COLUMN: MIND YOUR LANGUAGE. Pedestrians are also road users
DAR ES SALAAM: The Speech by the Minister for Works when presenting his proposed Budget to Parliament recently, struck a chord with me and my students of “Financing Infrastructure Development”, at Ardhi University.
The front-page headlines in the three English papers that I consulted, all dated 21st May were in unison. “Government now turns to bonds to finance key road projects”, “Infrastructure Bonds in offing”, wrote the Good Citizen and the Daily Blog, respectively. The Custodian had a hopeful note: “Expanding Major Roads can be done with Bonds”.
In the opening paragraph, the Custodian’s reporter had this to say: “The government is set to introduce infrastructure bonds as a new financing model to fund ‘the’ major rehabilitation and strategic expansion of strategic highways”.
The use of the definite article “the”, suggests that the strategic highways have already been referred to. That not being the case, it is recommended to remove the article (the), or to add an adjective referring to those strategic highways.
One version of the sentence (without the article “the”) would be: “The government is set to introduce infrastructure bonds as a new financing model to fund major rehabilitation and strategic expansion of strategic highways”.
The other version has the article “the” but with an explanatory adjective: “The government is set to introduce infrastructure bonds as a new financing model to fund ‘the planned’ major rehabilitation and strategic expansion of strategic highways”.
The writer went on quoting the Minister for Works: “The Works ‘minister’, set out the plan ‘in presenting’ the ‘ministry’s’ estimates for ‘fiscal 2026/2027’, asserting that the plan is part of a broader strategy to modernise the transport infrastructure and accelerate the implementation of Vision 2050”.
“Fiscal 2026/2027”? Something is missing, since “fiscal” in an adjective. The missing word, a noun, is “year”: “the fiscal year, 2026/2027”.
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In a recast version of the sentence, we change the phrase “in presenting” to “while presenting”; and a number of words (eg ‘minister’) are capitalised, to reflect the fact that they are referring to a unique person or institution. Here is a revised version:
“The Works ‘Minister’, set out the plan ‘while presenting’ the ‘Ministry’s estimates for ‘the fiscal year 2026/2027’, asserting that the plan is part of a broader strategy to modernise the transport infrastructure and accelerate the implementation of the Tanzania Vision 2050”.
There is sad news on page 3 of the Custodian in a story titled: “RC office photographer killed, 7 injured in Shinyanga road crash”.
According to the Regional Police Commander, the accident was caused by negligence of one of the drivers: “who was travelling from Shinyanga to Tinde at high speed before ‘on head collision’ with the press vehicle”.
The most common form is “head-on collision”, not, “on head collision”. A head-on collision is one of the most dangerous types of vehicular accidents. It occurs when the front ends of two vehicles (or a vehicle and an immovable object) crash directly into each other, moving in opposite directions.
Roads will always pose serious danger, as long as drivers do not adhere to traffic regulations.
The headline on page 4 of the Custodian: “RC orders PCCB to investigate Chunya District Councils Bus terminal Project”, attracted my attention. Local residents are up in arms as this project is taking too long to complete, and as a result: “some (bus) operators are forced to pick up passengers directly from the main roads, posing a severe safety risk to ‘pedestrians and road users’”.
As a lover of the use of roads by all, the phrase: “pedestrians and road users” is very annoying. It implies that, in the view of the writer, pedestrians are not road users. That is far from the truth. The phrase should be: “pedestrians and ‘other’ road users”.
“Some (bus) operators are forced to pick up passengers directly from the main roads, posing a severe safety risk to ‘pedestrians and other road users’”.
The end of May, is nigh!
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