, sense, spirit; attribute, character, characteristic, image, mark, notion, peculiarity, picture, property, trait; color, illusion, overtone, semblance, suggestion, tone

Style

a distinctive way of putting ideas into words <I correctly identified the quotation because I recognized Mark Twain's inimitable style>

Synonyms: fashion, locution, manner, mode, phraseology, tone, vein

Related Words: address, delivery, elocution; archaism, colloquialism, regionalism; acceptation, connotation, denotation, expression, idiom

Thesaurus entries are individually crafted by real people (in so far as an editor can be called a real person). How to shape an entry and what to include in the list of "Related Words" is always a subjective decision. As editors we always try to keep in mind the meaning shared by the listed synonyms. In this case, the meanings are "a special quality or impression associated with something" and "a distinctive way of putting ideas into words." I think that if one looks at the meaning given at the "style" word group, one might see why the editor did not conclude that the synonyms at "aura" were particularly relevant. On the other hand, with each new revision of the thesaurus, we are always prepared to rethink an entry. We will certainly keep your revision in mind for the next edition.

Thanks for your interest.

Sent to me by Ms. Brewster

(From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:)

Faulty Parallelism

     Faulty parallelism is a term used by composition teachers for the placement of different structures in coordination with each other. Very often such faulty parallelism occurs with the conjunctions "and" and "or" with such other coordinators as "either" and "neither." Here are a couple of made-up examples for illustrative purposes:

The old car was a relic and rusty.

To drink heavily and taking too many drugs are bad for your health.

     These examples--one from the teacher's guide to an English text and the other from a text reported in a technical journal--show the vice in a plain and simple form. In the first a noun and an adjective are coordinated; in the second, an infinitive phrase and a participial phrase. Those who teach composition in high school or in college are necessarily very fierce on such constructions.

     But when we get away from the writing of the tyro and into the world of the professional and presumably polished writer, we have a different problem. Faulty parallelisms still occur, but they tend to be almost invisible. This new invisibility would suggest that in edited prose faulty parallelism may generally be accounted a venial sin--if the writer doesn't notice it and the editor doesn't notice it and the reader doesn't notice it, how serious can it be?

     Moreover, what if the usage writer doesn't notice it? In Strunk & White 1959 we find this rule (printed in boldface italics in the book):

15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form.

     This is followed by numerous examples of faulty parallelism, complete with corrected versions. We assume that E. B. White, who presumably polished this up from Strunk's original, believed in the rule. E. B. White the grammarian, at least. What about E. B. White the essayist? Joseph M. Williams, in "The Phenomenology of Error," (College Composition and Communications, May 1981) quotes this passage:

I have written this account in penitence and in grief, as a man who failed to raise his pig, and to explain my deviation from the classic course of so many raised pigs. The grave in the woods is unmarked, but Fred can direct the mourner to it unerringly and with immense good will ... --"Death of a Pig," Essays of E. B. White, 1977

Did you notice any faulty parallelisms there? (Williams says there are two.) But White presumably didn't notice any, and neither have most of his readers.

     Here are a few more examples:

The award, which carries a $1,000 cash prize with it, goes to a trade-book editor under 40 who has shown special talent in discovering and/or getting the best work out of his authors--Victor S. Navasky, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 15 Apr. 1973

... the stripes are either plainer or appear more commonly in the young-- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859

In the Warrington family, and to distinguish them from other personages of that respectable race, these effigies have always gone by the name of `The Virginians.'--W. M. Thackeray, The Virginians, 1857 (in A. S. Hill 1895)

... a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin, and who had written a book about petals--Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, 1857 (in Hill)

... before I was capable, either of Understanding my Case, or how to Amend it--Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1722

You could probably find such examples by the dozen, if you were to sharpen your eye so as to be able to detect them readily. These are, as we said, venial sins; they are not ornaments or nice turns of phrase to be imitated. We think you should try to avoid them in your writing. But if you slip, no one may notice.

 

 

Correspondence with the reference editor of Macmillan Dictionary

 

Dear Sir/Madam

While looking up the word reticent (which is an adjective), I found the following synonyms in your online Thesaurus. Apparently they are all wrong as the synonym for an adjective should necessarily be an adjective:

reticent - thesaurus entry

adjective

Synonyms or related words for this sense of reticent

Being careful about what you say: imply, get at, convey, hedge, fudge, evade, skirt, parry, intimate, mince (your) words...

I look forward to hearing from you.

HP Singh

Their Reply

Stephen Bullon via server12.kayako.net to me

show details 30 Jun (1 day ago)

Hello
thanks for getting in touch which is about the thesaurus entry at reticent. You’re right that the entries in the list are not adjectives, but it is a list of “synonyms or related words”, and in this case, the words are related in meaning even though they are not the same part of speech.
Best regards
Stephen Bullon

Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus: Free English Dictionary Online

Ticket History Hareshwar Singh (Client) Posted On: 29 Jun 2011 07:16 AM

Ticket Details
Ticket ID: OJD-359669
Department: Dictionaries
Priority: High
Status: Open

My Reply to the above Letter

Dear Mr. Bullon

True, the words are related in meaning. However, a more honest approach would be to replace the text in question with some or all of the following examples:

close, close-mouthed, taciturn, tight-lipped, uncommunicative, quiet, reserved, silent, discreet, prudent; furtive, secretive, unforthcoming, restrained, coy, demure, modest and buttoned-up.

But if you are hell-bent on retaining your old text, you may consider modifying it to read “a reticent person is careful about what they say: imply, get at, convey, hedge, fudge, evade, skirt, parry, intimate, mince (their) words..”.

Regards

HP Singh