Panda eats, shoots and leaves

10 March 2011, Thursday

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused and bewildered waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry, and sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

So, PUNCTUATION really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death!!!

Hmmm.mm..........................................Panda eats shoots and leaves....

Interesting Facts About English Language

2 November 2009, Monday (14 Zulkaedah)

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

2. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt"

3. Almonds are members of the peach family.

4. The symbol on the "pound" key ( #) is called an octothorpe.

5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

7. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

8. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."

9. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

 

10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural:

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosesl.

12. The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakitnatahu, a New Zealand hill.

13. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,L.A.

14. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

16. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

18. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

21. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

24. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

27. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

28. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

30. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

31. 'Stewardesses' is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.

33. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

34. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

35. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

36. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.

37. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

38. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."

39. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Fire fighting!!!

I feel frustrated and perturbed whenever I have English classes with my students. Due to their extremely weak foundation in English and their "tidak apa" attitude towards learning English, it's really an uphill battle imparting knowledge to them.

I'm actuallly fire fighting. Sometimes, I just feel like screaming!!! Some of them are not making inroads!!!!! Damn our education system!!!

Asylum for the verbally insane

25 July 2010, Sunday

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice

If the plural of man is always called men
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

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?

Then one may be that, and three would be those
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose

We speak of a brother and also of brethren
But though we say mother, we never say methren

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; 
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple

English muffins weren't invented in England

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes
We find that quicksand can work slowly

Boxing rings are square
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing
Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all But one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship

We have noses that run and feet that smell

We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway

And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down
In which you fill in a form by filling it out
And in which an alarm goes off by going on

And, in closing, if Father is Pop,

How come Mother's not Mop?