When the English Language is at its Most Eloquent
JOURNAL
When the English Language is at its Most Eloquent
Whichever Country we are from, we all love our Native Language. Rightly so. We grow to become fond of and even in love with a second language, whose syllables, words and sentence construction we enjoy, especially when grammar construction is different to our native language.
My first language is English. It has been my tool in all my careers and yet, when confronted by Steven Poole in his superb book Word For Every Day of the Year I realise that my command of the English language in contrast to many is, quite simply, a dot or splodge on the page!
Always love your native language. It is your ancestral root, and we owe much to our ancestors in the same way that, one day, our descendants will owe much to us.
Take, for instance, this example I read this morning in the opening Chapter Four of Blowback by Miles Taylor, former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during the discredited 45th presidency, as well as Anonymous, the revelations by whistleblowing of just why that presidency was and remains so discredited.
Mr Taylor is quoting Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist, Issue Number 71 in the year 1788.
This is as living and vibrant today in 2023 as it was in 1788. It is a guiding light, as powerful as the beacon we shine from coastal lighthouses, as penetrating as the most searching laser beams to our satellites right out to our planet’s Thermosphere.
If we believe in freedom and democracy we have no problem with the 1788 Hamilton observation. If, however, we believe in MAGA, if we believe in conspiracy theory and deep state, then we will indeed have a problem. Some might be in the middle. But the floating voter is never quite sure what to believe or what to do.
Some might read discerning books to help their deliberation when November 2024 arrives. Others though, well that is asking too much. It would be like asking, in 1933, all those hapless Germans to immediately stop reading Mein Kampf, and I speak of the original German edition, not the watered-down international version.
3 September 2023
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Word for Every Day of the Year
Steven Poole
As shown on the inside back flap of this remarkable daily companion
Miles Taylor
Blowback
Principal Plate of this Journal Article is the striking portrait
of
Alexander Hamilton by John Trumball (1791).
In 1791, five New York merchants representing the Chamber of Commerce
commissioned John Trumbull to paint a full-length portrait
of the
Treasury Secretary
to commemorate
his civic and mercantile accomplishments
(Source ~ Wikipedia and World Wide Web).
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
