At 3:34 am local time, February 27th, a devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The photo above inspired me to reread the literary account of another earthquake in the same country but almost 400 years ago. Written in 1807, Kleist's novella The Earthquake in Chile has lost nothing of its horror. The original German version Das Erdbeben in Chili is also available on the internet.

It all depends

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams

And so much depends upon the right preposition matched with its object beside the verb.

Prepositions are the little – and very tricky – words that define the relation between the parts of a sentence, and there is a huge difference between thinking up a solution or thinking about one, between talking about one’s neighbor and talking with him.

In itself, a word like about or up is rather meaningless, but combined with other words prepositions help determine when or where or under what conditions something happened. And yet, they are such mischievous troublemakers. Why do we have dinner at our house but prepare it in the kitchen? Why is he under stress and she is at ease? Trusting our ears will not always yield the correct result as the following sentences, all taken from major newspapers, illustrate.

Union membership for men dropped 11.4%. While the membership fee for a certain group may drop, membership among men has dropped.

Mrs. Name concurred in this sit-tight strategy. In fact, she concurred with it, which is just another way to say, she agreed with it.

Warner Bros. romantic comedy "Valentine's Day" seduced an estimated $10.4 million from about 4,400 screens in 58 markets. The comedy may have seduced movie goers in 58 markets to spend $10.4 million. It certainly didn’t seduce any money from screens.

Max wrote about his lifelong embarrassment of his brother Nat. Max probably wrote about his embarrassment at this brother’s behavior or that Nat’s behavior was an embarrassment to him.

A movement of Mahler would indicate that a certain person by the name of Mahler made a particular move. Yet, the author wrote about Gustav Mahler’s symphonies and thus about a movement by Mahler.

The odds are definitely against any odds for promotion but very strongly in favor of the odds of being promoted; and someone who finds himself in such an auspicious situation should not be frugal about asking his boss for a raise but simply be frugal and not ask for a 20% increase.

A perfect face-lift shall ensure that someone will never suffer through an overarched eyebrow. This sentence raises eyebrows because it is an example of placing a preposition where in fact none is needed.

The person who suffers such damaging plastic surgery then may need some pampering and decide to stow away to her favorite spa. Nothing against some pampering, but at her favorite spa.

High school’s last year didn’t yield anything other than to make one an unwed mother and a couple of them into victims of major car collisions. Why should the same situation make "one a mother" and "others into victims"? The preposition into is as much a surplus as is – in the author’s opinion – twelfth grade.

Some politicians claim that health care reform would be a great help towards struggling families. Others believe that they should rethink the whole plan and start over from a clean sheet of paper. Let’s start over with a clean sheet and make sure that the plan will be of help to families.

The crucial question is whether we know of prepositions or know something about them. When in doubt, a good dictionary will provide the correct answer.

Here is a good list of words that require particular prepositions.

A satirical elegy

A Satirical elegy
On the Death of a Late Famous General
by Jonathan Swift

His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age, too, and in his bed!
And could that Mighty Warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well, since he's gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now:
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He'd wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the news-papers we're told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
'Twas time in conscience he should die.
This world he cumber'd long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that's the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow's sighs, nor orphan's tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that, his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he dy'd...

The resistance movement against Webster, Oxford, Longman, MLA and other sentinels of the Standard English Advancement Act, short Sea Act, has finally gained enough momentum to throw off the tyranny of the language czars. For years, the movement, calling itself Sons and Daughters of Liberty, has objected to the Act for a variety of reasons, especially because it violates the right to free expression. The movement has pledged to abstain from abiding by grammar rules, successfully unloaded the English language of burdensome syntax conventions, and finally dumped 342 chests filled with dictionaries and style manuals into Boston Harbor.
Thousands of people watched and attended an ensuing mass meeting during which a resolution was passed based on a similar resolution promulgated already in 1905 in Otto Jesperson’s Growth and Structure of the English Language. Jesperson praised the happy casualness of the English language which is “laid out seemingly without any definite plan, and in which you are allowed to walk everywhere according to your own fancy without having to fear a stern keeper enforcing rigorous regulations.”
No one but a few mossbacks will bemoan the demise of grammar. The rest will heave a sight of relief: no more lost sleep over absurd rules based on Latin, a language deader than dead. Americans have severed their ties to the old world once more, declared their independence and, beginning immediately, will no longer concede the authority of a language legislature which does not represent the majority.



The official announcement is available in a
print and an audio version.The latter might be easier to follow since most citizens already are used to hearing lawmakers' garbled communiqués.

Ah ha, boy, say’st thou so?

Fred R. Shapiro digs into movie misquotations that have made their way into everyday language, albeit sometimes distorted. It is almost a pity that Mae West never spoke the line "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me."
Quoting and misquoting have become almost as common as speaking and misspeaking. Yet, it is not always the correctness of a quote – or its incorrectness for that matter – that ruins a cited line. More often it is the way in which a writer implements quotes in his own text. So, let’s just haggle a little bit with The Haggler, David Segal.
Segal’s piece One Compliment, But Two Complains investigates Samsung’s wanting customer service. One Mr. Fowler seems to be among the luckier ones.

Mr. Fowler said the company called him twice in one day. ‘What would it take to make you completely happy with Samsung?’ Mr. Fowler said a case manager asked him. ‘A total refund,’ Mr. Fowler said he replied. Instead, Mr. Fowler said the case manager offered him a six-month extended warranty on the new DVD player, which soon arrived in the mail. Mr. Fowler says the DVD works perfectly.
… And what of that irksome three-repair policy? Samsung said that “while we do have a guideline that says a product should be exchanged after three repair attempts, the number is meant to be a maximum limit,” not a minimum.
Mr. Wong [another customer], meanwhile, had already heard from Samsung. … A Samsung employee called to offer a $50 Best Buy gift certificate, Mr. Wong said. Actually, the employee called to say the certificate had already been sent via FedEx.’If they had asked, I would’ve declined,’ Mr. Wong said by e-mail.

Ah ha, boy, say’st thou so? (Hamlet I.V)

The Haggler invites everybody to send him an e-mail, but “keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key.” Dear Haggler, go easy on those s-a-y keys!


What you can say instead of say:
acknowledge, add, adduce, affirm, allege, altercate, argue, articulate, ask, assert, believe, call for, challenge, claim, clarify, compare, connclude, consider , contradict, contend, convey, debate, declare, defend, deliberate, describe, differentiate , disclose, discuss, dispute, distinguish, divulge, elucidate, emphasize, enumerate, estimate, examine, explain, expound, expose, express, focus, illuminate, illustrate, imply, inquire, insist, interpret, introduce, justify, maintain, mention, note, offer, opine, points out, pose, posit, postulate, present, profess, pronounce, propose, prove, provide, put forth, relate, remark, render, report, require, reveal, show, state, suggest

It is really one of my favorite dictionaries, the Longman Advanced American Dictionary. Among its great features are the Thesaurus inserts, which explain the slightly different meanings of so-called synonyms. Under “H,” for instance, the user can learn more about the variety of words used to describe hair color: fair or blonde means yellow or very light of color, strawberry blonde indicates a light red-blonde, and a towhead is someone with very blonde hair. Yet, the entry for blonde tells the user that it is another spelling of blond, used when talking about a woman. The avid dictionary user thus concludes that there are no male strawberry blondes, and only women are real towheads. Don’t we dumb blondes love that!