In the process of vetting President Mills’ nominated ministers, Minority Leader, Hon. Mensah Kyei Bonsu asked now Minister of Information, Zita Okaikoi on measures to adopt to avoid unnecessary speculation of the public on sensitive national issues. She replied that “timely” information will be given out to the public. Hon. Kyei posited whether Ms Zita Okaikoi means “timeous” or “timely”. Ms Zita thought she made a mistake with her “timely”, so she apologised to the house and thank Hon. Kyei.
However,
this generated a logomachy between minority leader’s “timeous” over Zita’s “timely”.
Others even question the source of Hon Kyei’s “timeous”.
The
minority leader is one of the politicians I venerate simply on grounds of his
wide range of vocabulary and respect for language rubrics. Yet, I must confess
that he many a times demonstrated his verbosity and logorrhoea to the nth
degree.
I
observed that Honourable Kyei with his magniloquence always bulldoze his way
through his contemporaries. But it was just unfortunate he tried substituting
everyday spoken “timely” with “timeous” which is even overlooked by standard world’s
most trusted authority in English, Oxford Special-Priced 7th edition dictionary
for ADVANCE learners.
Therefore,
I have no grudge with Bright Segbefia’s letter carried in your April 18, 2009
edition challenging the source of Kyei’s “timeous”. Politicians ought to know
that they have better work to do than play with words. Semantics over important
matters cannot address our problems. So, the “brofou political leaders” should allow
us some breath. The learning public should not be taken as part of “ex gratia”.
Back to
analysis, the mere synonymy of words necessarily does not mean you can use them
interchangeably. Consider these two sentences:
“Dinner is served outdoors on weather permitting days” and “Dinner is
served outdoors on weather allowing days”. Though “permitting” and “allowing”
are synonymous, the first sentence is more standard because “permitting” collocates
better with “weather” and of course “timely” collocates better with
“information” than “timeous”.
More so,
“timeous” as suggested by Honourable Kyei was Timbuktu from the city of
formality and familiarity, hence superfluous!
