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 ??
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hmmm..
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 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
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
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
sentence ambiguity
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
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