Doing the needful

The continuing stream of comments and questions provoked by my column on “irritating Pinoy expressions” a few weeks ago leaves me with little choice but to “do the needful” (more on that later) and respond to some of them—with pleasure, of course. Let’s get right to them. First, reader Butch Noceda asks: “Concerning some confusing words, how about ‘moot’? It both means ‘debatable’ and ‘of no significance.’ What's up with that? And then there's ‘sanction’ which could mean ‘to approve’ or ‘to punish.’ Whatever happened to these words?” Earlier, I took up the words “cleave” and “enjoin” in this same respect. Pete Lacaba pointed me to the term “Janus word” to describe such words with dual or contradictory meanings; I’ve also seen the term “antagonym” applied to them. True enough, “moot” means both “subject to debate” but also, and perhaps more helpfully, “having no practical significance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision.” In other words, it’s something we can argue about all day, but all that yakking isn’t going to matter. The word “debate” often comes to mind alongside “moot” because of the phrase “moot court”—meaning a mock court where law students can argue hypothetical cases. To answer Butch’s question about “What happened?”, the meaning shifted from “debatable” to “irrelevant” sometime in the mid-19th century. My dictionary has this to say about “sanction”: ‘Sanction’ is confusing because it has two meanings that are almost opposite. In most domestic contexts, sanction means 'approval, permission': voters gave the measure their sanction. In foreign affairs, sanction means 'penalty, deterrent': international sanctions against the republic go into effect in January.” Another source notes that “sanction” has had at least three meanings over time: first, in the 1500s, as an ecclesiastical decree (think of the Latin root word sanctus, “holy”); then, in the mid-1600s, as a penalty for violating the law; and finally, in the late 1600s, as a reward for observing the law. Second, from reader Efren Fabic: “Is it correct to say “God bless’ only? I very often see the expression used by people in emails, letters, greeting cards, etc. Many radio and TV announcers, commentators, and program hosts say ‘God bless!’ when they are about to end a program or a presentation. Doesn't ‘bless’ as used in this context need a direct object, e.g., ‘God bless you’?” I hear you, Efren. The truncated expression makes me wince as well, and yes, formally speaking, it does require a direct object, although I suppose the more graceful thing to do is to accept and reciprocate the good wishes. As I’ve often said, for as long as the meaning is clear between both parties—and as long as they’re aware that others might not understand things the same way—then I don’t see a problem (perhaps in grammar, but not in communication). I do wish people would complete these statements, but that’s just my personal sense of order coming to the fore. Something I find even more, uhm, unique is that Pinoy greeting (which I’ve been hearing a lot this past week), “Belated!” Third, Ma. Leticia Estagle asks: “What do you think of the word ‘CR’ or comfort room? Did we Filipinos invent it?” I don’t think we invented the phrase “comfort room,” Leticia. Wikipedia tells us that while “toilet” and “washroom” are very commonly used in the West, “In the rest of the world (usually Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia) the term ‘comfort room’ is used.” I must admit that this was something of a surprise to me, because, despite having traveled quite a bit, I’ve never seen it used anywhere else, except to mean a room for comfort or solace, a refuge. But “comfort room” or CR is a good term to bring up, because it illustrates my point about language being all about communication before it’s about anything else, like being grammatically correct, stylistically elegant, and so on. If you need immediate relief for your bursting bladder, you’re not going to insist on looking for the “washroom” or the “WC” or the “lavatory,” not if you’re in this country. No, sir, you better know the local term for that most important of facilities, or risk profound embarrassment. Every language—or some variation of it—serves the people who use it, and not vice-versa. There may be a few people—teachers, scholars, writers, linguists, lawyers—for whom language has to be extraordinarily precise, because it’s the working material of their profession. For most others, it’s just a way of getting meanings across, the more clearly and more efficiently the better. What’s annoying about the way some of us use English isn’t necessarily wrong; and what’s wrong isn’t necessarily annoying. Also, as reader Mrs. Hill Roberts points out, “Filipinos love underestimating themselves. There's no need to. A couple of years ago, a ‘paediatrician’ was beaten up, left for dead by British people. Why? They didn't know the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician! The poor guy stayed in hospital for three months wondering why he was beaten up. To cut the story short, those Brits who lived in the housing estate were hardly educated (another shocking reminder to all Filipinos: the majority of the British leave school at 15 or 16—they go on to become plumbers, electricians, carpenters: David Beckham, Simon Cowell, Richard Branson, former Prime Minister John Major, the chairman of TopShop, Dorothy Perkins, etc.” Finally, reader Romeo Ybañez wants to know about the word “needful” as it’s used by Indians—for example, in the phrase “do the needful,” meaning “do what’s necessary.” It was the first time I’d come across the word being used this way—ordinarily it means “needy”—but again it reminds us how different peoples around the world have refashioned English to their own uses. Yes, “do the needful” is an example of Indian English, as are the words and phrases “foreign-returned” (the equivalent of our balikbayan), “immoral traffic” (prostitution), “updation” (update), “upgradation” (upgrade), and “godown” (warehouse). What’s even more interesting—according to a comment on a blog put up by a fellow named Matthew Barnson—is that “You've gotten it exactly backwards—“do the needful" is not a neologism. It's a quaint old phrase, suggestive of the 1940s. It was used by the British in India before India won its independence, and after the British left India the phrase didn't die out there the way it did elsewhere. Something similar happened with many words used in American English—for example, "fall" (meaning the season when leaves fall from the trees) was used in Britain during colonial times, but subsequently disappeared in favor of "autumn.” But we Americans, unmoored from British influence on our language, kept "fall.” For evidence of ‘do the needful’’s antiquity, see this archived Time magazine article from 1949. The article quotes John Foster Dulles saying ‘... I think we are now in a good way to do the needful quickly.’” So there we are. Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.