The International New York Times
published an article on 2 June 2016, in its Asia Pacific Section, with the
headline: In Taiwan, a Bird Gets Its Very Own Bodyguard. What does ‘very own’
mean? What is your ‘very own’ bodyguard?
Oxford Dictionaries defines the term ‘very’ as an adjective, meaning actual
or precise, or to ‘emphasize the exact identity of someone or something.’
’Very’ is also used when ‘emphasizing an extreme point in time or space.’
Oxford Dictionaries also states that ‘very’ can be used as an adverb, used for
emphasis, meaning extremely, exceedingly, exceptionally, especially,
tremendously, immensely, vastly, hugely, extraordinarily, unusually, uncommonly
and so on. Can the word ‘own’ be emphasized?
The article, from the Jinshan Journal,
is about a bird in a rural farming hamlet called Jinshan on the northern coast
of Taiwan. The bird is special. The article says the
‘star in hiding’ is a Siberian crane, ‘one of fewer than 4,000 in the world and
the only one ever seen on this Asian island on the edge of the tropics.’
Environmentalists call him the little white crane of Jinshan.
The Siberian crane is five feet tall (1.5 metres) with long thin legs. Its
wings stretch more than seven feet (2.1 metres). He spends his days wading
through the flooded fields, making honking sounds as he searches for snails and
fish.
The Sibeian crane was less than a year old when it arrived in Jinshan in
December 2014, with cinnamon-brown feathers on his back and head before the
feathers turned pure white. Siberian cranes can live up to 80 years, but they
are critically endangered. Fewer than 20 remain in western Siberia. The western
Siberia cranes migrate to India and Iran in winter, but they disappeared from
India more than ten years ago. The remaining cranes are in eastern Siberia and
migrate to southeast China, downriver from the Three Gorges Dam at Poyang Lake
– the country’s largest freshwater lake. Deputy Executive Director of the
Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation, Chiu Ming-yuan, said that
all of the world’s Siberian cranes are in Poyang during the migration period.
The Siberian crane in Jinshan was blown off course – instead of going to
the Three Gorges Dam in Poyang in China with its parents, it landed 400 miles
to the southwest in Taiwan.
The article adds that the Jinshan local government hired a full-time 24-hour bodyguard to protect the crane, because it faced threats from feral dogs and
powerful winds called typhoons (hurricanes). ‘But the biggest problem was the
sightseers.’ The bird’s bodyguard, Chuang Kuo-liang, said that the sightseers
were hard to control because they all wanted ‘to get close and touch him.’ More
than 50,000 visitors have travelled to Jinshan, in the flatlands and wetlands
between the mountains of Yangmingshan National Park and the East China Sea,
just to see the crane.
It is the only migratory bird known to have its own – its very own – 24-hour bodyguard.
If someone has their own bodyguard, it means that the bodyguard is protecting that individual person and not a group of people. But the bodyguard could be protecting other people at other times. Your very own bodyguard is protecting only you.
The Scorecard for the International
New York Times headline is 99%. The headline term ‘very own’ is not used in
the article, although the article clearly shows that ‘very’ is used as an
emphasis. It emphasizes the extraordinary status of the Siberian crane having,
not only his own bodyguard, but his very own bodyguard – a bodyguard that protects only the Jinshan crane, and no other bird, animal, or person.
MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:-
The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends
(2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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