English and its Usage

Some Interesting English

Not too far outside Cape Town in an area which is largely Afrikaans-speaking is a new shopping centre. Right, so there’s nothing very interesting about shopping malls, but this one bears a fascinating sign at the entrance (apart from the ‘No Smoking’ signs and obvious litter-bins which everyone seeks to avoid); this sign actually says, in English, ‘No Sauntering’. Now there’s an interesting word which has really lost favour in the English we speak today. Sauntering.

The Oxford Dictionary tells us that ‘sauntering’ means: walking in a leisurely way or without destination, strolling. Now I would have thought that one of the main purposes of any shopping mall, or centre, is to encourage shoppers to amble from window to window in a rather haphazard way; the various shops are there to excite the shopper to come inside, to tempt with their window-displays, to persuade us to buy things that we don’t really need, and when we get them home, to wonder why we bought them in the first place. Now, if we are forbidden to ‘saunter’ within these precincts, then most of the rent-paying shops will disappear.

Perhaps the developers had an altogether different scenario in mind; one can imagine hoards of over-weight, trouser-clad, knock-kneed farmers and their wives, who always seem to be sewn into skin-tight clothing over which spare tyres bulge indecently, getting out of their bakkies and four-wheel drives and positively hurtling through the centre as if pursued by armies of killer-bees in their headlong dash for Pick ‘n Pay or the local restaurant and then making ultimate speed for the exit before they are slapped with some kind of horrendous fine – perhaps three weeks in Mauritius, or a month on Marion Island.

What the sign should say is ‘No Loitering’. Now that is altogether something different. ‘Loitering’ means to linger, or hang about – and that conjures up a totally different picture. A loiterer is one of those rather dubious-looking people who hang around supporting various pieces of architecture with no apparent intent except to regard the valuables which they may relieve us of as we go about our legitimate business. These days it is doubtless loiterers who are ultimately responsible for blowing up auto-tellers, bag-snatching, conducting various imaginative scams on idle shoppers, and generally being a nuisance to those of us who wish to saunter.

I cannot honestly say that I have ever seen such a sign on any other centre, but, for the developer’s sake I would like to suggest that for future buildings we amend the sign to read: ‘No Sauntering, Goose-Stepping, Frog-Marching, Bicycling, Skate-boarding, Smoking, or Driving any vehicle within this shopping precinct.’ For the sake of safety this caveat would also apply to those harassed housewives who allow their toddlers to take charge of shopping trolleys; many is the time that one of these ungainly items is left blocking an entire aisle for those of us to fall over as we look for the Anchovy Sauce or the Canned Artichokes (which are always in an area of the supermarket reserved for frozen fish), or search hopelessly, with a somewhat bemused and abstracted expression, for the Parmesan Cheese or the Pappadums (which are always with the processed meats). While we are at it we should also ban those whose main intent when visiting the supermarket is to hold a conversation involving at least four people right across the entrance to the electrical goods or the toiletries section.

In short, we should really learn to stay at home while programming some remote contrivance to do our shopping for us. That would save a great deal of time and the need to ‘saunter’ anywhere would be blissfully obviated.