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| Image from HKO |
Imagine your lover tells you,
"I will consider telling you that this 5-star restaurant ABC is the place for our dinner in the next few hours."
What the hell does that really mean?
Haven't they already told you? Why would anyone decide to consider doing something later?
As we see, there are two obvious main verbs in here: 'consider', 'tell / issue', but there are at least two other hidden in the process, and those are 'decide' and 'inform'. The fact that you are hearing this line from your lover is because your lover has already completed these two hidden processes:
- has thought over or pondered and finally 'decided' to do 2
- has 'decided' to 'inform' you about 3.
And what is 3?
3. is that they will do two more things: 'will consider' and 'tell you' about something. Has 'will consider' semantically, grammatically and automatically mean 'yes' nowadays?
So the whole line should be read as,
"I have decided to inform you that I will consider telling you that this 5-star restaurant ABC is the place for our dinner in the next few hours."
When this is substituted back to the Hong Kong Observatory's official announcement:
"The Observatory have decided to inform you that we will consider telling you about the hoisting of Typhoon Signal No. 8 in the next few hours."
So, HKO, you sound like you have made up your mind, but have you really?
If you will issue, say you 'will issue'!! I hate hedging like yours!
If you will issue, say you 'will issue'!! I hate hedging like yours!
Reference:
Hong Kong Observatory