Christine Jalleh

This humourous poem about the the inconsistencies in English grammar and vocabulary has to be one of the most forwarded emails.

While it pokes fun at English and the English, the poem also captures the frustrations a student faces in the process of learning English as a foreign or second language.

Does anyone have the answer to the question: “If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?” Enjoy!

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

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During a semester break, I answered a newspaper ad looking for telemarketers to promote a holiday resort in Cameron Highlands.

After qualifying the phone interview, I went up to a hotel room at Merlin Hotel (now Dorset Hotel) in Penang and met a friendly 30-something year old American in a business suit.

The two adjoining hotel rooms had cubicles flanked against the wall and around 15-20 young men, young women and middle-aged women sat or stood chatting in clusters around the rooms.

(Photo from here)

A tall, middle-aged lady with a bouffant hairstyle called out,

“Rick, I need coffee! Where’s the coffee???”

She mimicked the shivering hands of a drug addict suffering from withrdrawal symptoms and burst out laughing.

“Coffee coming right up, Dayang!”

Turning back to me, Rick passed me a application form to fill and then gave me an overview of the job scope:

“We are promoting membership packages for a new holiday resort in Cameron Highlands. It’s a fantastic package with great discounts for early bird sign-ups. It’s such a great package that YOU may even want to get yourself one! (winks at me.)

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Original article “Cunning Couples” in The Star’s “Mind Your English” column (5 Feb 2009).

YOU can easily acquire an American, Australian, British or Canadian accent with speech training or from living several years abroad and come across as someone fluent in English. But you give yourself away if you use words wrongly, especially in e-mails, faxes and reports.

In the online world of blogging or chatting, such errors are easily forgiven but they are unacceptable in the business or educational environments.

Homophones, words that sound alike but convey different meanings, form many of these confusing pairs. Used wrongly in writing, they reflect someone with a poor grasp of grammar or a confused writer.

Be mindful of these cunning couples and be confused no more!

Accept (v.) — to agree to take something.
Except (prep.) — not including.
“Boss, I accept all your free books except ‘1,000 Ways to Manage Houseflies’,” said Pee Nang to Kay El.

Advice (n.) — one’s opinion about what somebody else should do or how they should behave.
Advise (v.) — to give advice to somebody or to recommend something to somebody.
“Are you sure, Pee Nang? I’d strongly advise you to reconsider the manual. You may regret not taking my advice if you’re suddenly faced with flies,” Kay El said.

Affect (v., pronounced uh-fekt) — to have influence on something or somebody.
Effect (n., pronounced ee-fekt) — a change produced by an action or a cause.
“Yes, I’m positive, Kay El,” Pee Nang answered. “If my mother’s way of handling house flies has affected them greatly by reducing them to zero, I don’t think I need to know the effect that 999 other ways have on them.”

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