Take Our Word, Contrary the problem

de Lincoln, Contributor

CONTRARY: A reader who listens avidly to Mr. Perkins' programme on radio has sent me the following note:

"I heard a woman with a strong voice who seemed to support the family of Wint who was killed by the police in the Mountain View area on Tuesday, April 26 in an alleged gun-fight. She made it clear that in her view that the police have said was "contrary" to her knowledge of the truth. Was she correct in stressing the second syllable 'tra'?

We did not hear the speaker on the radio. But pronouncing 'contrary' has always been in dispute in Jamaica.

The correct way to pronounce this powerful word is to stress the first syllable to sound like 'kon'. The word sounds like 'kontreri'. As we have realized from experience, when a word has three or more syllables and is stressed on the first syllable, the others cannot be given any prominence and tend to be lumped together.

Contrary came to us from Latin via Old French. The Latin origin was 'contrarius' from 'contra' meaning against. Contrary is a noun, an adjective and an adverb. As an adjective it is usually followed by to. So "This is not contrary to the truth". Contrary also means mutually opposed, or opposite in direction.

As a noun contrary can be pluralized to become contraries (still stressed on con). The contrary is the opposite.

As an adverb contrary is followed by 'to', so we may say "contrary to what we believed would happen, the West Indies won the match."

Oxford reminds us of expressions flowing with contrary such as "on the contrary", "to the contrary"; contrarily (adjective used colloquially to mean perverse, self-willed) and contrariness (adverb) with the same meaning as perverse or self-willed. What we must remember is that we normally use "contrary to" as an adverb, as also the adverbial expression "on the contrary". All we need to do now is to keep pronouncing it correctly with the stress on 'con'.

PROTEST: This is to remind our readers especially those who read news on the TV that whereas the USA in its use of the verb to protest puts the matter being protested against immediately after the verb to protest, in British English which is Jamaica's, 'against' or 'at' must follow protest.

On April 17 TVJ's newsreader said: "Britain is protesting the problem". In correct English it should have been "Britain is protesting against the problem". We have not yet accepted American usage and spelling as ours. So, until we do so officially, let us adhere to England's English. The noun protest is stressed on 'pro', the verb is stressed on 'test'.

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