Here There and Everywhere

Just Bad English

I am adding a new catagory today called Just Bad English.

No, I am not going to troll your blogs looking for grammar mistakes or misspellings or unusual use of English. I have noticed that I am blogging in English, and that many of the Kuwaiti bloggers are blogging in their second language – that is tough enough without the Language Police lurking in the background, and that’s not my point, nor my interest.

If, however, you are writing for a newspaper, you are held to a higher standard, even if English is not your native tongue.

So tell me, in this article from the Arab Times Kuwait Crime News, how many people were arrested? What were they arrested for?

Meanwhile, a team of securitymen has launched a surprise inspection campaign in Ahmadi resulting in the arrest of two Kuwaitis wanted by law for various criminal charges and 105 jobless expatriates. The arrested individuals were referred to the concerned authorities.

I have another complaint. In the Kuwait Times, we often read of the police “suspecting” a car and pulling it over, or
“suspecting” some individuals and chasing them.

We don’t use “suspecting” that way.

There is suspicious behavior. People are suspected OF something – you can’t just look at a car and “suspect” it, you have to suspect it OF something – erratic driving? What made the police suspicious?

examples of good usage:

Police suspected him of being under the influence of drugs, and pulled him over.

He looked nervous, and police suspected him of being an illegal resident, so they asked to see his papers.

Police received a tip that a brothel was operating in Farwaniya, and based on that suspicion, raided the apartment, breaking down two iron doors in the process which gave the occupants enough time to escape through a hidden hatch in the back of the apartment.

A sharp eyes policeman spotted the car, which appeared to be one stolen a few nights previously. Suspicious that the driver was not the legal owner, they stopped him and interrogated him, and demanded to see his registration and residency papers.

(I made up all the above. Any resemblance to a case you may know is purely coincidental.)

I have also noticed that almost every suspect gives up his drug accomplices, pimp, fellow thieves, smugglers and drug stash after interrogation. I suspect Kuwait police have some extensive experience in encouraging these confessions. Most of these confessions seem to result in other valid arrests. Sometimes, I can believe, these confessions are made by people who are very very afraid. On the other hand, sometimes a confession elicited by fear of a lot of pain might be totally false.

How do you know the difference? What if someone experiences a lot of pain and confesses to a crime they did NOT commit? This means that an innocent man suffers and the one who committed the crime skates. This happens in every country in the world. (That is just a rant, not a language criticism, just a general question in my mind; how do we protect the innocent?)

February 15, 2008 Posted by intlxpatr | Blogging, Crime, ExPat Life, Humor, Just Bad English, Kuwait, Language, Living Conditions, News, Rants, Technical Issue, Words | "suspecting", suspected of | 10 Comments