The above is a flyer which I got while walking around the campus. Click on it to enlarge.
It's basically a flyer promoting the NUSChoir who are having their 30th anniversary concert. Scanning through the description on the flyer, something caugh my attention. The last line reads "...the NUSChoir continues to embark on its journey of diverse and challenging choral music".
Now embark is a rather common word to use alongside journey. However, what caught my eye was the use of continue together with embark. To me, embark has the meaning of starting something new, challenging and possibly unexplored as of yet. If it is the start of something, how could you possibly continue to start on something? Once you start on something, it's finished in the sense that it has already begun. There isn't a way to continue to start on something.
It's basically a flyer promoting the NUSChoir who are having their 30th anniversary concert. Scanning through the description on the flyer, something caugh my attention. The last line reads "...the NUSChoir continues to embark on its journey of diverse and challenging choral music".
Now embark is a rather common word to use alongside journey. However, what caught my eye was the use of continue together with embark. To me, embark has the meaning of starting something new, challenging and possibly unexplored as of yet. If it is the start of something, how could you possibly continue to start on something? Once you start on something, it's finished in the sense that it has already begun. There isn't a way to continue to start on something.
Then I thought perhaps the line was trying to convey the message of the Choir committing themselves to continue exploring new paths. But in the flyer, only 'one journey' is being mentioned. This makes the line sound a little weird since if there is only a single journey, then once you embark on it, where does the continuity part come in? If there were multiple journeys then it might be possible to embark on new journeys each time.
Checking out the Longman Dictionary:
embark on/upon something
to start something, especially something new, difficult or exciting
Alright so this probably means that embark was used in a slightly inappropriate context here. In this case, I guess leaving out the word embark should do the trick.. so that the sentence will read "...the NUSChoir continues on its journey of diverse and challenging choral music".
That sounds better to me. And it seems more logical since their journey started 30 years ago. So they should be continuing on their path, overcoming more challenges. Ok that was a digression.
Over and out.
Checking out the Longman Dictionary:
embark on/upon something
to start something, especially something new, difficult or exciting
Alright so this probably means that embark was used in a slightly inappropriate context here. In this case, I guess leaving out the word embark should do the trick.. so that the sentence will read "...the NUSChoir continues on its journey of diverse and challenging choral music".
That sounds better to me. And it seems more logical since their journey started 30 years ago. So they should be continuing on their path, overcoming more challenges. Ok that was a digression.
Over and out.
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