Invitations
Increasingly, during news programmes, we are invited to ‘have a listen to’ an item or a speaker. Is it a friendly, informal way of introducing a snippet of news, or are we being patronised, or even infantilised?
It’s not discourteous to say, ‘Listen to the next item.’
Sometimes we are asked to ‘have a read of’ an article. It’s not a slice of cake to be held in the hand. I don’t ‘have a read’ of a book – I just read it.
We have always ‘had a look at’ things, though perhaps we should say, ‘Look at this,’ but asking someone to ‘have a taste of’ a dish would be more easily expressed as, ‘try this,’ or ‘taste this.’
Must we mangle the language so badly that it bears no relation to what we actually mean? Do we have to wrap every sentence in extraneous vocabulary to make them more acceptable? It’s not good to be peremptory, but it makes little sense to add unnecessary words. They don’t clarify matters.
After I had written this moaning, whingeing piece, I read an article by Giles Coren in The Times. He writes so well.
