RADIO IS A TRICKY medium. Presenters often cannot afford the luxury of time to check their facts and those of others before they are broadcast. Casual listeners are thus in constant danger of being misled by instant experts on the airwaves.
Last Friday, Talkabout on RTHK's Radio 1 picked up a Ming Pao report on Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's instruction to his senior colleagues that English be used at meetings.
A Cantonese speaker from New York, who recently had visited Hong Kong, called to express his displeasure at what he despised as substandard English in the SAR.
The man objected to the use of the phrase 'false ceiling' in a notice posted by the MTRC. He asserted that the word 'false' was redundant. The hosts promised to relay his criticism to the company.
The problem is there was no case for complaint. Ceiling and false ceiling refer to different structures. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the latter as 'a dummy ceiling fixed below the genuine one (e.g. to accommodate wires, conduits, etc.)', while the Webster's New International Dictionary describes it as 'a ceiling that is hung some distance below the ceiling joists'.
The presenters of the programme yesterday were toying with the idea of inviting Premier Zhu Rongji and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou to take over Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's job.
It was meant to be a light-hearted comment and they swiftly pointed out that these two charismatic leaders did not meet the residency requirement anyway.