Someone posted a link to this photoblog on QT3 and I now intend to check it regularly for updates. It’s collects examples of badly used English in situations that make it humorous. Check it out. It’s awesome.
Tag Archives: English language
Purging of the English Language
Check out this list of English words that the editors of the Collins English Dictionary wants to purge to make room for new words and the accompanying article. As it notes, some words that are common in mainstream usage are nonetheless useful in particular communities. As a gamer, I’ve collected my fair share of Periapts of Wisdoms across many different Dungeons & Dragons-based computer games, so I should know!
Then again, while it’s understandable that a dead tree version dictionary wants to drop words because you can only fit in so many in a single volume and still have it at a manageable size, in the Internet age that we live in, these words will never truly be gone. Furthermore by singling out these particular words, the editors have simply given them a short-lived notoriety that will effectively grant them a new lease on life.
Four-eyed meetings
This is a repost of a thread that I started in the Low Yat forums:
Amidst all of the political mess that’s been going on, I’ve noticed the phrase “four-eyed meeting” being used again and again, especially in The Star.
PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had a four-eyed meeting with his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak for more than four hours to discuss the country’s present political situation, including the Umno transition plan.
KOTA BARU: Terengganu PAS commissioner Datuk Mustafa Ali has mended the rift between him and party spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat during a four-eyed meeting at the Mentri Besar’s official residence.
Obviously it means a serious, one-to-one, discussion, but I’ve never seen the phrase used in this way before. A quick Google search indicates that it’s only been used by Malaysians in this way and only fairly recently at that. So, what gives and where did this come from?
Stir-fried wikipedia
Yeah, reposting a funny picture found in another blog is uncool, but I couldn’t resist, considering that Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites. Original credits to the Language Log. Apparently this is a photo taken of a menu of real restaurant in Beijing. Read the end of the post for a link to a “Wikipedia” brand of bread in China. I guess there’s nothing that the Chinese won’t copy.
Word of the Year
The publishers of the Merriam-Webster dictionary has just named the word of the year, and it’s “w00t”, spelled with two zeros instead of the letter ‘O’. While it’s fascinating to note how a word from the gamer lexicon has entered the mainstream, I personally find the usage of such terms annoying. One reason why I find the QuartertoThree forums so appealing is that almost everyone there uses complete sentences, proper grammar and punctuation and correct spelling. I find many garish forums such as SomethingAwful and even lowyat.net to be nearly unreadable and the Malaysianisms of the latter forum doesn’t help at all.
I’d like to note though that the article’s stated reason for the spelling of “w00t” using zeroes is incorrect. Early online gamers that could only type messages to communicate with one another used numbers to replace text only because they thought it would be cool and as a way to subtly code their communications. Nowadays, thanks to predictive text technology and better keyboards on mobile phones, I think that there’s no real excuse to actually spell “w00t” with zeroes other than continuing the tradition from online gamers.