But he's dead! Hahaha.

Once again ... from the Sic! section of Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter:

Jeremy Ardley found this in the Washington Post on 8 September: "'We are the ones who saved our country,' Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, whose slain younger brother first allied himself with U.S. forces and who now serves as president of the Iraqi Awakening Council, said in an interview." Call him Lazarus.

No, call Jeremy an idiot.

Not only is it semantically difficult (in fact, impossible) to get Jeremy's meaning, it's almost impossible to do it syntactically, as the parallel structure of "Risha, whose ... and who ..." emphatically points you at the intended meaning.

I'm all for writing clearly and avoiding English's extreme structural ambiguity, but come on.

Where is the joy in seeking out such tortured interpretations? I really don't get it.

ps - it occurs to me that (a) you might be wondering why I still read this newsletter and (b) I might be putting you off it. But Sic! is a very small part of it (and one that can be and often is funny). The bulk of it is etymology and neologisms from a man who knows his stuff.

World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2008. All rights
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