Illiterate him quite from your memory

To be a Malaprop is real fun (to others):

by Lionel Wijesiri

When I was a teenager, my English Literature teacher once told me that I might have descended from the historical Malaprop generation. For those of you who haven't heard of any Malaprop generation, let me enlighten you that Mrs Malaprop was a character in the famous Richard Sheridan's comedy "The Rivals," written in 1775. She had a habit of replacing words with incorrect and absurd utterances. Mrs. Malaprop once said, "Illiterate him quite from your memory" (obliterate) and "She's as headstrong as an allegory" (alligator)

English Language historians believe that's where we get the word malapropism from, though its real origin is in the French phrase mal a propos, meaning inopportune or not to the purpose.

I wouldn't really mind if someone calls me a malaprop because I am not the only person who fits that bill. There should be hundreds more and I know, at least three other people in my office. Let me give you a few instances. Selecting the menu over the office dinner party, our accountant confides in her new assistant: "I cannot eat crabs or any other crushed Asians."

The Personnel Manager advices the new-comer: "Good punctuation means not to be late." The Sales Executive narrating his experience over the recent disaster: "Flood damage was so bad they had to evaporate the village."

But the problem is when an average person like me, who holds a senior managerial post, uses a malapropism in reading or writing, the result is typically high hilarity and a severe dip in the "take me seriously" quotient.

For example, the other day I was reading a weekend magazine and came across a headline. "Colombo district to hit 1.6 million electrical volts soon". My first thought was that somebody in Colombo would have constructed an unusually-large Tesla coil capable of delivering violent, writhing discharges of artificial lightning at levels well over one and half million volts. "Nice idea for a fund-raising event," I thought myself. When I took another look at the newspaper, the heading has changed to "Colombo district to hit 1.6 million electoral votes soon".

Stimulating

As a young boy, during one rainy day I was reading a magazine article by Pearl Buck. In a moment, one of those enchanted sentences caught my eye. It went, "At dawn we set forth in sedan chairs whose poles rested on the shoulders of bare backed Chinese beavers."

My heavens, I gasped. The Chinese beaver must be a good deal larger than ours, and is obviously capable of being domesticated. At that point there was a thunder which jolted me into losing my place. When I settled down again, I realized that Mrs Buck and her party had been carried by Chinese bearers.

This tendency to transform words into something they are not would be of significance to a psychiatrist, but I do not want to be told what it implies. Besides I sometimes find the errors rather stimulating.

I might confess that the majority of the words I misread are in small print, and that my eyesight is not what it was. However, I sometimes make the same mistakes in bold-face advertisements.

A few years ago, a Departmental Store announced in their website in big bold letters calling all Sri Lankans planning to visit Europe in winter to call over at their showrooms for bargain sales - terminal underwear in half prices. The ad started me thinking about all those Sri Lankans arising in the dark of a dull morning and deliberately getting into their terminal underwear prior to venturing forth to the city. Their "we-who-are-about-to-die" frame of mind, while courageous, struck me as difficult to understand. It took me a while to take a second look at the headline to discover that their underwear was thermal.

Demons

My newspaper misreading usually occurs in the early morning when, bleary of eye and mind, I scan the headlines. Thus three odd decades ago, while sipping morning tea, I read: "Demons appear in three major cities,' which produced a wobble in my cup. I could visualise large groups of demons led by King Wesamuni (with Maha Sona assisting).

At Dhamma School they taught me that there are 32 torturous punishments he can hand out, including boiling, roasting, impaling, and pouring molten metal down the offender's throat.

King Wesamuni has a magical golden sword which can fly out of his hand, behead a thousand "with the rapidity of lightning" and return to his hand again, all of its own accord.

"Oh, boy," I thought, "We are in deep trouble and need help immediately." Halfway through this daydream, I glanced again at the headline to realise that it was "Demos appear in major cities" in protest of 13th amendment." It was merely a space-saving typesetter having shortened the word demonstrations to demos.

If my occasional visual disturbances are abnormal they at least give way to fantasies which are sometimes more entertaining than the actual printed words. That is why I would never dream of going for any course in remedial reading.