Thursday, February 12, 2015

spot the grammar error

From an AP News article by Youkyung Lee about the sentencing of "nut-rage" conglomerate queen Heather Cho, 41, who famously went postal aboard an aircraft when she was served macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a plate or in a bowl:

If she could have controlled her emotion, this case would not have happened.

The above is part of a quote (presumably translated from Korean into English) by Judge Oh Seong-woo, who presided over Cho's case.

Did you spot the grammar error? I think you can blame this one on the translator. And a follow-up question: can you rewrite the sentence to make it better?


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Posted by Kevin Kim at 2/12/2015 10:38:00 PM

5 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 13, 2015 at 1:12:00 AM GMT+9

    I posit that the following might be better:

    "Had she controlled her emotions, this case would not have happened."

    Or:

    "Had she controlled her emotions, this case would not have started."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kevin KimFebruary 13, 2015 at 1:22:00 AM GMT+9

    Bravo! You caught the error in tense, which is in the "if" clause, and your improvements both sound good.

    My own take would be:

    Had she been able to control her emotions, this incident would not have occurred.

    In English, we don't normally speak of a "case" as "happening." That's a bit awkward and unnatural. The word "case" might be appropriate for a courtroom context (e.g., a court case, a legal case), but the judge was referring to the events before this became a legal case, which is why I've replaced "case" with "incident."

    I also use the locution "had been able to" because the original sentence used "could have"—a form of the modal verb "can." So to retain the notion of ability, I changed "could have" to "had been able to."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Horace Jeffery HodgesFebruary 13, 2015 at 7:12:00 AM GMT+9

    "If she could have controlled her emotion, this case would not have happened."

    The real error above is the misspelled preposition, which I've now corrected:

    "If she could of controlled her emotion, this case would not have happened."

    Jeffery Hodges

    * * *

    ReplyDelete
  4. John from DaejeonFebruary 13, 2015 at 10:45:00 AM GMT+9

    I'm with Jeffery Hodges on this one as she only had to control one emotion (anger). Her arrogance and stupidity aren't emotions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lee FarrandFebruary 13, 2015 at 1:43:00 PM GMT+9

    Y'all speakin' like you was born in a barn.

    "Assuming a greater level of emotional control in a repeat scenario, it would not be unreasonable to expect a more favorable outcome."

    ReplyDelete

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