Why Johnny Can’t Read
Why Johnny Can’t Read is a rant, but the rant is justified if the ‘whole-word’ method was as dominant as the author, Rudolf Flesch, claims. How infuriating that someone assumed, and led a whole...
Author: Lucy Day Werts
Déjà vu
A few weeks ago I was looking for a book on my language shelves. I noticed a book called A Study of Writing by I. J. Gelb. Separated from it by two or three...
Wear your shoe
Singlish: “You need to go toilet? Okay, wear your shoe first.” English: “You need to go to the toilet? Okay, put on your shoes first.” ‘Wear’ is really not the same as ‘put on’,...
Object dropping
Singlish: “Do you like horror movies?” “I don’t like.” The object is obvious, therefore there’s no need to express it. Sometimes you even get subject dropping, too: “Do you like horror movies?” “Don’t like.”...
Business hours
Common messages relating to business hours are often distorted here in Singapore. Sometimes the sign says ‘business hours’, sometimes it says ‘operating hours’, sometimes it says ‘operation hours’, sometimes it says ‘opening hours’. I...
I also don’t know.
In Singapore, the answer to a question will often be “I also don’t know.” The implication is that the asker doesn’t know and that the answerer is thus the second person who doesn’t know....
Redundanancy
Today at Parkway Parade I saw a sign on a cosmetics store that said “powerful-strength line-reducing concentrate”. I read it as an advertisement for a reducer of ‘strength lines’ and momentarily wondered what a...