Answering a Pedant with his Folly?
December 29th, 2006 by Stephen
I mentioned before that I am something of a pedant. I also mentioned I am something of a sloppy pedant. A case in point occurred when I wrote the following:
> I don’t know about you, but I do not only speak English in an English
> class!
I meant that I speak English in other circumstances, and not just in an English class, but another pedant shot back with:
>If you’re gonna get pedantic, that sentence is ambiguous.
[At this point we will leace the interesting digression on whether "gonna" has become a legitimate verb auxiliary].
> It could mean that you also speak Zambezi in an English class.
I naturally replied:
As the Zambezi is a river and not a language, that is hardly likely.
However there are a number of languages spoken by the people who live
around the Zambezi. The river name itself comes from the language of
the Batonka tribe (originally from Malawi). Other languages spoken by
the people of the Zambezi include Thakwani, Sena and associated
dialects, Nyungwe, Nyanja, Marenje, Manyawa, Lolo, Kunda and Kokola.
