Wednesday, February 29, 2012

what's wrong with this locution?

Something's the matter in the following sentence:

North Korea has known only millennia of monarchy and then a century of dictatorship — Japanese from 1910-1945 (in the late stages of colonial rule Koreans had to worship the Japanese emperor), and then for the past 66 years the hegemony of the Kim family.

It's just a little error, but it's the sort of gaffe that occurs frequently, and can be very hard to detect. Check the comments for my explanation of the problem.


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1 comment:

Kevin Kim said...

The problem, in case you missed it, is this:

"Japanese from 1910-1945"

Notice that "from" is completely written out, whereas "to" is represented only by a hyphen. Properly speaking, the phrase should be:

"Japanese from 1910 to 1945"

So there we are.