I'm so grumpy that I could eat brazil nuts.
I'm so grumpy that I've decided to be mean.
The state of English Language proficiency amongst young Malaysians is deplorable. How can one think of oneself as a serious, fit-to-be-published writer if one continually uses "stuffs" and "informations" as plural forms?
And for the sake of all self-respecting English queens, it is incorrect to say "today I will meet up my friend".
You don't meet up someone. Feel up, yes, and much more pleasurable to boot.
This is the correct usage of meet up - "let's meet up" or "meet up WITH".
God help you if you say "I met him up".
Where's them brazil nuts. CHOMP. Grrrr. GACK.
Am I a meanie to email these people and be all Whip-You-Into-Submission English Bossy Boots?
Here's an idea. Given that the internet is the habitat of choice for people these days, how about spreading some lessons through our blogs. Particularly those who ping to content aggregators like PPS and have, like, gazillions of readers.
Feel free to cut and paste.
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Community Service English Lessons.
There is NO plural for stuff. "Stuffs" is only ever a verb. Eg. "more stuff" is correct, "more stuffs" earns you the honour of being shunned.
There is NO plural for information. It's like sheep. One sheep, many sheep. One piece of information, many pieces of information.
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I'm not greedy. Just correcting these two words will go a long way in helping me stop eating those disgusting brazil nuts.
"Meet up" is a bonus.
ADDENDUM - Yes, yes, I know that blogs are largely informal. But this is not an issue about Manglish, for which I believe that there is a time and place. Plural form is not something that is deliberately used incorrectly vis-a-vis Manglish. You either know it, or you don't.
My beef here is with regard to very basic language proficiency. Plural form is taught in primary school, for goodness sake. It might not be a big deal on blogs, but in real life, particularly in a formal setting (CVs, formal correspondence/documents, oral presentations), seeing/hearing "informations" and "stuffs" is bound to lower one's first impression of you by a couple of notches.
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9 comments:
1 sheep? not 1 shoop ah? ha ha ha! seriously, "irregardless" gets my goat. esp when a senior [ranking] person says it and you can't correct them coz ... why ah? coz they're more senior and should know better? hmm... pass me some of them brazil nuts...
hmm... i think i'm a very tolerant person ler... bad grammar dun really irks me. to me, not being able to apply the eng language as well as others doesn't mean they're stupid. maybe they just have not had the opportunity to learn/practice the language. eng IS a rather confusing language, after all said and done, rite? hehe, just my two sen. not that my eng is that great... :Þ
anon - ah...so shoop shoop song was actually about a herd of sheep! ooo.
stargal - kan dah kata i'm a meanie? :)
i'm not saying that people with a lower proficiency are stupid. my post is specificly about people who actually think they're publishable in the traditional print media.
i'm not even going to go into things like sentence structure, inappropriate use of words/phrase, spelling or advanced grammer.
plural form is very very basic.
true, they may not have had the opportunity to learn or are unaware. that's why i made my little community service tip-of-the-day! :)
I share your pain. I get irritated by customer service "staffs" who insist on telling you over the phone,"You hold, ah?" What was I supposed to hold?? Is a simple "Please hold on." so difficult?
A certain well known Malaysian artiste while receiving an international award had this included in her thank you speech,"I would like to thanks Gods ......" She must have many thanks to her numerous Gods....Heheh...
-BoobJuicer
I don't know. I've read several books on writing and grammar, and while they were exceptionally useful, I've gotten more neurotic about writing. I find myself second-guessing words and phrases more and more these days, words and phrases that I'd have used without a second thought years ago. But bad English is certainly unacceptable if it's public or official.
boobjuicer - oh ya, forgot about "staffs". sigh. heehee...poor siti. i like her though. :)
shryh - i know what you mean. i did a spelling test recently and was horrified by the results. and i'm still confused with how to use certain words/phrases as well. so much for the holier than thou. the difference i'm lamenting is, the defensiveness that springs up in some upon being corrected.
Lucky my speling very good.
today, i had my boss call and DICTATE to me a message to be emailed to the higher ups, which said message was in spectacularly bad english. the email was to be sent in my name. i couldn't rectify most of the errors without changing the whole sentence structure, and THAT i couldn't do, since the message was dictated.
oh, the shame!!!
I'm currently (as I type this commment) having my own experience. If you think you have it bad, you should try amending the article my lady boss gave me to publish on menopause. Grammar, spelling punctuation, sentance structure etc all off. Bad enough I had to read advice on how to apply vitamin e to the "outer lining"! I had to put up with "The consequences of long-term effects of menopause cause many illnesses and can variably shorten a woman’s life." Because it would be TOOO complicated just to say "Menopause can have many serious implications including life threatening diseases & even death."
NoooOOoo... its too hard....
*sigh* back to editing. I do blackcurrant, not nuts. breaks over. Moo spot.. Moo...
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