I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time, but I was only reminded of it recently. I’m sure everyone has a peculiar, idiosyncratic way of speaking English, but sometimes I find myself too weird.

I like to “-ology” everything. With that useful suffix, I can turn almost anything into a
noun. I’ve even developed a small vocabulary based on it. Something fun? “Funnerology!” as in, “I went on this wild roller-coaster ride. Funnerology!” ‘Paiseh’ meanwhile, is Hokkien for ‘embarrass’, embodied in this sentence: “Wah I walked around campus with my fly down! Paisehology!” And funnerology’s big brother, Shiokology: (shiok = very exciting) “I watched the fireworks and could even feel the blasts of the explosions! Shiokology!” As you may have noticed, the “-ology” words stand alone at the end of the statement, for impact.

Occasionally I refuse to obey the rule of the silent ‘l’, resulting in “peo-play” and “ta-blay”. Peoplay is my favourite. When addressing my friends, I’ll go “Eh, peoplay!” just for the heck of it. And J.K. Rowling gets my props for calling her wizard currency “K-nuts” instead of “nuts”. Yes, it’s really pronounced with the K. Knuts for all!

Now, you kids don’t go trying this at home, because I’m a highly-trained English student and I know how to handle subjects and objects in sentences. My most common aberration is one that will ring a bell with teenagers: The replacement of “I” with “me”. As in, “Me went to Orchard today. Me forgot to wear pants.” It has a slightly diminutive, cute flavour. It is, however, sickeningly toxic in large doses.

The only thing I am a stickler for, is spelling. I’m almost fanatical about it, and I’m always hugely annoyed by misspellings which appear in (mostly American) publications. Misspellings, not typos. Most of these errors, I blame on homonyms. Dears, we don’t ‘pour’ over documents, we ‘pore’ over them. Unless of course, you’ve been driven mad by hours of looking at said documents and have upended your coffee mug over them. Same goes for “their”. “Their going to the cinema” is only correct if you were talking about the act of them going, i.e. “Their going to the cinema precipitated a chain of events.” But usually, it’s “They’re going to the cinema.” Hmmm. If my kids dared to make such a mistake, I’d probably not let them go to the cinema… Spelling Nazi mum strikes again.