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President Park’s mistake in English grammar

Posted March. 31, 2015 07:25,   

한국어

President Park Geun-hye attended the funeral for Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and left a message in English in the memorial guestbook. In television, the president appeared to write the message on the spot although it is not sure whether she thought the expression in advance. She wrote three sentences and the last one is unnatural: “The Korean people join all of Singapore in mourning his loss.”

“His loss” gives an impression that former Prime Minister Lee lost something, instead of the Singaporean people’s losing their former prime minister. When I asked a few people who are good at English, they said the expression is awkward. In this case, it is the Singaporean people, not former Prime Minister Lee, who experienced the loss. Therefore, it is accurate to use “their loss of him.” However, it sounds more natural to use “his death” with the verb “mourn.”

Many English news often used the expression “mourn the loss of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew.” If you think just about English grammar, you might think you can simply replace “the loss of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew” with “his loss.” It can be grammatically correct because a possessive pronoun like “his” can be used as a subject or an object in meaning. Generally, however, “loss” is not combined with a dead person’s possessive pronoun.

President Park has been good at English since her younger days as the first daughter of former President Park Chung-hee. She was an interpreter during dinner between former Prime Minister Lee and her father in 1979. However, one can easily make a mistake as long as he or she is not an English expert, if one wants to write something in English beyond daily conversation. The guestbook, which will be left as a record, contained the Korean president’s awkward English expression. If the president wrote it with her aide’s help, it would her aide’s mistake. If the president wrote it by herself, she would be overconfident about her English.



pisong@donga.com