Here are some common mistakes by students when using the English language.

TEACHING English can be fun and rewarding. Often, students make errors, but in the long run they improve after they have been corrected.

Some errors may be hilarious and unintentionally insightful. Everybody can make mistakes for human beings are fallible.

One common error is the use of malapropism. A malapropism (also called a Dogberryism) is the substitution of an incorrect word for a word with a similar sound, especially with humorous results. The following are examples:

> He had to use a fire distinguisher. (extinguisher)

> Dad says the monster is just a pigment of my imagination. (figment)

> Good punctuation means not to be late. (punctuality)

> He’s a wolf in cheap clothing. (sheep’s)

> My sister has extra-century perception. (sensory)

Mistakes also arise when using similar sounding words, or homonyms. For instance, an aisle is a walkway between or along sections of seats in a theatre or classroom while an isle refers to an island. Both words are pronounced in the same way, but one is indoors while the other is outdoors.

Other examples are air/heir, fore/four, him/hymn, and cereal/serial.

Another mistake is in translating words from one language to another. Many foreign students are in Malaysia learning English in universities and colleges. Occasionally, a direct translation of a Malay or Chinese phrase into an English one can be hilarious.

“What news?” the Japanese student greeted the teacher, grinning from ear to ear.

“No, you have to say Apa khabar? This is the Malay way of greeting each other. We cannot translate words directly from the Malay language to English,” explained the teacher to his foreign students in class.

The literal translation of “Apa khabar” is “What news” but this is not used as a greeting in English. International travellers have relied on three primary methods of bridging the language gap: taking time to learn the local tongues, utilising a phrasebook or engaging in a spirited display of improvised face pulling and sign language.

Sometimes during English lessons, the humour comes from a confusion between two words. Students have written, “Having one wife is called monotony (monogamy)! One student reminisced: “Each Thanksgiving it is a tradition for my family to shoot peasants (pheasants).”

Another observed: “In 19th century Russia, the pheasants led horrible lives.” Now, one word refers to poor people while another describes a type of bird!

One must also be careful about reversing a g and q, as a young man once wrote: “When a boy and a girl are deeply in love, there is no quilt (guilt) felt between them.”

Side-splitting slips like these are collected by teachers throughout the world, who don’t mind sharing a little humour while taking their jobs seriously.

One interesting sentence gleamed out of a student essay: “The girl tumbled down the stairs and lay prostitute (prostrate) at the bottom.”

If your body is in a prostrate position, that means you are lying face down (on the floor). This is not to be confused with prostate, which is a gland associated with the male private parts!

In the margin of the paper, the teacher commented: “My dear sir, you must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman and one who has merely slipped.”

Below are other creative side splitting slips in students’ essays:

> A virgin forest is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.

> Although the patient had never been fatally ill before, he woke up dead!

> I expected to enjoy the film, but that was before I saw it.

> When there are no fresh vegetables, you can always get canned (getting canned means being fired from your job).

> The problem with intersexual swimming is that the boys often outstrip the girls.

Here are some of the ironies of the English language from an Anonymous poet:

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

But the plural of ox becomes oxen, and not oxes.

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?

There is no egg in egg plant nor ham in hamburger;

Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

Quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,

A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And finally, here are some weird headlines from the newspapers:

> Iraqi’s head seeks arms

> Labourers refuse to work after death

> Unemployed people cut in half

I shall leave readers to figure these out!

* Peggy Tan is a lecturer by day, a writer by night and a mountain climber and scuba diver on weekends.

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