My English Grammar Blog

2011-08-14T04:05:00.004-05:00

Kena

When teaching grammar, and in particular passive verb groups, I’ve often found it useful to use the Singlish passive marker, kena — this is because many students have great difficulty telling whether a clause is in the active or passive voice.

In English, the passive voice is usually formed with the appropriate form of be or get:

(1) Shirley was/got promoted last week.
(2) Shirley was/got cheated last week.

Using the passive marker kena is a useful test for the passive voice: if it can be used in place of be/get, then the clause is probably passive. However, the ‘kena’ test has an important limitation: it can be used only with outcomes considered to be negative or undesired:

(3) * Shirley kena promoted last week. (positive outcome, ungrammatical in Singlish)
(4) Shirley kena cheated last week. (negative outcome, grammatical in Singlish)

Leaving aside the issue of preferred verb forms in Singlish (kena cheat is more likely), we note that (4) is good because it describes an event considered negative or undesired (i.e. nobody likes to be cheated), but (3) is definitely out because most people would wish to be promoted. For this reason, kena is said to a marker of the adversative passive.

2011-08-14T03:34:00.008-05:00

How Come You Never Call Me?

To many people in Singapore, Peppermint Patty must sound very Singaporean in the first panel.

For starters, how come? is widely believed to be a Singlish expression, but it is not, and is in fact very common in colloquial American English (Peanuts is, of course, American).

Furthermore, Peppermint Patty’s utterance differs from Singlish in two important respects. First, as is obvious from the subsequent panels, she really means ‘Why do you never call me?’ whereas in Singlish never is often used as a simple negator, so the most obvious meaning to most Singaporeans would be ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

Second, Peppermint Patty would probably never drop you, whereas for most Singaporeans it is redundant and stylistically heavy since Singlish is a pro-drop (null subject) language and subject and object pronouns need not be expressed if their referents (here, Chuck and the speaker, Peppermint Patty) are understood or recoverable from context. In other words, the most natural formulation of the sentence in Singlish would be Why never call? (Call in Standard English may also be intransitive, in which case Why don’t you ever call? does not have a missing object pronoun, me.)

2011-08-14T03:19:00.001-05:00

Railway

This is one I cannot be absolutely sure about, but I suspect the highlighted verb ought to be sits rather than sit since the noun railway as used in this sense is noncount, hence singular (Straits Times, 16 June 2011). Similarly, we would say Six cups of coffee a day is excessive, not are.

2011-08-14T02:59:00.001-05:00

18 Years Old

Make it 18 years old, without any hyphens (New Paper, 9 August 2011).

The rule to remember here is that if the compound adjective comes before the noun, it should be hyphenated (as if to show it functions as a single adjective), and that the unit of measure is singular (year): an 18-year-old student.

However, if it comes after a linking verb (in this case be), it loses the hyphens and the unit of measure becomes plural: He may only be 18 years old. (Pedants might also point out that only should precede 18 rather than be, since it modifies the age rather than the verb.)

If used as a noun in its own right, it is hyphenated: Even as an 18-year-old, Jim was incredibly mature for his age.

2011-08-14T02:47:00.002-05:00

Diffused/Defused

The verb needed in both cases was defused (Today 27 June 2011). Both diffuse and defuse are commonly confused, almost certainly because they are near-homophones.

Defuse (/ˌdiːˈfjuːz/) means ‘to stop a possibly dangerous or difficult situation from developing, especially by making people less angry or nervous’ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s), and is clearly the meaning intended here.

Diffuse (/dɪˈfjuːz/), on the other hand, means ‘to spread something or become spread widely in all directions’.

2011-08-14T02:31:00.000-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

The verb are above is wrong; make it is (Straits Times Life! 26 May 2011).

In English, the verb following a subject should agree with the subject; but if the subject is a complex noun phrase (in this case, TV drama Skins, which shows teens doing drugs and binge drinking), the verb almost always agrees with the head of that noun phrase.

The headline writer has presumably made the verb agree with the plural Skins, but the head of the noun phrase is in fact the singular drama.

2011-08-14T02:22:00.003-05:00

Sink, Sank, Sunk

The highlighted verb is intended to be in the simple present tense, so it should be sank (Straits Times online, 12 August 2011).

Sunk is, of course, the –en/ed participle of the verb sink, which has irregular past (sank) and –en/ed participle (sunk) forms, so we do not say His heart *sinked/*has sinked.

The –en/ed participle is more commonly known, especially in schools, as the past participle, but this is inaccurate since past tense is not inherent in the verb form, as the following examples illustrate:

(1) The yacht has sunk. (present perfective)
(2) The yacht had sunk. (past perfective)
(3) The yacht will have sunk. (modal perfective, referring to future time)

Note that, in all three cases, the verb sunk remains unchanged and any tense marking is left to the other, auxiliary verbs.

2011-03-16T08:06:00.001-05:00

Noncount Nouns

This an advertisement on the Straits Times website. The noun stuff is noncount in Standard English, but in Singapore English is often used as count (as the plural –s suffix suggests).

Other common noncount nouns used as count in Singapore English include markings (e.g. As an English teacher, I have lots of markings to do), junks, jargons, terminologies, and slangs.

2011-03-16T07:57:00.003-05:00

Worse, Worst

The superlative worst above is wrong (Straits Times Life! supplement, 19 February 2011). Instead, the comparative worse was needed here since the writer meant that there was no time ‘more bad’ than that referred to in the article.

Perhaps there is a phonological explanation for the above: worst ends in the consonant cluster /st/, and since the following word begins in /t/, the writer would probably have dropped the first /t/ in speech, and allowed this to influence his spelling.

The deletion of /d/ and /t/ in rapid speech is in fact very common, even among BBC announcers; see, for example, David Deterding’s article.

2011-03-16T07:42:00.002-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement and Inversion

The verb comes above is wrong (Straits Times Life supplement, 22 January 2011). The writer probably assumed that the singular noun consumption was the subject of the sentence, but it is in fact the plural noun emissions.

This is because the sentence has an inverted order Adverbial + Verb + Subject, whereas a normal SVA structure would give us Carbon emissions come with low fuel consumption.

2011-03-16T07:25:00.001-05:00

A/An

In Singapore schools we are often taught to use the indefinite article an before words beginning in vowels, and a elsewhere. However, many teachers seem unaware that this rule applies at a phonological level and not an orthographic one — in other words, it applies to sounds, not spelling.

This misunderstanding of the rule has probably led to the error in the caption above (Straits Times online, 14 February 2011): a NTU Linguistics student ought to be an NTU ..., because NTU begins in a vowel sound, /e/.

2010-12-15T07:08:00.004-05:00

Keep

In Singapore English the verb keep has the meaning of ‘to put away’ — as was obviously intended in the excerpt above.

In Standard English, however, keep describes a state and not an action; and, as noted by Adam Brown in his excellent Singapore English in a Nutshell, it is very often synonymous with possess, remain or retain.

2010-12-15T06:58:00.000-05:00

Marketing

In Standard English, the term marketing refers to ‘the activity of deciding how to advertise a product, what price to charge for it etc, or the type of job in which you do this’.

In Singapore, as the above article (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 28 November 2010) interestingly shows, marketing is used to mean both that and the activity of shopping for groceries. The latter meaning is in fact also old-fashioned American English.

2010-12-15T06:47:00.000-05:00

Young

For some mysterious reason, the Straits Times seems never to be able to handle the collective nouns the young and youth. Both expressions refer to young people considered as a group, and are grammatically plural. Hence, make it Young Prefer Newspapers.

2010-12-15T06:42:00.000-05:00

Hedge

What, exactly, is a slight change in venue? Getting people to move from the left side of the room to the right, perhaps? (No, it was a complete change, from one lecture theatre to another.)

The use of slight above is an example of a hedge, i.e. ‘a mitigating device used to lessen the impact of an utterance’. Using it probably made the writer feel there was no need for an apology.

2010-12-15T06:33:00.003-05:00

Ellipsis

The verb give is wrong; it should have been giving (Straits Times, 27 November 2010).

This is because the final clause shares an auxiliary verb with the preceding one, and since it is understood it may be omitted (or ellipted): he is not heeding her words and he (is) not giving in to his grief.

2010-12-15T06:13:00.001-05:00

Sentence Construction

The above sign would be improved by the insertion of a definite article before elderly:

This restroom is for people with disabilities and the elderly.

This would make it clear that the restroom is for (i) people with disabilities, and (ii) the elderly. The definite article would help mark the start of a new, separate noun phrase, so that elderly would not be construed as being part of the postmodifier of the head noun people. Of course, we might also choose to repeat the preposition (i.e. for the elderly), but perhaps an even clearer way of wording the notice would be:

This restroom is for the elderly and people with disabilities.

2010-12-15T06:02:00.004-05:00

Articles

The noun phrase a elephant in the cartoon above (19 November 2010) looks like an error arising out of ignorance. However, a more plausible explanation is that the cartoonist had merely been very careless. As an amateur calligrapher myself I know all too well how easy it is to misspell even the simplest of words — and even one’s own name! — when writing (and typesetting) a piece very slowly and deliberately by hand, especially in capital letters.

2010-12-15T05:48:00.002-05:00

Commas

The second sentence (Sunday Times, 21 November 2010) might have been punctuated better as follows:

They are the first, and only, women to date to break into these two male-dominated elite frontline combat units.

2010-12-15T05:44:00.001-05:00

Apostrophes

This sign, spotted in a supermarket in Singapore called Giant, is perfectly punctuated (the apostrophe applies, in each case, after the plural forms children, ladies and men have been derived). In the UK, where I lived for eight years as a student, such a sign would almost certainly have been mispunctuated.

2010-11-08T02:48:00.016-05:00

Phonics by Kelly Chopard

The above is a description of a phonics course. As can be seen from the title and body text, the instructor suggests that the pronunciation of phonics as /ˈfəʊnɪks/ is Singaporean and wrong.

Well, here’s an opinion from somebody who knows better — Professor John Wells, possibly the world’s foremost authority on English pronunciation, and writer of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD).

Below is his entry for phonic. (The ~s means that, in terms of pronunciation, phonics differs only in that one detail from the headword, phonic.)

Unsurprisingly he prioritizes the more common pronunciation, /ˈfɒnɪks/, but also lists /ˈfəʊnɪks/ as a variant for British Received Pronunciation (RP). The same pattern is observed in the General American pronunciations, given after ||.

The fact that /ˈfəʊnɪks/ is not prioritized does not mean it is non-standard. In the LPD, non-standard (i.e. non-RP) pronunciations are marked §, as we can see in the following discussion of /wɪθ/ in Britain:

It is unclear on what basis (apart from irrational prejudice) Kelly Chopard believes that /ˈfəʊnɪks/ is a Singaporean, hence undesirable, pronunciation worthy of ridicule, when for millions of British and American speakers it is perfectly acceptable.

It is also interesting to note that she labels this pronunciation as ‘Singlish’, a usually dismissive term for colloquial Singapore English. However, one should point out that this term refers not so much to the Singapore accent as to other features such as lexis and syntax.

Indeed, the instructor’s misuse of linguistic terms, obvious misunderstanding of issues, and stilted English should make any knowledgeable reader question her credentials.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

2010-11-08T01:50:00.002-05:00

Spelling

An interesting spelling error in a BBC headline today (8 November 2010): Aborigenes should, of course, be Aborigines. One wonders if the headline writer, it not merely careless, was thinking of Classical Greek names (e.g. Diogenes) when she or he typed this.

2010-11-06T06:16:00.002-05:00

Persephone

This is from the official English As It Is Broken website.

The anglicized pronunciation of the Classical Greek name Persephone is /pɜːˈsefəni/. Interestingly, the answer respells the second syllable as SAF rather than SEF, suggesting that for most Singaporean speakers the vowels /e/ and /æ/ are merged.

It also shows that so-called phonetic respelling is an often maddeningly inexact way of indicating pronunciation, since different readers will assign different sounds to the same letters and to combinations thereof. In fact, I suspect that most Singaporean readers would be baffled to learn that FUH is supposed to give /fə/ rather than /fu:/.

2010-11-06T06:00:00.002-05:00

Ambiguous Headline

This headline (Straits Times web, 6 November 2010) is probably baffling to the reader, until she or he works out that police is not a noun but a verb.

Because headlines need to be brief, words that are understood or recoverable from context are usually omitted. Function words are usually the first casualties, such as the underlined definite article: Peer pressure to police the deal.

2010-11-06T05:50:00.001-05:00

Ambiguity

The headline above (Straits Times web, 20 October 2009) is unintentionally ambiguous and amusing.

The noun phrase ageing panel is intended to mean ‘panel that works on issues involving ageing’ (ageing is a noun here), but arguably the more obvious and natural reading would be ‘panel of ageing members’ (ageing as adjective).

2010-11-06T05:25:00.001-05:00

Past Perfect

In the article above, the writer recounts — in the past tense, naturally enough — her maiden experience at a casino.

The use of the simple past in the last sentence, however, is non-standard: since the realization that she had ‘had enough’ took place before her suggestion to H that they leave, she should have used the past perfect: I had had enough of the casino.

2010-11-06T05:13:00.000-05:00

Verbal

The word verbal is often imprecise in meaning. Most people use it to mean ‘spoken’ or ‘oral’, so a verbal agreement is one that is spoken and not written down.

Pedants, however, insist that technically it means ‘involving words’ — that is, it may be spoken or written. This broader meaning of verbal may be usefully contrasted with non-verbal, for example a nod to indicate ‘yes’.

2010-11-06T05:05:00.000-05:00

Good Winds

I don’t know Portuguese, but I do know enough to work out that bom vento is singular; hence a more accurate translation of the highlighted phrase would be ‘house of good wind’ rather than ‘good winds’, as in the article above (a restaurant review). Presumably, in Portuguese the plural would be bons ventos.

Perhaps the name is in Kristang, the Portuguese-based creole?

2010-10-26T09:19:00.003-05:00

Scruffle

There is no such word in English as scruffle; make it scuffle. As a verb, scuffle means ‘to have a short fight that is not very violent’ (Longman).

Speakers sometimes inadvertently blend words when they cannot remember them accurately or are not careful. I had a university lecturer who said she once referred to somebody as portulent, when she had meant to say either corpulent or portly — but not both at the same time.

2010-09-20T03:54:00.002-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

The verb were is wrong (Straits Times, 17 September 2010).

Since the noun phrase the Singapore universities’ drop in rankings has a singular head noun drop, it needs to be followed by the singular verb was.

2010-09-20T03:48:00.004-05:00

The Young

The headline above (Straits Times Online, 13 September 2010) contains a subject–verb agreement error; make it S’pore young worry MM.

The relevant sense of young here is ‘young people considered as a group’, hence it is equivalent to (one of the senses of) youth and is a collective noun.

How could we find out the grammatical properties of a noun, or indeed of any other grammatical category? Here’s where a good learner’s dictionary comes in handy. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, for example, marks young as ‘[pl.]’, meaning that it is grammatically plural; accordingly, it should be followed by a plural verb.

2010-08-31T09:41:00.000-05:00

Children Sold Here

This sign, which tries unsuccessfully to combine two noun phrases — children’s books and Chinese books — was spotted in a bookstore in Singapore. It implies erroneously that children are sold here, in addition to Chinese books!

2010-08-31T09:23:00.003-05:00

Past Perfect

I was recently asked which of the following was correct:

(a) Before I left the room, I switched off the lights. (simple past)
(b) Before I left the room, I had switched off the lights. (past perfect)

My reply was that (a) was correct, but I was told that (b) was given as the recommended answer in a primary school English exercise. However, I have no doubt that (b) is definitely wrong.

In Standard English (StdE), the simple past is used for events that may be represented as a single point on a time line showing present time and past time. It tends to be used when there is a specific time expression, e.g. yesterday, three hours ago. If we represent this on a time line, we need two points: one indicating present time, and another indicating yesterday or three hours ago.

The past perfect, by contrast, is used when referring to the earlier of two or more events. If on a time line we have three points A, B and C, where C is present time, the later past event B will be expressed in the simple past, whereas the event that preceded it, Event A, will be expressed in the past perfect.

The past perfect is properly used below:

(c) He popped by, but I had already left the room.

In Singapore, the past perfect is often incorrectly used, perhaps because of a poor understanding of what constitutes an ‘earlier past event’. Admittedly, it is not always easy to determine what an earlier past event is, and the proposition expressed in (a) and (b) is a good case in point: doesn’t switched off the lights qualify as an earlier past event, since it took place before left the room?

The explanation is not so straightforward, and lies in the fact that before I left the room counts as a specific time expression — hence the use of simple past switched as in (a) rather than past perfect had switched as in (b). Note that before I left the room is a subordinate clause; it cannot stand alone and has to be attached to a main clause, in this case I switched off the lights. Note also that, as is typical of subordinate clauses, it can be moved around: I switched off the lights before I left the room means the same thing. Another thing: it is an adverbial, like so many subordinate clauses are, and as it conveys time, it is a adverbial of time.

Contrast this with (c), which has two main clauses, He popped by and I had already left the room, either of which can stand on its own. Unlike subordinate clauses, main clauses cannot be inverted freely, hence *I had already left the room but/and he popped by is ungrammatical, or at best very odd. Hence, either main clause expresses an independent past event; neither serves as a time adverbial to the other.

2010-08-31T08:21:00.001-05:00

Satisfied?

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

The above are extracts from two articles published side-by-side in the Straits Times (26 August 2010).

I think most readers would find satisfaction over transport very odd indeed because of the choice of the preposition over. However, this appears twice on the same page, as (a) and (b) show.

Then we have Example (c) — satisfaction for its services — which is just as bad, if not worse.

In only in one instance, Example (d), is the correct preposition, with, used. Indeed, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (5th ed), indicates that satisfaction should be used [+with], and gives the example Finance officials expressed satisfaction with the recovery of the dollar.

It should be no surprise that we use with with satisfaction, since we would say We are satisfied with public transport in this country, and not satisfied for or satisfied over.

2010-08-31T07:41:00.002-05:00

No Outside Food

In Singapore, signs like the above are very common. You’ll find them in restaurants and cafés whose owners, perhaps understandably, want to restrict the use of their tables to their customers. In this context, the term outside food refers to food bought elsewhere, i.e. not from the restaurant or café displaying the sign. It may also be used as an antonym of home-cooked food.

Among campaigners for good English in Singapore, there is a sense that the above message is non-standard and hence to be discouraged. The following sign appears to be an attempt at expressing the same message in Standard English.

I am not entirely sure that this is an improvement, for it does not sound very idiomatic either, i.e. not something a native speaker (however you choose to define her or him) would say. Perhaps it is necessary to recast it more radically, as any one of the following (or variants thereof):

These tables are for the consumption of food purchased/bought here only.

These tables are for our customers only.

Only for the consumption of food purchased here.

Only for food purchased here.

Not for the consumption of food bought elsewhere.

You’ll probably agree that this little exercise is a good example of a cure being worse than the original ailment! Note that, by comparison with any of the above, the original message, No outside food allowed, is beautifully concise, precise and immediately comprehensible, at least in Singapore.

2010-08-31T07:16:00.002-05:00

Although ...

The sentence beginning with the highlighted word is incomplete, giving the reader the impression that it is left hanging (Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2010).

This is because the entire sentence is a subordinate clause, and subordinate clauses ordinarily cannot stand alone and need to be attached to main clauses. One obvious way to ‘rescue’ it is to end the previous sentence with a comma, and to tack the subordinate clause on at the end:

Demand is highest in Germany, Austria, Poland and central Europe, although the powerful light ... in historic homes.

Another solution is to change the subordinating conjunction although to the adverb however:

However, the powerful light ... in historic homes.

2010-08-20T10:44:00.004-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

The subheading above, in The New Paper (20 August 2010), contains a subject–verb agreement error. Since the subject is the noun phrase frequency of cases, whose head is the singular noun frequency, the following verb should be singular prompts and not plural prompt.

It is worth remembering that, even though we call it ‘subject–verb agreement’, the agreement is between the verb and the head of the subject noun phrase (if it is complex), and not with the noun nearest to it (so the verb doesn’t agree with cases).

A similar problem is seen here (same newspaper, same day). The subject is the non-finite clause locating the best places ... for effective exposure. Like all non-finite clauses functioning as subjects, it should be treated as singular, hence ... is all in a day’s work.

2010-08-20T10:29:00.003-05:00

What? Wot?

This is from Metro, a free newspaper distributed throughout London (23 June 2010).

The headline, Water way to set a record, would probably be puzzling to many speakers of English, unless they realize that water way is supposed to be a pun on what a way. Since water and what a are pronounced /ˈwɔːtə/ and /ˈwɒtə/ respectively in many varieties of British English, they are reasonably close rhymes.

But of course this doesn’t work for many American speakers, most of whom are rhotic (i.e. pronounce the /r/ at the end of water), pronounce wh as /hw/, and use /ʌ/ in what.

Like the Americans, most Singaporeans pronounce what as /wʌt/. In fact, most would be surprised to learn that what is pronounced /wɒt/ in British Received Pronunciation — the pronunciation model traditionally adopted in Singapore schools (but which is evidently on its way out) — and that wander is pronounced as /ˈwɒndə/.

2010-07-29T13:13:00.000-05:00

Grass

Seen in City Square Mall, which professes to be the first ‘eco-mall’ in Singapore.

The subject pronoun of the second sentence, They, is wrong. Since the antecedent is the uncountable noun grass in the preceding sentence, we need a singular pronoun. Make it It helps to curb soil erosion.

2010-07-29T13:07:00.002-05:00

Thumbs Down

This headline (Straits Times website, 13 July 2010) is wrong: the correct expression is thumbs down, not thumb’s down.

2010-07-29T13:03:00.002-05:00

Noun Phrases and Pronouns

Reading the short introduction above, one might wonder why the name of the product is repeated throughout, rather than being replaced by pronouns. Indeed, the piece sounds a bit odd, since it lacks the cohesion that pronouns usefully lend to a text.

Presumably, this is because, the more hyperlinks a webpage contains, the more likely it is to be picked up by a search engine.

2010-07-29T12:53:00.001-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

This is from the New Paper on Sunday (28 February 2010). Is the highlighted verb correct?

One might assume it is, considering that the subject, over 17,060 kilometers, is plural, hence the plural verb separate.

However, over 17,060 kilometers actually represents a distance, hence a single entity, so it requires a singular verb here, i.e. separates.

2010-05-25T07:11:00.003-05:00

/l/-deletion

This is the packaging of a car-care product. What could conditional possibly mean? It turns out that this product is actually a conditioner. Quite obviously, the misspelling arose because the owner of the business, or the person in charge of marketing the product, does not pronounce syllable-final /l/, hence making conditioner and conditional homophones in his or her speech.

2010-05-25T07:05:00.000-05:00

Barbeque (sic)

No, it’s not barbeque — the correct spelling is barbecue. This has got to be one of the most commonly misspelt words in English.

2010-05-07T04:58:00.001-05:00

Incident/Incidence

The first highlighted word, incidences, is wrong; make it incidents (Straits Times, 27 April 2010).

An incidence is ‘the extent to which something happens or has an effect, e.g. an area with a high incidence of crime’ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s).

By contrast, an incident is ‘something that happens, usually something unusual or unpleasant, e.g. His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident’.

2010-05-07T04:33:00.002-05:00

Farquhar

The above are publicity banners for an exhibition on William Farquhar, who, as every self-respecting student of Singapore history would know, and as the banners helpfully inform us, was the first Resident and Commandant of Singapore, 1819–1823.

In Singapore, the Scots surname Farquhar is usually pronounced /fʌkwʌ/ or /fɑ:kwɑ:/ — the usual pronunciations taught in schools.

So it invariably comes as a shock to Singaporeans to learn that it is pronounced in standard British English as /ˈfɑ:kə/ or /ˈfɑ:kwə/ (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edition).

However, considering that most Singaporeans do not consistently distinguish between the vowels /ʌ/ and /ɑ:/, it is perhaps wiser to stick with the Singaporean pronunciation than to insist on the standard. Or if the standard pronunciation is indeed important, then teach the variant with /w/, i.e. /ˈfɑ:kwə/ rather than /ˈfɑ:kə/.

2010-05-07T04:06:00.003-05:00

Cost/Cause

The highlighted word above (The New Paper, 14 April 2010) should, of course, be cost rather than cause. As with so many typos, this one seems to have a phonological basis.

But how do cost and cause end up as homophones (or at best near-homophones) in Singapore English when, in British Received Pronunciation (RP) for example, they are /kɒst/ and /kɔ:z/?

The first factor is the neutralization of distinctions between vowels that are differentiated in other varieties of English: here, the distinction between short /ɒ/ and long /ɔ:/, which is responsible for pot/port being a minimal pair in RP.

The second is the phenomenon of final fricative devoicing, where /z/ becomes [s], which leads to course and cause being /kɒs/ or /kɔ:s/ in Singapore English, whereas in RP they are /kɔ:s/ and /kɔ:z/.

And finally, the simplication of consonant clusters, leading to the loss of /t/ in cost.

2010-04-04T10:25:00.003-05:00

/l/-vocalization

The headline above, old no!, is intended to be a pun on oh no! (Straits Times, 3 April 2010). While it may work for Singaporean speakers of English, this would probably be quite a stretch for speakers of most other varieties of English.

In British Received Pronunciation (RP), old no is pronounced /əʊld nəʊ/, and oh no as /əʊ nəʊ/ — so they are really quite different.

In Singapore English (SgE), a realistic standard pronunciation might be /oʊld noʊ/ and /oʊ noʊ/ respectively, assuming that a diphthong is more desirable than a monophthong in each word (incidentally, the diphthong /oʊ/ is usual in American English).

How do old no and oh no become rhymes in SgE? First, the final consonant cluster /ld/ in old is simplified, leaving [l]. And since SgE vocalizes or deletes dark /l/, we end up with [oʊ] for both old and oh.

2010-03-28T12:11:00.005-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

The highlighted verb is wrong (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 14 March 2010). Make it is, because the subject of the sentence is making reservations at high-end restaurants, a non-finite clause and hence grammatically singular.

2010-03-10T10:02:00.003-05:00

/l/-vocalization

An interesting typo that gives a clue to the caption writer’s pronunciation (Straits Times online, 1 March 2010).

Obviously the writer meant former’s, but the fact that he typed formal’s suggests that both words are homophones for him.

One might surmise that he pronounces /l/ and /r/ alike, but this would be wrong. Rather, the phenomenon that is relevant here is /l/-vocalization (or ‘vowelization’ of /l/), which means that dark /l/ either becomes a vowel, or is deleted — in other words, /l/ disappears. And since Singapore English is non-rhotic, /r/ is not pronounced after vowels; in other words, is it not even present. Hence, /l, r/ confusion does not arise.

2010-02-16T09:23:00.007-05:00

Regret About/For

Here are two examples of superfluous prepositions in Singapore English (SgE), the first from the broadsheet The Straits Times (15 February 2010) and the other from a notice at one of Singapore’s more popular museums.

In Standard English (StdE), regret as a verb is transitive, meaning it takes a direct object (underlined) and no preposition, e.g. He regretted his indecision over the sale. Similarly, StdE would have He regretted what had happened and We regret (any) inconvenience caused where the SgE examples above have regretted about and regret for.

In SgE, the use of prepositions with (what in StdE are) transitive verbs is very common. Typical examples include discuss about, emphasize on, source for, relook at, rework on, study/research on, partner with, demand for and request for.

On the other hand, SgE uses some verbs transitively where in StdE they would be intransitive and require a preposition. Hence, in SgE one may apply leave and reply him, whereas StdE would have these as apply for leave and reply to him.

2010-01-29T09:31:00.001-05:00

If She Were...

The above is an excerpt from a cross-examination in a law court (Straits Times, 26 January 2010). Interestingly, although the lawyer asks, If Nellie Huang were your mother, the doctor twice replies, If [she] was my mother.

In hypothetical conditional clauses, i.e. those expressing an unlikely or imaginary situation, either the hypothetical past (was) or the past subjunctive (were) may be used. The past subjunctive were is more formal and likelier to be found in formal writing, whereas the hypothetical past was is more common in speech.

The past subjunctive is, however, generally used in American English, which in many ways (e.g. grammar, punctuation) is more conservative than British English.

Likewise, where American English would have We suggest that he leave soon, British English is more likely to have We suggest that he leaves soon or We suggest that he should leave soon.

2010-01-19T18:32:00.004-05:00

Youths

In Standard English (StdE), youth as a countable noun — that is, singular a youth or plural some youths — refers disapprovingly to young males, usually teenagers, engaged in antisocial or criminal behaviour. It is therefore often found in collocations such as a gang of youths. (This is different from the collective-noun sense of the word, e.g. the youth of Singapore, meaning ‘young people in Singapore taken considered as a group’.)

In Singapore English (SgE), however, youth as a countable noun refers to nothing more than ‘young people’, both female and male. As the extracts above show (Straits Times, both 11 January 2010), the word has no negative connotations: in fact the photographs show young people, female as well as male, doing good deeds.

A linguistic purist might put the SgE usage down to sheer ignorance, but a descriptive linguist would probably argue that it is simply a feature of SgE which sets it apart from other varieties.

2010-01-11T10:27:00.005-05:00

Error on BBC Learning English

About a month ago I wrote to point out two errors on a clickable IPA chart on the BBC Learning English Pronunciation Tips page. Sadly they remain unchanged after all this while, even though I immediately wrote to the BBC via its Contact Us page to alert them to the errors.

I’m glad the eminent phonetician, Professor John Wells, agrees with me. (I’d written to him about the errors, seeing that his help had been acknowledged on the BBC site.) Here’s an excerpt from his blog post of 7 January 2010:

Look at this chart of phonetic symbols for English (RP type). It is a pop-up that appears if you go to the BBC World Service learning English site and click on Listen to the sounds of English. Do you notice what is wrong? Compare it with the correct chart found on that page itself. There are two discrepancies. One is that the MOUTH vowel is written as ɑʊ rather than aʊ, which is something that could perhaps even be defended as a preferable notation for the diphthong in question (though here it is unquestionably just a mistake). The other is a straightforward error: ɭ (retroflex lateral) instead of l (alveolar lateral). Thanks to Ludwig Tan for this.

Professor Wells’s Phonetic Blog is probably a little too advanced for most undergraduate students of phonetics, but it is always fascinating.

2009-12-27T04:38:00.007-05:00

Punctuation

(a)

(b)

Can you, at a glance, tell whether each abstract (from Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans) is from a British or an American publisher?

The answer is that (a) is from an American publisher (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) and (b), from a British publisher (Faber & Faber, 2000).

Quotation marks are usually the most obvious clue: Americans prefer double quotes, whereas the British prefer single quotes: compare “interrogating” and ‘interrogating’, for instance.

A second difference is the placement of the full-stop: compare “such an odd bird at school.” with ‘such an odd bird at school’. American practice always has the punctuation inside the quotes, even if a fragment is being quoted (as here), whereas in British practice it depends on whether the punctuation was part of the original quote, a grammatically complete sentence, and so on.

A third clue to (a) being American is the full-stop in St. Dunstan’s: American editorial practice generally uses full-stops in abbreviations; by contrast, modern British practice has largely dispensed with them altogether. In older British practice, however, full-stops were used in all abbreviations except contractions, i.e. the first and last letters of the full word were retained. Hence, Dr for doctor but Prof. for Professor. (However, to avoid confusion, St. was used for street and St for saint.)

Surprisingly, the word judgement in the US edition retains the British spelling, with the e as underlined — perhaps to keep the British identity of the protagonist. In British English, judgement is used in non-legal contexts, and judgment in legal ones. Hence, In my judgement, this judge is not qualified to pass judgment on this case (but judgment in both instances in American English).

2009-12-27T03:37:00.001-05:00

Verb Errors

These are just the first two paragraphs of an opinion piece, but they are littered with elementary verb errors.

In the first paragraph, do is wrong as there is no reason for an abrupt switch in tense from past (spoke, were) to present.

In the second paragraph, poor service standards was not my bugbear is, again, obviously wrong. Since the plural standards is the head of the noun phrase poor service standards, we need a plural verb, were.

2009-12-16T08:00:00.003-05:00

BBC Learning English Gets Symbols Wrong

I have just discovered the BBC Learning English Pronunciation Tips page, a splendid resource not only for learners of English but also for teachers and anybody wishing to learn IPA symbols for English. Among other things, it has an IPA chart as well as videos showing how vowel and consonant sounds are pronounced.

I particularly like the chart (Listen to the sounds of English) where each symbol, when clicked, plays the sound it represents. (This is arguably more effective with vowels rather than consonants.)

Two elementary errors blight this chart, however. First, the diphthong given as /ɑʊ/ is wrong: the correct symbol is /aʊ/. Second, the consonant /l/ is wrongly given as /ɭ/ — this latter sound is the retroflex lateral approximant which one finds in the Dravidian language Tamil; it is, loosely speaking, an /l/ sound produced with the tongue curled back (retroflex).

What these errors show is that transcribing sounds is an exact business: there is no room for creativity or self-expression, as subtle differences may result in altogether different sounds. I have written to the BBC pointing out these errors, and hope the chart is amended soon.

2009-12-15T04:59:00.003-05:00

The Number Of...

In the two occurrences above of the number of cases (Straits Times, 10 December 2009), the writer uses a singular verb is in the first instance (correct) but plural go in the second (wrong).

The rule to remember is this: use a singular verb with the number of ..., but a plural verb with a number of ....

This is because, when we say the number of ..., we are really referring to a number. Since number is a singular head noun, it accordingly takes a singular verb.

But when we say a number of ..., we actually mean some. Hence, a number of becomes a complex determiner. Since the noun that follows of is always plural (e.g. a number of doctors/cases, not a number of *doctor/*case), the verb should also be plural.

2009-12-15T04:47:00.003-05:00

Strait-Laced

It often surprises people that straight-laced is wrong — the correct spelling is strait-laced (US spelling straitlaced).

The word strait is a noun meaning ‘a narrow passage of water that connects two seas or large areas of water’ (Oxford), e.g. the Straits of Gibraltar, Straits of Malacca, Johor Straits. There are also figurative expressions, of course, such as dire straits and desperate financial straits.

No doubt the writer was exercising literary licence in her descriptions of Tiger Woods in the above excerpt (Straits Times,12 December 2009), in which she uses the superlative forms cleanest, straightest and goodiest, but straightest shows quite clearly that she has confused the noun strait (which cannot take the suffix –est) with the adjective straight (which can).

2009-12-15T04:25:00.001-05:00

The Games Is/Are...

Since the head of the noun phrase SEA Games (South East Asian Games) is the plural Games, the headline (Straits Times, 10 December 2009) ought to read: SEA Games open with a bang. The same applies to, and is observed with, the Olympic Games.

2009-12-11T07:20:00.005-05:00

The Kena Passive in Singapore English

In Standard English (StdE), passives are formed using a be passive auxiliary verb or a form of get. By contrast, Singapore English (SgE), which does not have as complex a system of auxiliary and main verbs, uses kena (a word of Malay origin) to form the passive. The SgE examples above may therefore be phrased in StdE as I was once fined, I got fined once, or If I was fined. (The quote may be translated as ‘I was once fined for jaywalking. Quite embarrassing. If I’d been fined for speeding, then that would’ve been cool.’)

Interestingly, the SgE kena passive is what is known as an ‘adversative passive’ — one used for negative or undesirable outcomes. Hence, The baby kena fed is all right if the baby had been fed poison, but not if it had been fed milk. Likewise, if one were to say I kena appointed leader, it suggests the speaker did not want to be leader.

2009-12-11T07:02:00.002-05:00

A Clarification on Clarify

In Standard English (StdE), the verb clarify is a transitive verb, meaning that it has the pattern ‘someone clarifies something’, or Subject-Verb-Object.

In Singapore English (SgE), however, clarify is usually intransitive, meaning it does not take an object. We see this very clearly in the above example, taken from a letter explaining overcrowding on the trains:

We hope this clarifies, and thank Dr Lim for his feedback.

In StdE, the first half of the sentence might have read: We hope this clarifies the matter.

2009-12-07T05:47:00.007-05:00

The Passive Construction

It is said that children, once they’ve acquired the passive construction, soon discover its usefulness when they’ve done something wrong and wish to avoid taking responsibility for it.

In an active sentence, the subject (underlined) is the agent or doer of the action: I made mistakes.

In a passive sentence, the subject (underlined) is the patient or undergoer of the action: Mistakes were made. Note that the passive construction allows the speaker to avoid mentioning the agent. However, the agent may be mentioned using a so-called ‘agent by-phrase’ (underlined): Mistakes were made by me.

This comic strip is doubly funny because Zoё’s utterance sounds very adult. If it sounds familiar, it’s probably because we associate it primarily with bungling politicians, CEOs, bankers and celebrities who’ve been forced to admit their mistakes publicly!

Edit: A few days after this post, the exact phrase was used by a ‘top banker’ in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph. One wonders why he didn’t say, ‘We made mistakes’!

2009-11-30T10:08:00.003-05:00

Phonics *Are Interesting

The highlighted verb is wrong (The Times, 30 November 2009). Since phonics is the name of a subject, it should take a singular verb, is. It is puzzling that the teacher — if she was indeed quoted correctly — chose a plural verb for phonics but a singular one for maths. (And while we’re being pedantic, there should be a semicolon and not a comma after excellent.)

Words like mathematics, economics, acoustics and politics take singular verbs when they refer to the name of a subject or topic of study, but they take plural verbs when they refer to aspects, attributes, qualities and so on. Hence:

Politics is my strongest subject at university.

but

The politics at work are unbearable.

2009-11-29T01:23:00.002-05:00

Stress

A rather unusual typo here: the headline (Independent on Sunday website, 29 November 2009) should have read The war was illegal, with was rather than war underlined for emphasis. The typo was no doubt due to the superficial similarity of the two words. (And no, in case you’re wondering, it was not a hyperlink.)

As the first paragraph of the article shows, the issue at hand was the legality of the war:

‘Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.’

While it would be possible to stress the word war, the effect would be to contrast it with something else, for example occupation. This is known as contrastive stress. But as we can see from the article, there was no such intended contrast.

2009-11-25T05:26:00.004-05:00

Colons

The above colon (Straits Times, 6 November 2009) is wrong and should be deleted, since colons are not to be used after linking verbs (in this case were).

Colons may be used to introduce main clauses (i.e. clauses that are grammatically complete and can stand on their own), as in the two examples above (Straits Times, 12 November 2009). But does one use a small or capital letter after the colon? Interestingly, in North America, the preference is for a capital letter, whereas British English prefers a small letter. As can be seen from the above, however, Straits Times (and, by extension, Singaporean?) practice is inconsistent.

2009-11-21T08:43:00.004-05:00

A Slight Problem

The headline (Straits Times, 21 November 2009) is wrong: make it Sleight of hand. The expression means ‘skilful movements of [the] hand that other people cannot see’ (Oxford) — in this case the France striker Thierry Henry’s main de Dieu (‘hand of God’), which cost Ireland its place in next year’s football World Cup.

Slight and sleight are pronounced alike, so the misspelling — assuming it was not a weak attempt at a pun — is perhaps understandable. The formal equivalent of sleight of hand is the French leger de main.

2009-11-15T02:22:00.008-05:00

Weak Forms of Function Words

Online discussion forums are a rich source of authentic language data, particularly where linguistically insightful misspellings and other errors are concerned.

In the above extract, the poster (an American) writes would of when he means would have. This misspelling would probably be rather baffling to non-native speakers of English or to speakers of new varieties of English (e.g. Singaporean), but it is very common among ‘traditional’ native speakers such as the British, Canadians and Americans. In these traditional native varieties of English, the function words of and have have identical weak forms — /əv/ — hence the confusion in spelling. However, this misspelling does not arise in Singapore English and other newer varieties of English since they do not generally use weak forms of function words.

Similarly, this extract suggests that the poster (British) rhymes you’re (the spelling needed in the first instance) with your. Again, this is because in British English are has the weak form /ə/ — so both you’re and your are pronounced /jʊə/ or /jɔː/. Likewise, this does not arise in Singapore English since it generally avoids weak forms.

2009-11-06T12:26:00.004-05:00

Scrap/Scrape

In Singapore, the words scrap and scrape are often confused, with many pronouncing the former like the latter in the context of sending cars to the scrapyard. Still, the mistake in the headline (Straits Times website, 6 November 2009) is surprising, since one would expect a sub-editor to know better.

2009-11-05T11:09:00.005-05:00

Comes and Goes

The choice between come and go is often tricky because it depends on who the point of reference is: the writer/speaker or the reader/hearer.

The use of goes in the above example is extremely odd. Here, the headline writer ought to have taken the reader as point of reference because the latter interprets the situation as one in which the vaccine comes to a clinic near her/him from the country of manufacture — hence comes is preferable in this instance to goes.

2009-11-04T07:24:00.007-05:00

Pronunciation of –s suffix

This notice, seen in Ikea cafés in Singapore, encourages customers to clear their trays after eating. As can be seen, in Singapore English pronunciation, trace and trays are homophones (different words pronounced identically): both are /treɪs/.

By contrast, in other varieties of English, e.g. British, trace would be /treɪs/ and trays, /treɪz/. The suffix –s, as a possessive (e.g. Chuck’s), plural (e.g. Chucks) or third-person singular present tense (e.g. chucks) marker, is realized as /s/ after voiceless sounds and as /z/ after voiced ones (vowels and voiced consonants). This rule applies to trays, whose singular form, tray /treɪ/, ends in a vowel (voiced) sound, but not to trace /treɪs/, where the /s/ is not a suffix but part of the root.

2009-10-31T09:05:00.004-05:00

Ashes

Some problems with this advertisement for a pocket ashtray.

The top line reads: A green way to toss away your cigarette ashes. Make it cigarette ash, since the word ash is uncountable (hence singular) in the context of tobacco, wood, coal or volcanoes. The plural ashes is more appropriate for cremated bodies and for buildings, etc. destroyed by fire.

The next line reads: Your environmental friendly Pocket Ashtray. The compound adjective is more commonly environmentally friendly (adverb+adjective) or environment-friendly (with hyphen).

The last line is the exhortation, Don’t be a Tosser, keep the city clean! The word tosser is a bit unfortunate here since it is, among other things, a swear word with the literal meaning ‘one who pleasures himself’.

2009-10-30T03:58:00.002-05:00

Premises

The word premises, meaning ‘the building and land near to it that a business owns or uses’ (Oxford), is always plural. Hence, a plural noun and verb are needed: These are smoke-free premises.

2009-10-30T03:51:00.002-05:00

Subject-Verb Agreement

This headline, from the Daily Telegraph website (12 August 2009), is wrong. Make it:

Thinking of something good that happened the day before boosts happiness.

In Standard English, verbs agree with subjects. Here, we have a subject in the form of a nonfinite clause, as underlined above. When clauses function as subjects, they are grammatically singular — hence the singular verb boosts.

The subheading is a little trickier: Smiling and recalling something pleasant from the previous day help to make you happier, according to a new experiment.

The plural verb help, if intentional, suggests that the writer was thinking of smiling and recalling something pleasant from the previous day as two separate activities, hence making the subject plural. My preference, however, would be to treat it as a single activity, hence Smiling ... previous day helps ....

2009-10-30T03:39:00.005-05:00

–ise vs –ize

Are criticize, analyze and televize American spellings?

Some quick answers: criticize is also possible in British English (BrE); analyze is found only in American English (AmE); and televize is possible in neither.

There is a widespread misconception that –ize is AmE and –ise, BrE. It is worth remembering, however, that –ize has been in the English language since the 16th century — long before the founding of the United States of America as we know it.

While –ize is standard in AmE, it is also used by many BrE writers. Reputable British publishers such as the Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Longman and Macmillan, and newspapers such The Times, prefer –ize on the grounds that it is closer to the Greek root –izo (whereas –ise is French).

There are many words, however, which cannot, for etymological reasons, be spelt with –ize: advertise, advise, arise, circumcise, compromise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, merchandise, premise, promise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise and televise, to name a few.

Another point to note is that words ending in –yse cannot be spelt –yze in BrE, even by writers who prefer –ize: for example, analyse, catalyse, and paralyse. (These spellings retain the s from the noun forms analysis, catalysis, and paralysis.) In AmE, however, only –yze is used: analyze, catalyze, paralyze.

Hence, –yze is the only true AmE-only spelling, whereas –ize, though used chiefly in AmE, is hardly an American spelling since it has been in continuous use in BrE for the past five centuries.

2009-10-21T00:16:00.005-05:00

Pore Over

Unless the New Paper (20 October 2009) really meant that intelligence officers were going to empty liquid on a book, the phrasal verb they were looking for was pore over (‘to look at or read something very carefully’, Oxford).

2009-10-15T00:09:00.014-05:00

Wendy Saw Joe *Scratched Her Car

Something I shared during this week’s lecture.

Which is correct, (1) or (2)?

(1) Wendy saw Joe scratch her car.
(2) Wendy saw Joe scratched her car.

Most people know that (1) is correct and (2) is wrong. Some teachers, however, are asked so often about (2) that they begin, quite understandably, to believe it might actually be correct. After all, it would seem logical enough that, as saw indicates past tense with the subject Wendy, so also should scratched, with Joe.

The thing to remember here is that, in English, the verb agrees with the subject of the clause (subject–verb agreement). In the main clause, Wendy is the subject, hence saw agrees with it. Scratch cannot, however, agree with Joe since it is the object of the clause. (The clause has the structure S+V+O+Co; Wendy + saw + Joe + scratch her car.) But if Joe became the subject of its own main clause, then the verb would agree with it: Joe scratched the car. Therefore, only a nonfinite (tenseless, agreementless) form of scratch can appear after Joe: either the base form scratch or the –ing participle, scratching.

What, then, is the difference between scratch and scratching?

(3) Wendy saw Joe scratch her car.
(4) Wendy saw Joe scratching her car.

In (3), scratch implies that Joe made a single scratch, and that Wendy witnessed the act from start to finish. By contrast, in (4), scratching implies that the act was ongoing; when Wendy looked, Joe was already engaged in his mischief.

Why, then, is it possible to say (5) but not (6)?

(5) Wendy made her pupils cry.
(6) Wendy made her pupils *crying.

In (5), cry implies that Wendy witnessed the start of the act — indeed, because she was the cause of it. It should be obvious that (6) is impossible since, if Wendy caused her pupils to cry, then they could not already have been crying. The verb made above is called a causative (a person/thing causes another person/thing do something).

2009-10-14T06:14:00.009-05:00

Collective vs Uncountable Nouns

This sign, No Footwears Beyond This Point (Straits Times, 12 October 2009) is obviously wrong — but so also is the analysis of footwear as ‘generic, collective and plural’.

First, in grammar, generic is a term associated primarily with pronouns, not nouns. Generic pronouns are those referring to no specific addressee, like you and one, e.g. You/One should never work too hard. It is not clear what a ‘generic noun’ is supposed to mean.

Second, footwears is not a collective noun; it is uncountable. Uncountable nouns include flour, sugar, salt, bread, patience, food, tea, coffee, metal, furniture, equipment, information and software. They take determiners such as much and less (rather than many and fewer). Uncountable nouns do not (or do not usually) have –s plural forms; hence, *informations and *flours are wrong.

However, some nouns that are normally uncountable also have countable uses, with the meaning ‘varieties of’. So we may say I want some coffee, but also I have tried some of the world’s finest coffees.

The third point about footwear being plural is also wrong. Uncountable nouns are in fact grammatically singular, hence The information/equipment/software/furniture is not very useful; Coffee/Sugar/Salt is bad for health when taken in excess. And, of course, Footwear is prohibited in the prayer hall.

In Singapore, collective nouns are surprisingly often confused with uncountable nouns. This is perhaps due to the misinterpretation of the term ‘collective’ as referring to collections of, for example, shoes (footwear) and tables and chairs (furniture). Note that collective nouns refer to groups of animate beings (see previous post) — those with powers of volition, i.e. the will to act. This will to act enables members of the group (e.g. flock, family, committee, staff, crew) to act as individuals or as a single unit, in unison with the rest. Footwear and furniture are not collective nouns because shoes, chairs and tables do not have powers of volition.

2009-10-14T05:14:00.007-05:00

Collective Nouns

Microsoft show ‘faster’ Windows 7, proclaims the headline (BBC News, 2 September 2009).

While this may look like a subject–verb agreement error to many readers, in British English it is in fact correct.

That’s because British English very often uses plural verbs with what appear to be singular collective nouns, where singular verbs would be the norm in Singapore English and American English.

A collective noun is essentially a group of animate individuals, who may function as individuals (+ plural verb) or as a single unit (+ singular verb). Common collective nouns include staff, crew, group, team, committee, family, flock, police, public, audience, police, army, media, class, institution, university, and businesses (e.g. Microsoft above).

British English often allows a choice between a singular or a plural verb. A singular verb is preferred if the emphasis is on the unit as a single entity, e.g. The committee is undecided, while a plural verb suggests that its members are acting as individuals, e.g. My committee are always quarrelling among themselves.

Collective nouns like police always take plural verbs in British English, as do sports teams, e.g. Argentina have qualified for the World Cup. Singapore English generally favours singular verbs, except in sports reporting, in which it is clearly influenced by British English.

Some collective nouns are always singular in form, e.g. police (not *polices). Others are countable (singular or plural), e.g. family/families, group/groups. Yet others are only rarely found in the plural, e.g. staff/staffs, crew/crews, meaning two or more sets of staff/crew (not staff/crew members ), as in The staffs of the White House and Downing Street.

2009-10-05T23:22:00.003-05:00

Plural –s

Quite a creative way to make a correction look like an intended part of the design!

2009-10-05T01:40:00.008-05:00

Writings

This is the cover of a book titled More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by 30 Singaporean Women.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word writing in the sense of ‘the activity of writing books, articles, etc.’ is uncountable, hence marked [U], as in the expression creative writing.

By contrast, the plural, i.e. countable ([C]), use denotes ‘a group of pieces of writing, especially by a particular person or on a particular subject’, as in the examples His experiences in India influenced his later writings and the writings of Hegel (Oxford).

Hence, the use of writings in the subtitle of the book is non-standard, because it refers neither to the work of a particular person nor to work on a particular subject.

2009-10-01T04:44:00.004-05:00

Bald/Bore

Here is a typo that has a phonological explanation. Lamenting that many drivers do not know how to maintain their cars, the reader comments: And I have [observed that] that [some/many] drivers don’t change their tyres even though the tyres were bore (Straits Times website, 1 October 2009).

Quite obviously, the writer meant the tyres were bald. What’s interesting is that he may simply have been typing what he heard in his head — and evidently he pronounces bald and bore alike.

But how does bald /bɔ:ld/ become bore /bɔ:/? First, /d/ is lost through the process of final-consonant simplification. Next, syllable-final dark /l/ is deleted. Both are well-known features of Singapore English phonology.

2009-09-30T05:35:00.003-05:00

Less Is More

To prescriptive grammarians, 10 units or less would be wrong, since units is countable and would accordingly require fewer. The notice should therefore read 10 units or fewer.

However, this conundrum could be avoided altogether if we simply phrase it Up to 10 units/items.

2009-09-26T10:54:00.006-05:00

Negative Dual

In Standard English, both is not normally used in the negative, so the above extract (Straits Times web, 16 September 2009) would read: neither man was dressed and both were foaming.

The so-called ‘negative dual’, as exemplified by the ST extract, is, however, common in Singapore English.

2009-09-20T11:06:00.004-05:00

Molest/Molestation

The use of molest as a noun is usual in Singapore; as it is found regularly in the Straits Times (this example from the web edition, 16 September 2009), one might consider it Standard Singapore English usage.

In other standard Englishes (e.g. British), however, molest can only be a verb. The noun is molestation.

2009-09-14T01:06:00.006-05:00

How It Looks/What It Looks Like

The above is from an article about a Singapore mail-order bride agency and its success in attracting overseas customers, owing to its use of English and the web (New Paper on Sunday, 13 September 2009).

Singapore English is often said to be economical and to the point, but this is not always so — how the girls look like has a superfluous like. The standard English expressions would be how the girls look or what the girls look like.

This distinction is obvious in the following excerpts, taken from the same article in the online version of the UK-based CAR Magazine:

2009-09-10T00:51:00.006-05:00

Youth

Here is another error that is exceedingly common in the pages of the Straits Times (7 September 2009). Reporting on the launch of this year’s Speak Good English Movement, the newspaper asks young people for their views on whether ‘youths’ are the right target for the campaign.

This use of youths to mean ‘young people’ in general is non-standard. As we can see from the following entry from the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, the word youths as a [C] or countable noun (i.e. singular or plural) can refer only to males, especially teenaged ones involved in violent or criminal activities. However, the Straits Times clearly refers to young people both male and female, engaged in nothing more objectionable than Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

2009-08-30T09:34:00.006-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement, Again and Again

This has to be the most persistent error in the Straits/Sunday Times — which, somewhat ironically, fancies itself as the standard-bearer of good English in Singapore and runs a website ridiculing other people’s bad English.

The plural verb characterise is wrong (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 30 August 2009). Make it characterises (singular), since it is inside a relative clause postmodifying the singular head noun friendliness.

2009-08-25T10:10:00.004-05:00

One Of Those Problems...

The Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko is one of those artists who does not attempt something unless it can be done differently (Straits Times, Life! supplement, 19 June 2009).

It is natural to think that a singular verb should follow one of ..., but in reality the verb is always plural. Here’s how it works:

The underlined constituent in the quoted sentence is a noun phrase, with the structure one of X.

If I were to ask, ‘One of what?’, your answer would be: those artists who do not attempt something unless it can be done differently.

Now, it should be obvious that there’s a relative clause postmodifying artists, and since the relative pronoun who refers to artists, the verb that follows should be plural.

2009-08-25T10:06:00.003-05:00

Uncountable Nouns and Agreement

The second bullet point of this notice, by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, reads:

Do not buy mouldy food as they may contain mycotoxins.

As uncountable (or noncount) nouns are grammatically singular, the sentence should have read, ... as it may contain mycotoxins.

2009-08-20T10:01:00.004-05:00

Casanova

The spelling cassanova in the headline (Straits Times, Internet edition, 20 August 2009) is wrong: make it casanova. The term is used in English to mean ‘womanizer’, a reference to the eponymous Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, reputedly the ‘world’s greatest lover’.

In Italian, casa nova would literally mean ‘new house’, whereas cassa nova would mean ‘new cash’ or ‘new (cash) till’.

2009-08-19T12:28:00.006-05:00

Well Qualified

‘Could this be Singapore’s most well qualified taxi driver?’ asks the Straits Times (18 August 2009) of Dr Cai Ming Jie, who holds a PhD in molecular biology from Stanford.

This is a misuse of the term well qualified — a taxi driver who is well qualified for his job may have many years’ driving experience, hold certificates in defensive driving, be an approved tour guide, and command some foreign languages in addition to the local languages. But holding a PhD in molecular biology would probably not make him a better taxi driver.

Perhaps the Straits Times meant most highly educated.

2009-08-08T11:03:00.003-05:00

Happy National Day

There’re two ways of analysing Happy National Day as a noun phrase.

The more obvious analysis, perhaps, is to treat the adjectives happy and national as premodifiers of the head noun day, hence [ happy national [day] ].

The other is to treat national day as a single head noun, and happy as the sole premodifier, hence [ happy [national day] ]. This is perhaps the better analysis since national day is thought of as a single idea.

2009-08-06T10:45:00.006-05:00

Linguistic Coincidence

If you know German, the above headline may be mildly amusing, because Putin is a close rhyme for German Puten (plural of Pute), meaning ‘turkey hen’.

Incidentally, in French, Putin would be pronounced as putain, which means (among other things) ‘prostitute’.

2009-08-02T09:24:00.008-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement

Memories of trainee’s injury still haunts coach (The New Paper, 24 July 2009) is wrong; make it: Memories of trainee’s injury still haunt coach.

In Standard English, when we have a complex noun phrase as subject, the following verb agrees with the head noun, not the noun closest to it — that’s why we need the plural verb haunt to agree with the plural memories, not the singular injury.

The head noun is often (but not always) the most important noun in the noun phrase: if we were to choose only one noun to tell us what the noun phrase is about, we’d pick memories, not injury (i.e. memories haunt him).

2009-08-02T09:14:00.004-05:00

Big Sale

The noun phrase the big bra sale in the above sign is ambiguous, in that it has two possible interpretations. The intended interpretation is, of course, ‘big sale (of bras)’, where the adjective big modifies the head noun sale. We can represent this as [ big [bra sale] ]. The unintended interpretation is ‘sale of big bras’, which has the noun phrase big bra modifying the head noun sale: schematically, [ [big bra] sale].

The layout artist who did the following poster was evidently aware of the ambiguity, hence the larger font size for big and sale.

2009-06-08T05:28:00.005-05:00

Celery/Salary

This headline (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 17 May 2009) may sound ‘punny’ to Singaporeans, but speakers of other varieties of English would probably find it rather baffling.

In Singapore English, the vowels /e/ and /æ/are often merged, so that celery and salary become homophones, i.e. are pronounced alike. In other varieties, however, they are not homophonous: in British English, for example, they are respectively /'seləri/ and /'sæləri/.

Of course, context may help: salary collocates or goes with negotiation. But if one doesn’t pronounce salary like celery in the first place, then the collocation probably wouldn’t arise at all, and one would still be left wondering what negotiation has to do with the vegetable.

2009-06-08T04:53:00.006-05:00

Apostrophes

This is part of an advertisement currently seen on trains in Singapore. The last sentence of the body text reads: Dengue season is here, don’t be it’s next victim.

The first apostrophe is correct but not the second. Make it: Dengue season is here; don’t be its next victim. Interestingly, the slogan at the bottom gets it right, however: It’s your life. It’s your fight.

Many people confuse its and it’s — to careful writers, this is one of the surer signs of semi-literacy. The first is a possessive determiner that goes before nouns (e.g. its name), while the second is a contraction of it is (e.g. It’s time to leave).

It is worth remembering that apostrophes help indicate omitted matter, so don’t, it’s and can’t are contractions of do not, it is and cannot.

The fact that ’s is often used to indicate possession — for example, in Mark’s, Singapore’s, and Jupiter’s — may be one reason people think it logical to use it’s as a possessive determiner. However, it is worth noting that possessive ’s attaches only to nouns, and not to pronouns.

2009-06-05T03:43:00.005-05:00

Who’s The Christian Here?

In Singapore, the term Christian applies only to Protestants, and not to Catholics, so a Christian person is either a Christian or a Catholic.

Singapore Christians may therefore find the above, from the BBC website, surprising, since it features three Christians: the Pope (Roman Catholic), the singer Bono (who was raised as both a Catholic and Church of Ireland Anglican), and the Archbishop of York (Church of England).

2009-06-03T07:30:00.009-05:00

Car Park vs Parking Lot

In British English (BrE), drivers park their cars in a car park — or what American English (AmE) speakers call a parking lot.

In Singapore English (SgE), both terms are used, but with an interesting difference: the building or area where cars are parked is a car park (as in BrE), but each parking space is a parking lot.

As the picture (Straits Times, 30 March 2009) above shows, there are three cars in three parking spaces — or, in SgE, three parking lots (hence the plural). Indeed, the caption reads:

Ladies-only lots at Furama Riverfront Hotel are conspicuously painted pink so as to set them aside from the usual lots. Out of the 278 lots there, seven are set aside for women. The lots are located near the entrance to the hotel lobby.

Contrast this with the caption in the example below, from Time magazine (13 April 2009):

Cars may be sitting on lots like this one in Michigan, but should sell as the GDP rises.

As Time is American, it uses AmE parking lot for BrE car park.