As of late, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: a lot of native English speakers don’t have a good grasp of their own language. I’ve seen examples of this not only in an academic setting but also in business and (so called) professional journalism.
Recently I was listening to a speaker talk about challenges of managing change in an organization when he uttered the phrase:
“We were making money hand over foot.”
Yeah, that isn’t the cliche. The proper saying is:
“We were making money hand over fist.”
Why is this important? I guess it isn’t as its own isolated example, but let’s look at how often this mistake is made. If you do a search for “making money hand over foot” and one for “making money hand over fist” you’ll find 1,093 incorrect uses and 310,991 correct uses. That means about 99.65% of the time the phrase is used correctly. Not bad.
So let’s look at a slightly more obscure phrase: “taking the reins”. This phrase denotes when someone takes over power (as in taking the reins of a horse or a team of horses) from someone else. The word “reins” is easily confused with the homonyms “reigns” and “rains”. Doing some searches results in the following:
“taking the reins” – 24,576 results
“take the reins” – 58,951 results
“taking the reigns” – 8,934 results
“take the reigns” – 20,138 results
“taking the rains” – 34 results
“take the rains” – 361 results
This results in 29,467 incorrect uses and 83,527 correct uses of the phrase. That gives a correct usage rate of 73.92%. This low rate reflects the fact that even a lot of journalists don’t know the correct wording to use either. One example is this Associated Press article published in the Washington Post. I don’t know if AP writers have editors but this mistake is pretty blatant.
So why is this all important, especially now? With the recent story of the US national anthem being translated into Spanish, a lot of people have become upset. First, everyone should remember that like a handful of other countries (Sweden, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom), the U.S. has no official language. Second, if having everyone in the U.S. speak English is really that important, shouldn’t we be most concerned about the (in)ability of native English speakers and how the language will be propagated?
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I agree with you that mistakes like these are inexcusable. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people simply aren’t reading very much anymore. When you see words and phrases in print over and over again, you’re likely to notice and remember the proper spelling (assuming, of course, that they were spelled correctly in the first place).
To add to your collection: I recently saw a news article posted on Yahoo in which the author used the phrase “chalk full.” Apparently, she meant “chock full.”
Another one that gets butchered repeatedly: A lot of people think that the phrase is “tow the line,” when it is actually “toe the line.”
Actually, the MSM should simply avoid leaning on colloqualisms such as these to make themselves easier to understand. It should come as no surprise that the journalists that need these “crutches” would be those most likely to do so incorrectly.
As far as the National Anthem is concerned, I don’t see a problem with someone singing it in Spanish as long as they are properly moved by the tradition. However, I do believe that we need to have an official language and that it should be English. As much as the US should remain true to it’s roots and welcome immigrants from around the world, a common language will serve to strengthen understanding between communities and reduce conflicts.
Good thought!! Sanjay…In US, English is just a de facto.. I dont understand why so much huss and fuss over Spanish language….
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