Also is oh so redundant During my three years as the language cop at the Computer Science Department, I have proofread many an article, exam paper and letter, and my name can be found in six PhD theses (unfortunately not in my own, since my own PhD research is on hold until some benevolent patron of the arts approves one of the numerous grant applications that I have written since I completed my Master's degree in 1999). In the last two months alone, I have proofread four PhD theses. Most of what I read here has been written by Finnish-speakers. I have found that, when proofreading a text written in one language (English) written by someone whose first language is some other language, it is an enormous help to know that other language. This means that I can usually understand what a Finnish-speaker wants to say, even if the English they write is complete gibberish. However, having read papers by e.g. Russian-, German- or Italian-speakers, I must confess that sometimes I can only draw a long red line in the margin and write 'very unclear' (meaning 'I don't understand a word'). Correcting the texts of Finnish-speakers, there are some mistakes that occur over and over. The Finnish overuse of the word 'also' is one of my pet peeves. In the Finnish language, it is quite natural to bind sentences together with words like 'myös' and endings like '-kin,' and it is not unusual to see the combined 'myöskin' (also, too? Seems like what is called 'tårta på tårta' in Swedish). Having 10 consecutive sentences with one or several of these is normal in Finnish. It carries the narration forward. That is how Finnish works. But in English, it is assumed that the narration goes forward without any explicit help. You do not have to spell it out. Anglo-Saxons are big on implicitness. This means that 'also' is nearly always redundant in an English sentence, though it would be used quite naturally in a Finnish one with the same meaning. The placing of the word 'also,' if you really really feel the need to use it, is matter enough for a whole new article. P.S I might add, as an instruction on how to read the above, that the irony and sarcasm innate in the English language might seem like cruelty to Finnish sensibilities. Marina Kurtén |
