A RECENT EMAIL FROM a reader started us thinking. The lady, a retired school teacher, took umbrage at the expression “lane assist”, pointing out that “assist” is a verb, not a noun, and so the expression should be “lane assistance”.
Car companies have now almost universally adopted this terminology, with Lane Assist, Park Assist, Hill Descent Assist and many more.
Because we at seniordriveraus often bemoan the declining standards of English (grammar, spelling, punctuation and all the other disciplines that we over-50s had drummed into us at school), we sent this lady’s comment to many of our contacts at the various car companies.
Most of them took it in good spirit. And hardly surprisingly, none of them thought they’d be adjusting their description any time soon.
But Justin Lacy at Honda took the time to explain the usage, after commenting that he felt like he’d just been given “a rap over the knuckles” for his homework!
He explained (light-heartedly) Honda’s rationale for the trademark name for Lane Keep Assist System (LKAS for short): “The system ‘assists’ you in keeping the vehicle in the lane, rather than ‘assistance’ you, so it might be that our engineers were spot on this time around. Most things like this start with our engineers in Honda R&D, so we have roots in Japanese not English, which may help explain. But it really depends on how you look at it too – the system ‘assists’ the driver to keep the vehicle in its lane … or the system provides ‘assistance’ to the driver to help keep the vehicle in its lane.”
Justin then went on to remind us that Lane Keep Assist System is the full brand/marketing/trademark name for the system and Honda always refer to it in full to make it clear it’s an official name.
At the risk of offending our reader even further, Justin said the name aligns with other system names in the Honda world, including Agile Handling Assist, Hill Start Assist, Vehicle Stability Assist, Trailer Stability Assist, and suggested system names such as these need to work on a global basis and be translatable across all languages, so on occasion, semantics need to be put aside.
We think that’s a great response from someone who has much more important things to keep him busy.
So, do you have any linguistic bugbears of your own? My wife blows a gasket over “bunkering down” when the expression should be “hunkering down” My personal hate applies to the tortured police terminology of “fined for fail to …” or “fined for drive without due care” when the expression should be “failing to …” and “driving without …”.
Let us know. We’d love to hear your thoughts.