FUN
Teaching English is fun, feeling superior to others is always fun, and even more fun is finding ambiguities, and failing to succeed in teaching English. (I wrote succeed at English and Grammarly.com change it to succeed in English.) Instead of getting annoyed at errors, enjoy them.
Toastmasters International meetings sometimes start in Singapore with the greeting, welcome, Toemasters. As if we are masters of our toes. I am often Grammarian, or Language Evaluator. Once we were told that Mr President will address us and so will the grammarian, Angela. First, he will say a few words about the word of the day. I waited for the president to speak. He waited for me to speak. As far as I was concerned, he meant him, a man, the president. As far as the Chinese are concerned, there is one word which means he, she or it. At some meetings, during the course of the Toastmasters of the day introducing me, I appear to change sex, then turn into a robot. I am she, then he, and finally it.
GRANNY
For example: The sentence which reads: Shall we start cooking granny?
You can find that kind of missing punctuation error, given as an example in grammar and punctuation books and on the internet. It is easy to see that this sentence can be read two ways. A comma is essential. To make the distinction you get from intonation in the spoken word. Shall we start cooking, granny, when spoken is a question, ending with a comma, which addresses granny. Without the comma, granny becomes the object of the sentence. Punctuation is there to guide the reader so they don't have to read twice. Grammar is a silent signal to the reader. Punctuation is even more important when reading aloud.
COOKING CHILDREN
While on the subject of eating and punctuation, I must mention a best-selling book.
EATS
Another example of missing punctuation is deliberately demonstrated in the title of a book by Lynn Truss. Eats shoots and leaves. This is a description of what an animal eats, if you leave out the punctuation. If you were describing a brawl in a bar you would write, Eats, (comma) shoots, and leaves! (Exclamation mark). The exclamation mark indicates, either surprise, or dramatic action. For example, 'the cowboy comes to the wedding. He eats, shoots and leaves!'
To avoid plagiarisms, or copying somebody else's work and passing it off as your own, I shall make sure to quote from my own book. The title is:
Did I really write that!
DENY
I once interviewed a famous TV personality, Magnus Magnusson, at the World Travel Market. At the end of the interview, I asked, 'May I quote you?'
He replied, 'Of course you can, dear. I shall simply deny, everything.'
PAUSE
If I were writing the draft of this speech for myself, I could add the word pause. When I am writing a novel, all I need is one exclamation mark.
CAN AND MAY
The popular saying is the one supposedly given to a schoolboy in class who puts his hand up and asks, 'Can I go to the toilet?'
The master replies, 'You can - but you may not.'
As some of you will have understood, 'can', strictly speaking, refers to ability. 'May', refers to permission.
TYPOS
You also need to look out for Typos.
If somebody writes you a nonsense text which has a typo, check the keyboard for adjacent letters.
Somebody sent me an amorous text saying 'kiss, kiss cuddle curdle'.
I also received a message from somebody middle aged, who described himself as 'a miffle aged man'.
Somebody thanked me for my letter, but began by thanking me for my litter. He asked, what are you looking for.
I replied: 'Somebody who can spell.'
I was afraid he would be angry. No. He wrote me an enthusiastic letter with many more spelling errors and typos.
A man who thought he was good-looking and tall wrote, I am good looking tail.
The letters
If you are writing a newspaper article, and you are paid by the word, you could turn an exclamation mark into the word pause. However, having been a sub-editor on Womena's Realm and Woman magazine for IPC, I can tell you that a sub editor would cross out the word pause and insert an exclamation mark.
So, my number one rule for you to pass on to the world is, use grammarly.com
One Singaporean friend of mine speaks English very well, but struggles with writing. He sent me a long piece full of errors, for correction. He wanted me to spend half an hour of my time, so save him spending half an hour of his time. He said, "I don't use grammarly, because it finds too many changes."
My husband, protested, "Stop doing that for him. It's dinner time. If you go on correcting his work, instead of eating, you'll starve to death. The reason grammarly finds so many mistakes it because he makes so many mistakes."
A lot of foreigners don't understand the need for punctuation, especially as other languages are constructed, and presented differently.
After grammar, let's move onto spelling.
This morning I read a comment in a Daily Mail newspaper article about an event in the USA. The reader wrote, 'I was hopping for a better outcome.' It is a common mistake. I had read a funnier version of this before. A blind date wrote to me, 'I am hopping to meet you.'
I wrote a humorous book called Did I Really Write That!, about my real and imagined replies to people who wrote me ambiguous sentences. One would-be date wrote to me, I love cooking children.
Hop is hop. Hope - add e to change the sound. Double the p to retain the strong, short o sound.
People whose second language is English have one complaint about English, and another about English speaking people.
1 English spelling and grammar are complicated and have no rules.
2 The English speak only two languages, English and louder English.
MISSING LETTERS
Watch out for mistyping. Whilst typing out my speech I turned somebody into some boy.
An American wrote that he liked watching movies. He missed out the i so it read I like watching moves.
Another man said he was open minded. Fortunately he wrote it twice, the second time correctly, because once he described himself as being open mined. What had he in mine. If I had been a gold digger I would have been hoping he had a gold mine.
Imagine how this could have continued. Your place or mine. I don't mine. You mean I don't mine. Or don't entertain at my place.
One person wrote that he was careful with spelling. Unfortunately, he typed car full.
One man dropped the 'm' in male. He said he was a professional ale.
Another dropped an 'o' from good. He meant to say I am good fun. He wrote I am God fun
A lot of people like wining and dining. I typed winging and dinging.
Most people type winging and dinging.
SOUNDALIKES
If you use a system or app which converts the spoken word to text you may have to correct soundalikes. You get the same confusions which occur with predictive text.
A single man wrote that he was signal.
I wasted twenty minutes trying to work that one out.
Another man said he was a widower and his wife had passed away. Except that he changed the 'a' to an 'i' and wrote that his wife had pissed away.
It is better to spell out words. Especially if you miss out apostrophes in contractions. If you are not careful, not 'carful', careful, I'll becomes ill.
Laddies
Some people add extra letters.
Ladies has one d.
On my first day in the advertising office copywriting department I asked the artist to write the word ladies and gentlemen for the toilets.
He did lovely scroll Italics. But he spelled the word ladies as laddies.
I said, ladies is spelled with one d.
He was disappointed. He asked, 'Does it matter?'
I said yes.
He disagreed.
We referred to the head of department.
He said, 'It does matter. As an advertising agency, we have to show attention to detail, and we can't have visiting men going into the ladies toilet."
In addition to spelling, you must check simple facts, which are well known to natives of the country, but which you can get wrong.
Almost everybody knows the story of American President Kennedy supposedly saying in Berlin, Germany, 'Ich bin ein berliner.' That doesn't mean, 'I am a citizen of Berlin,' but, 'I am the Berlin speciality sausage.' Berliner, like frankfurter.
SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTTISH
I taught a Singaporean class about the different between England, the country, and English the language or people.
We had a whole list of countries and I asked the girls and boys to write sentences including the words Scotland and Scottish.
A girl from Indonesia stood up and proudly read, out the sentence, 'Scottish people live in Scotland where they grow lots of rice'. The clas could see my apprehensive, open-mouthed look.
"What's wrong?' she asked. I said, ' "Scottish people live in Scotland," is correct. But they don't grow rice. It's a cold country. They grow oats, sold as Scottish porridge oats.'
IDIOTIC SOUNDING IDIOMS
The idioms are also hard to explain. I looked out of the classroom window in Singapore and said to the nearest pupil, "It's raining cats and dogs."
He replied, "I see cats, but I don't see any dogs."
Eventually, I learned the answer. "It's an idiom. It comes from the era when houses had thatched roofs and cats and dogs slept in the rafters. When it rained, if the rain was heavy, the roof would leak, so the cats and dogs would leap down. So people said, It's raining cats and dogs. People still say that, although most people don't know why. But now you know more than many English people."
Songs are full of obscure references. I tried to enliven my classes in Singapore by asking them to write about songs by the Beatles for homework.
One girl doubted my expertise, or my veracity, when I mentioned the Beatles song entitled, We all live in a yellow submarine.
She said, accusingly, "Last lesson you told us they lived in Liverpool."
Teaching English is fun, at home or overseas, and full of unexpected surprises.
Start reading and researching. Don't start cooking Granny.
.Useful Websites
Useful Books
The Oxford Guide to English Usage
The Oxford Popular Dictionary and Thesaurus
Fowler's Guide to English Usage
English Idioms and how to use them, by Seidl/McMordie, published by Oxford University Press.
Frederick T Wood English Verbal Idioms
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable
