Do You Know?

I did as requested and the reply from someone in authority there was quite interesting and informative.

It seems to have been a case of mishearing. In Germany, the stadia (or “stadiums” — both plurals are correct) each has a name which is naturally in German, and it was the German name which the announcer had used.

eg Olympiastadion — pronounced “stad - ion,” (not “stay - dion”) ; Westfalenstad - ion; Fritz Walter stad - ion, etc. Is she forgiven?

The mistake which she made was in not pronouncing with clarity the final syllable “ion,” so that it could not have sounded like “ium -”

I am happy to have been of some help in clarifying the issue.

Someone also called to ask me whether she should say “of who” or “of whom,” and it struck me immediately that I had not done a thorough job in the article in which I was sarcastically ridiculing the way in which old-fashioned teachers taught, particularly in reference to prepositions.

I had referred to the unnecessary rubbish they taught children involving definitions of Parts of Speech. Concerning prepositions I had stated that children had to rehearse:

“A preposition is a word that shows the relationship between two or more objects.”

But here is where I failed miserably. I did not add the following information which was always given:

“A preposition is always followed by the Objective Case. The prepositions are: (Note carefully, not “Some of the prepositions are” but “The prepositions are”) : at, to, on, in, up, upon, of, for, from, by, between, beside, below, around, above, down, during and except.”

I figure they must have gone so far as to calculate which were the prepositions children would normally come across.

I do not remember where or how this came in, but I am sure they would have taught the children how to distinguish between a preposition and a conjunction, as in the case of the word “than.”

“Crap, all crap,” as the young generation consider it.

I must admit, however, that there would have been no need for the person to have asked me whether she should say “of who” or “of whom” if she had learnt that the word “of” is a preposition, and it is always followed by the objective case “whom,” not “who.”

There must have been some method in the madness of those old-fashioned teachers. The point is that it worked, “crap” or “no crap.”

Do not for one moment imagine that I am suggesting a return to all that “rubbish.” But surely, the modern generation should be able to come up with some method of teaching their students so that even simple constructions in English do not continue to be a pitfall for them.