I am beginning to hate the word shall (and its derivatives) more and more. You may wonder how can anyone hate words. People just do. Like people who hate expletives like fuck, I hate the word shall. To me, shall must join the ranks of dirty words. I refer to the sense that denotes “expressing…
My tuition student didn’t know what a hawk is. I told her it’s a big predator bird. And then she asked, “how is it related to hawker?” HAHA. I had a good laugh. I never looked at it that way. So I had to try to explain how language is so arbitrary, CAT has nothing…
I’m quite befuddled by two cases of excessive affixation I’ve observed. (1) Obligated vs. obliged. Recently I’ve been hearing some instances of obligated from my classmates. Is there a different meaning to these two words? Or different connotation? I don’t feel any difference between the two of them. I always prefer to use obliged. (2)…
Just now I was looking at a book description on the net when I saw the book being described as “unputdownable”. I went, WOW, since when was that a word? So I had to turn to the “authorities”. Webster claims it is an adjective synonymous to riveting, used for describing books and the first instance…
Yesterday evening I met 3 friends whom I have known for 12 years, since 1997. The four of us make it a point to try to meet a couple of times a year to update each other on our lives. We went to a Korean restaurant along Mosque Road at Chinatown, called Togi. They serve…
That day I witnessed a trivial yet entirely classic episode of English as Lingua Franca (ELF) moment at the nail salon. My friend and I went for express manicure the other day and the manicurists were mostly from China. When we knew, we spoke Mandarin to them, no biggie. After a while, this other Chinese…
Some of you may have heard this puzzle before, but I thought it’d be fun to post it up: Three women went to restaurant and had a meal for $10 each, the bill totalling to $30. The restaurant manager then decides to give them a discount of $5, so the total bill was slashed to…
Was at the KTV with the girls on Sunday, and they sang this duet which I thought had interesting lyrics: 宇宙洪荒那时候 第一句爱是谁说出口 当时的他 如何形容 对方 听懂不懂 (rough translation: When the universe was born, who uttered the first words of love? How did he/she describe it then? Did the other party understand?) What is interesting is…
You know the word “alamak” in Singlish is a sort of exclamation when something is wrong. Recently my 29-month-old niece has taken to that word and started using it. The cutest thing is, she says with the [k] sound at the end. Now, [k] is a velar plosive, and word-final sounds are typical unreleased or…
A couple of weeks ago, I was down with a horrible bug that gave me runny nose and sore throat. So while I was nursing the bug, I went for dinner with my friends (at Botak Jones, that oh-so-sinful place that does nothing to help a sore throat. Photos speak for themselves here here and…
