The phrase “To cut a long story
short” features frequently in
our day to day conversations
or interactions even in lecture halls
in our ivory towers whether we are
speaking or writing them, forgetting
that the expression has since lost its
flavour. It’s now grouped among hack-
neyed statements or clichés that have
lost their original impact because
they have been overused. Some Eng-
lish pragmatics even takes it to the
extreme, insisting that the expression
‘to cut a long story short’ is un-Eng-
lish and a piece of colloquialism which
should be consigned into history.
What comes to mind when we en-
gage the phrase ‘to cut a long story
short’ is to summarize or give a sum-
mary of the story we are about to tell
and convey to the listener. In other
words we tend not to overlabour the
conversation by ‘cutting a long sto-
ry short’ which as I said has lost its
value and original impact, even if we
situate it in Nigeria as a home grown
expression. There are several ways
we can say it and sound better, away
from the monotony and cliché ‘to cut
a long story short.’ As I often caution
my readers let’s avoid sounding repet-
itive, make use of the large chunk of
synonym-word or phrase that means
the same as another word or phrase
in the same language, quoting the
Oxford dictionary of current English,
always at our disposal. Except we are
mentally lazy to keep recycling words
or phrases that readily comes to our
minds because they are ever present
begging to be employed.
Be creative, discerning and inno-
vative whenever the temptation to
engage out of favour statements that
everyone else choruses appears to get
hold of you think again and do some-
thing different, don’t just jump on
the bandwagon of imitation, because
those who do so lacked the initiative
to stand on their own. Refuse to be a
copy cat, rather raise the bar of excel-
lence while pushing your thoughts or
ideas across to the listening and read-
ing audience.
Rather prefers the expression ‘to
summarize my story or report,’ for
example, and jettison ‘to cut the long
story short.’ Task your brain and find
out other options that would im-
prove your spoken or written English
and stop repeating the same word or
phrase over and over that could bore
your listeners.
We continue today’s English les-
son tilted in favour of pronunciation,
again to remind us that we should pay
equal attention to the written and spo-
ken language. But many of us seem to
be contented with the written English
to the detriment of the spoken Eng-
lish. Being a master in the craft of note
taking neglecting oral English could
be bad enough even suicidal to say
the least. Some of our brightest aca-
demics have lost jobs away from home
because they could not measure up in
the spoken word.
A quick rundown of some English
pronunciations we should take note
of and pronounce them correctly
otherwise when we find ourselves ad-
dressing an audience we begin to do
the wrong thing and those who know
make jest of us or silently cringed
shutting their ears in the process for
fear of being contaminated with rot-
ten pronunciation. See for yourself
and make the best out them: En-
mass, bath/a: /bathe/beithe, plait/
plat, granite, regime, suite, divorce.
Let’s take them one after the other;
‘en-mass- when we mean to ask for a
big or larger participation of people
for a common course towards achiev-
ing certain ends. For instance, we
sometimes speak or write “The vil-
lagers came out en-mass to welcome
the governor of the state.” En-mass is
correctly pronounced ‘on-mass’ with
the letters ‘e’ and ‘n’ sounding and
taking the form of ‘urn’ in verbaliz-
ing it. ‘Bath/a: / bathe is vocalized as
beithe/be:th with little or no differ-
ence as it is written. One can correct-
ly pronounce it in the sentence “She
‘beithe’ the baby with a jelly-like soap
this morning before setting out to her
work place.” ‘Plait’ takes the form of
‘plat’ in pronouncing the word. “Nne-
na ‘plat’ her hair in readiness for the
cultural festival taking place on Sat-
urday at the town square,” is correct.
Never say or voice “Nnena ‘plaite/
plate’ her hair in readiness for the cul-
tural festival taking place at the town
square.”
The words ‘granite,’ ‘regime,’ ‘suite,’
and ‘divorce’ are correctly pro-
nounced ‘greynit’ not ‘greynait’ as
some will voice it. Similarly, the word
‘regime’ sounds like this, ‘ray-gime,’
‘suite’ is simply pronounced ‘sweet/
swi:t,’ ‘divorce’ takes the form of ‘di-
vors’ not ‘daivorce’ as plenty of people
do pronounce it. Learn to speak right
and write right and see yourself tow-
ering above your fears, dispelling the
myth surrounding the written and
spoken word.
