Figures of speech in English grammar and correct use of tenses

Photo: Courtesy

On a light note, if you are conversant with the word ‘shokolokobangoshe’, we probably went to primary school at around the same time.

It is one of the few things I remember about that wonderful time when primary school was fun, less the cane, of course. Shokolokobangoshe was a wise character in West African folklore who had answers to everything.

 Basically, it was a story that imparted good morals to young children. Today, kids get immersed in the Blue Whale Challenge game that encourages them to commit suicide; it’s a whole different world.

TONGUE TWISTER

At about the same time that Shokolokobangoshe was the rage, we often engaged in the challenge to speak out fast and loudly the words: ‘She sells sea shells by the sea shore’ without fluffing the lines.

The repetition of an initial consonant sound in a sentence, as in the case above where ‘S’ is repeated several times is known as alliteration. This, as with metaphors, metonyms, similes, hyperbole, Anaphora, pun, irony and many more, falls under the classification of ‘figures of speech’. 
 

Anaphora is the instance where every sentence begins with a particular word. It is a style of writing suited to poems. ‘Alone’, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe illustrates this well: ‘From ev’ry depth of good and ill, the mystery which binds me still. From the torrent, or the fountain -- From the red cliff of the mountain --From the sun that ‘round me roll’d’. 
 

An earlier column had discussed metaphors, which basically make comparisons. Metonyms as figures of speech are used to make associations.

When one talks of Nollywood, Bollywood or Hollywood, the association is automatically with the film industry in Nigeria, India and the United States of America. Our own Machawood appears to have hit a snag, maybe because the man behind the concept found politics more appealing. In local Kiswahili, ‘sonko’ has an association with the rich. 
 

Hyperbole as a figure of speech is that which exaggerates the truth through colourful language. A good example is when one says: ‘Mzee Kamau is older than dirt.’ Even though the sentence actually conveys the message that Kamau is very old, it is an exaggeration in as far as the comparison to dirt is concerned. Who knows how old dirt is? Another common expression that revolves around age; ‘being a little long in the tooth’ is considered an understatement. This expression was initially used on horses whose gums recede with age, leaving the teeth to appear longer than usual. In human beings though, the teeth tend to fall off as one advances in age. 
 

‘Past’ , ‘present’ and ‘future’ as a combination of words probably remind you of tenses in English grammar. Tenses refer to the exact moment in time when something takes place or happens. Listening to a television interview recently, I first heard a police officer say ‘there were information coming in’ while a panellist on some subject was heard to say ‘he came across to me as being more solid and academically grounded’.

In the first case, the speaker, by using the word ‘were’ (plural) instead of ‘was’ (singular) overlooked the fact that ‘information’, irrespective of the tense, remains singular. In the second case, by saying ‘he came across to me’ instead of ‘to me, he came across as ‘(gave the impression or appearance) , the panellist was telling us that the subject was in the same room with him and actually walked over to where he (the panellist) was seated.

TENSES

There are 13 tenses, and this may account for the confusion some of us encounter in sentence construction.

Some of the tenses are; Simple Present tenses on things that happen daily (Mary goes for a jog every afternoon), Simple Past (Jack bought a new house last week), Simple Future (They won’t support you), Present Perfect to describe what began in the past and continues in to the future (for how long has Peter been married?), past perfect to denote what happened before something else in the past (I hadn’t finished compiling the data when the boss asked for it), Future Perfect to describe what will happen up to a point in future (how many college years will you have put in before graduating?), Present Continuous ( Iam working on the assignment at the moment) Past Continuous, Future Continuous, Present Perfect Continuous and Past Perfect Continuous.