Ambiguous Tree Snakes

I have recently been informed, by one who knows about such things, that Tree Snakes do not eat trees.

This is confusing. After all, Rat Snakes eat rats, presumably.

It is understood that King Cobras and King Snakes do not eat Kings because, after all, there are insufficient Kings to go around to satisfy the dietary habits of legless reptiles.

But still. One should be careful when naming animals.

There is a shop in the village where I live that is called ‘Floral Heaven’. It leaves me to wonder if this is where flowers go when they die.

Is this another carelessly applied descriptor?

When I was working in the People’s Republic of China we customarily drove past a large car showroom every morning and evening en route to the office in Guangzhou.

In large letters it said, “Guangzhou Noble World Auto Service Centre,” in amongst a plethora of Chinese characters.

One morning I asked my interpreter what it meant. He applied considerable thought to this problem before telling me that, from the Chinese characters, he determined that the actual translation should be, “Prestigious Vehicles of the World Service Centre, Guangzhou.”

True enough there were emblems underneath the sign that represented all the top marques one would expect to see applied to such an epithet.

Of course, it is easy to laugh at the mistakes made by people who have English as a second language in their attempts to master the nuances of English especially when faced with the dichotomy that is American English and British English.

There is, naturally, only ‘English’. ‘English US’ and ‘English UK’ exists only in the mind of Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation.

Only one ‘English’ exists and that is the English as used by residents of the British Isles.

American English, Australian English and South African English as well as other forms from Nigeria, for example, are colloquial, derived or dialectic English.

None of them should be confused with the real thing.

President Roosevelt said to Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference during World War 2 that we (America and Britain) are “divided by a common language”.

He was correct.

On ‘Facebook’, for example, there is a popular application where someone can ‘poke’ you. This may be fine elsewhere but, in UK, this could be regarded as an offensive action.

The TransAtlantic variations in the language can create problems but it is a problem that has been going on for generations. It is not new.

There are, as I have described in a previous ‘Blog’, sayings that have progressed down the years that have been ascribed to either side of the ‘Big Pond’. “Son of a gun” is one such that many people believe began in the USA. As I described in that previous ‘Blog’ it is actually an old Royal Naval saying from the days of sailing ships.

Thus the language changes. We have, on our side, adopted and now use ‘Americanisms’ gleaned from films and TV programmes and they, over there, still use terms that were generated by past generations over here.

New words are included in the lexicons on an almost annual basis. The word ‘selfie’ is now accepted as, no doubt, will the word ‘wefie’ in time.

Descriptors. We should be careful how we use them and apply them.

As writers we need to be constantly aware of the dangers of ambiguities that can be misleading and detract from the plot.

Tree Snakes don’t really eat trees…