Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Hmmm. A Unique or An Unique?


Something we'd like to note whilst teaching the use of 'a' and 'an':

We commonly see the use of these determiners as being confined by a vowel rule. However we should note that the vowel rule applies to vowel sounds that begin a word and not vowel alphabets.

Thus it should be a unique in this case as unique begins with the /j/ consonant sound.

Similarly with an heiress or an hour, where the h is silent and the nouns begin with vowel sounds.

Hope this was useful(:

Regards,
NASeera(:

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Where's the L ??

Recently went for dinner at Jurong Point. Was looking through the mall directory when this caught my eye:


I wonder, what exactly is 'Hala'??

Cheers,
Ajay.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Hmmm..


The picture says:
"Please dispose your litters into the rubbish bin".
Shouldn't we use:
  • "dispose of" here instead of just "dispose'
  • "litter" instead of "litters"?
I took this picture when i was at the lobby of a particular condominium at orchard road. :)
Cheers,
Charmaine Goh

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Food for thought....literally.

Here are two pictures that my friend and I took when we were at the Palette @ NTU and on the MRT.


This was taken at the Palette @ NTU near the front counter. Depending on how you take the phrase, it could mean that the corn was fed to tenderness (Poor cows), or the Cows were fed corn till they were tender (which still does sound wrong, so a better paraphrase would be the cows were fed corn thus they were tender.) This is due to the fact that the words corn and fed can be taken together to mean an adjective to describe the elliped noun of cow, or they can be taken separately as corn (a noun) and fed (a verb) to mean the former meaning.


A similar example can be seen here in the second picture. Depending on if we take the word horny to be an adjective or part of the head noun in the noun phrase in the picture, would it then be describing the Goat Weed as Horny (which would be rather amusing since...an asexual object usually would not be described that way) or as a type of Goat Weed instead? :)

<3,
Goh S. Silk



This is a cartoon from Reader’s Digest.

The cartoon shows the danger of separating two words that actually, together, make up the head noun. If you insist on separating the words to make “tank” the noun premodifier of “tops”, that is what you will get.
P.S. Recall the “king kong” question (similarly, “king kong” cannot be separated)



Michelle Yeong


This is in an attempt to warn people to be careful because the floor is slippery. However, after a loose and direct translation, it became "slip carefully", it which is to not warn but rather, tell "If you want to slip (and fall), do it with care".
Cheryl Hong Siong Ling



Monday, September 21, 2009

straightly

This was taken some time back by my friend.
Obviously, it was supposed to be "Strictly for customers only".
No idea how they could mix that up with "straightly".
By the way, do you guys have any idea if it should be "With minimum spend of $xx, stand to win a chance ..." or "With minimum spending of $xx, stand to win a chance ..."
I've seen this many times at restaurants, but didn't have a chance to take a photo. :)

- Safrina

Direct translation


Instead of writng 'Do Not Leave Litter',replace it with 'Do Not Litter'. I believe 'Do not Leave Litter' is a direct translation from the Chinese Language.

This 'Pola Snack' photo is taken by me after my quick snack in my hostel room.

Wan Ting (wei Ting) ;)

sentence ambiguity



Ambiguity! The monsters ate everyone (humans that were present), or everyone (every monster) had eaten?

Taken from: 99.5 Spooky Jokes, Riddles, & Nonsense, by Holly Kowitt

`Chow Shi Qin


Perhaps it should have been- "Application forms will be given out between 3- 5pm, from this Friday to next Wednesday."



Rephrased:

Could you please do your laundry during the day and not at night? The noise made by the washing machine disturbs me. Thank you.



Pictures take from: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/408759609_77270a792f.jpg?v=0

Charmain Loy

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Direct translation does not work.


Picture from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01407/sign14_1407795i.jpg.

Only Mr. "Knock Head" needs to look out?

- Effie