Mea Culpa: What should we call the Irish prime minister?

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Name game: If we call Leo Varadkar the taoiseach, shouldn’t Angela Merkel be referred to as the Bundeskanzlerin? (AP)

Leo Varadkar is in the news, so we used the word “taoiseach” a few times last week to describe him. It is The Independent’s style, but I wonder if it should be. It seems designed to divide readers into those who know that it is the Irish equivalent of prime minister and those who do not (and into those who know how to pronounce it – tea-shock – and those who do not).

We do not call Simon Coveney the tanaiste, as some media outlets do, because even fewer readers know it means he is in effect deputy prime minister. Nor do we call Angela Merkel the Bundeskanzlerin – although I noticed Michael Gove did in the House of Commons last week. (Mind you, I suppose you could say it is confusing to call her “chancellor” for people who do not know that this is the equivalent of prime minister in Germany.)

I think taoiseach is misplaced politeness. It is what you would call him if you met him, but in journalism our aim is to communicate clearly. I think we should call him “the Irish prime minister”. Let me know what you think.

Bouncy surprise: When a British heptathlete won a gold medal last week we said: “Katarina Johnson-Thompson sprung a huge upset.” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing out that should be “sprang”. That is the usual past tense of “spring” in British English. “Sprung” is the past participle, so you might say KJT “had sprung” a huge upset.

These conjugations can seem arbitrary. Some verbs ending in -ing go -ing, -ang, -ung, such as sing, sang, sung and ring, rang, rung. But others don’t have the -ang form, such as fling and flung, and cling and clung. In American English, spring is moving from the first group to the second, but long may “sprang” be preserved over here.

Another nice mess: Another Americanism that crops up on our pages from time to time is “gotten”, a past participle of “get”. In this case, American English has preserved a word that British English has lost. Thanks to Steven Fogel for drawing attention to our report of the Austrian ski resort murders, which said that the victim and her new boyfriend had bumped into her old boyfriend “and they had gotten into an argument”.

Much as I like “gotten” and approve of reviving it in British English, it is informal over here and out of place in a straight news report.

Kingdom for a horse: We had a “reign in” last week, spotted by John Schluter. It has been changed to “rein in”, which is the original metaphor of restraining a horse. That is the thing about metaphors: many of them come from activities that were once universal but are now esoteric. Horse-based metaphors are particularly common. Jeremy Corbyn was going to say he was “champing at the bit” last week. It was in the text of his speech issued to journalists in advance, but when he came to it he left the phrase out, possibly because he wasn’t sure about it.

Anyway, rein in means curb (which itself comes from the curved strap holding a horse’s bit, from Old French courber). You can see how it sounds like a monarch exercising restraint in their reign, but that’s not where it comes from.