Damage - Damages

Sadly, this article has nothing to do with the excellent Louis Malle film of the same name.

Okay, so this is too interesting to not write a piece on. Also, the thing I’m correcting right now which yielded this little gem is so boring, and I’m so loaded on cold medicine, that I’m almost compelled to stop and do this. Plus, I haven’t posted anything of worth here since part one of the fabled articles series (which we will continue, of course, but I dare not touch the subject when my mind is so addled ;).

Right then, I’ll skip all the fancy-schmancy screenshotting and just copy-paste this little monster: 

The Ordinance specifies the criteria for determining whether an environmental damage occurred in a given case. 

So, first of all, a bad article! And why is anhere a bad article? Because environmental damage is uncountable. Specifically, damageis uncountable. The correction looks like this then: 

The Ordinance specifies the criteria for determining whether environmental damage occurred in a given case. 

But Jim! You’ve over-done the pharmaceuticals and have become confused! What about in the legal context, damages? That’s a plural damage, isn’t it?

Not so, my friends, not so. In the primary sense of damage meaning destruction and brokenness, it remains uncountable. This is a very common mistake I see in PL>EN translations, that someone has put, for example, The damages to the vehicle were extensive. Wrong! Bad, bad. Always damage, always damage. Remember this.

BUT! In the legal context, damages is of course valid. KFC has been ordered to pay 8 million dollars in damages after apparently brain-damaging a girl in Australia (true that, I just read it on the news).

The thing to remember is, damages is a distinct, separate word, unrelated to damagein any way, except for a fair resemblance in the spelling department.

Remember: damages (legal compensation) is NOT interchangeable with damage (broken stuff). Unless, like me, you’ve become hopelessly addicted to Strawberry flavour Neurofen for Kids and are considering suing the manufacturer for, err, not providing complementary fried chicken with every bottle. Yeah.