Keeping Up Appearances

If there is one thing we can learn from Hyacinth, it’s the importance of making one’s message clear rather than sounding pompous. I find her antics here awfully hilarious:

Tribute to Teachers

Mother’s Day has come and gone but I’m sure we won’t treat it as a one-off thing. Hopefully we will continue to cherish our mothers every single day.

Besides mothers, we shouldn’t forget our teachers as well. Since we are celebrating Teacher’s Day this coming Saturday,  it’s good to talk about them from now till then. Do share with me your experiences with your teachers.

I remember this funny lesson I had under this temporary teacher when I was in Form 2. He told the whole class that we would only understand some of the sacrifices made by our parents when we reached adultery. Being respectful, we didn’t correct him but it made us more determined to study harder so that we wouldn’t be taught the wrong thing.

Dictionary Skills

By now, most of you would have known about the Altantuya word which was supposedly included in the Malaysian issue of Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary. If you look at the following definitions, you would know that it’s a hoax.

Just pay close attention to the magnified words and you”ll see what I mean. It states that Altantuya can be either a verb or an adjective. However, the  5 definitions in no way mention any adjectives. Definitions 1 to 5 point to the fact that it can only be used as a verb.

Look at definition 1. Instead of explosive, it should be pluralised. Even then, the definition is still dodgy. Committing murder by the use of explosives? How? Banging them on the person’s head? It should be made more explicit: To commit murder by blowing the person up with C4 explosives.

Definition 2 should be “make plans” even though one plan is made.

Definition 3 has too many tos.

Definition 4 should be written thus: …by having others do

What’s the moral of this? If you plan to be an English lexicologist, make sure you know the ins and outs of  the English language. And if you can’t measure up to that, at least know the basics of dictionary skills. We don’t want trickters whose tricks fail to achieve their purpose, do we?

P/S: Troubling Consonant Clusters

Dear readers,

Have you tried saying grasp, crisp and hasp in quick succession? If you happen to say them as they’re meant to be pronounced, congratulations to you. However, there are cases where these words come out sounding like graps, crips and haps. And if you fall into this latter category, you are not alone provided you’re living in  Malaysia. The reason for the inversion of the two consonant clusters from sp to ps could be due to ease in pronunciation.

Having said that, consonant clusters like st or sk do not follow the inversion rule. I notice that in colloquial Malaysian English, words like blast, fist, bask and dusk follow a different rule namely the dropping of the last consonant. Hence these words sound like blas, fis, bas and dus. Any idea why blats, fits, bats and duks are almost unheard of? If you do, please let me know.

Regards,
Higgins

P/S: Do mind your ps and sp nonetheless.

THE For Emphasis?

It has come to my knowledge that there is this worrying trend among some folks in Malaysia of placing the definite article right after the word very. Though it’s grammatically wrong, it does follow the rule as mentioned above. Two examples that I’ve heard of are:

• Thank you very the much.
• I am very the angry with you.

I am aware that language use changes over time. In fact, I’m still trying to grapple with “You’re so fired” or “She’s so gonna kill you”. But are you so gonna accept this very the troubling phenomenon?

Do you think this trend is passing or it will catch on? I’d love to hear your comments. And I’d like to know how many of you have heard of this the phenomenon by taking part in my poll.