STREET OF SHAME CANDIDATES REGULAR readers will have noticed that we have a static page called Street of Shame. We think we now have debut candidates for entry. Once upon a time (yesterday) it all started with one innocent Facebook status update:— “How fast can you uncork a bottle with a handscrew?” No sooner had […]
June 23, 2013
Comments Off on Cured ham curated here
We aren't alone in noticing the job-title inflation about the word 'curator' today.
December 2, 2012
’ERE WE GO AGAIN! Yet another post about that long-running saga (sago?) on the word scholarism that’s also the name of a Hong Kong student protest group. Learn English or Starve has gotten lots of off-site flak (German: fliegerabwehrkanone, lit. ‘aeroplane defence cannon’: anti-aircraft fire — as if you didn’t know already) for our two […]
November 22, 2012
A VERY IRATE READER wrote in (off-site, by the way) about our manifestly well-researched article “Scholarism? Is it edible?” (LEOS, 1 Sept 2012), specifically homing in on the description of the student protest group called Scholarism (學民思潮). That very irate reader (who we shan’t name in order to avoid general embarrassment) wanted to know just […]
November 19, 2012
YOU have only one job and one job only, yet… As you may have noticed, the chart tries to give us a sense of various English prepositions. A preposition [prep-puh-zish-uhn, /ˌprəpəˈzɪʃən/] is a part of speech that shows the relationship of one word to another so as to provide spatial, figurative or some other meaning […]
September 1, 2012
“I know you’re smart. But I hope you didn’t make the classic smart person’s mistake of thinking you’re smarter than everybody.” — Carl Van Loon to Eddie Morra in the movie Limitless (2011) IF there’s one thing worse than seeing our best and brightest go off at a tangent and waste their precious youth on […]
July 27, 2012
Comments Off on Pity the young souls
HAVE A LOOK at this school worksheet:— We’ve converted the original photograph into monotone on purpose in order to hide the company watermark. This worksheet is for teaching how to figure out the days from descriptive language. * Fill in the blanks This is what the worksheet requires:— (a) The first Monday is the 3rd. […]
May 15, 2012
Comments Off on Your ‘cum’ is rubbish
‘FAIL’ on several levels:— (Victoria Park, Hong Kong, 10 May 2012) This is exactly the kind of antics that call into question one’s reputation, capability and mental stability. * You’re not writing a bleedin’ essay, so stop using cum. It’s also liable to be made fun of because of its pornographic connotations, jizzhead. If you […]
September 2, 2010
English tenses are not for picking on a whim. You just can't pick and use any ole' tense to use just because you're too much of a dumbferk to realise you're doin' it wrong.
August 16, 2010
HONG KONG proclaims itself as “Asia’s World City.” If the communication abilities of seasoned professionals in this 1,000-square-kilometre territory is anything to go by, you have to ask if we could be trusted with anything more complex. To wit: Here (below) is a hoarding at a construction site somewhere in Wanchai district on Hong Kong […]
July 12, 2013
Comments Off on Street of Shame: First candidates