Can you roll your tongue? Try these...

There are some people who can't roll their tongue and the sentences spoken could mean something else. Try these sentences:

• "I want to lent a house near the Punggol Liver",
• "Go and blast your teeth",
• "I want a plate of Flied Lice",
• "My plinter cannot plint documents.",
• "How much is your gloss salaly?",
• "I don't like to dlink loot beer!"
• "I like to eat loti plata!"
• "These jokes are all oliginal, vely cleative, light?"

Just for a laugh...Cheers..:)

To make sure River does not turn into Liver, try this tongue twister everyday, "Round and round the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran"... Enjoy it..cheers...:)

A witty and humorous two-year-old boy!

A two-year-old boy whose parents are professionals from India, impressed me with his wits and humours. At this young and tender age, he is already speaking complete English sentences. The parents and other members at home also speak to him in other languages. It is amazingly rare!

The father related to me an incident of the boy. The boy likes to pull his mother's hair and wants his mother to carry him instead of walking on his own. So, the mother told him, ''A good boy does not pull Mummy's hair and does not ask Mummy to carry.'' Spontaneously and mischieviously, the boy responded, ''Mummy, I'm a bad boy!''

When I was at their home, I was talking with the father for quite a long while. The little boy started to miss his father and got impatient with me. Eventually, he could not hold it any longer, he came to me and said, ''Uncle, bye bye!'' Of course, the father scolded him and told him not to be rude!

This is a boy very extraordinary. He is doing and saying things many children his age do not. I believe he would grow up very intelligent and smart and able to connect with people well.

This notice at coffeeshop is much better written...

As compared to the other notice which I posted on 23 November 2009, this one is much better written, both in English and Chinese.

Would you like to rewrite this notice with better English?

Click on the image for an enlarged view.

This is a notice put up at a local coffee shop. Do you find anything wrong with the English used, may be if you could read Chinese, what about the Chinese statement? There is obviously room for improvement as far as the standard of English and Chinese Language is concerned.

Do post your comments here if you have your idea of making it better.

What is the meaning of "Highfalutin"?

In Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, highfalutin is explained as follows:

"People sometimes use highfalutin to describe behaviour that they dislike because it seems pompous, pretentious, false or foolish; an old-fashioned, informal word."

The uniqueness of Chinese characters ...

Against the backdrop of the long-standing Chinese civilisations, the Chinese characters, written as 汉字 (in Simplified Chinese) or 漢字 (in Traditional Chinese) are so unique, significant and profound that they are even used in the Japanese and Korean Language, where they are referred to as Kanji (漢字) and Hanja (漢字) respectively.

The most significant and amazing thing about Chinese characters is that the same character can be pronounced in as many different ways as there are number of dialect groups in China. Every dialect group pronounces the same character quite differently.

For example, in the first picture, the character, "黄" is typically used as Chinese surname, which means yellow, and it can be pronounced as Huang, Wong, Wee, Ng etc. depending on your dialect group or which province one comes from in China. The Japanese and the Koreans would pronounce it differently, too.

The second picture displays two characters, "安康" which collectively means peaceful and healthy. They can be pronounced as An Kang, On Hong, An Kong etc. depending on the dialect group again. Literally, it means that a Chinese newspaper can be read and understood by every Chinese but the characters in the newspaper are pronounced differently from province to province.