Funny errors

Humour

The leest (list) of students who pass the taste (test) would be on the noteeze (notice) board tomorrow. Only if you gate (get) above 70 per cent you are feet (fit) to join, you have to pay the fees by the end of the veek (week),” the person at the information desk said pushing the forms towards me.

“Do you have on campus hostel/dorm facility for students?’’ I asked. “Yes, Yes! Weary (Very) good hostel to leave (live)”, was his answer. Later I came to know that he was one of the lecturers there!

Raju told me it must be scholarship of Rs 75 that was distributed to students belonging to economically backward families. No possible substitution, permutation and combinations of sounds would make ‘scholarship’ sound like ‘collecshop’; but that’s exactly what she was referring to. This maid has never gone to school at all, so it is pardonable. What about the lecturer at a management institution?

There’s no doubt that English is a crazy language with difficult inconsistent rules for pronunciation. For example, ‘ea’ has three different sounds in ‘eat’, ‘great’ and ‘threat’. But that's not the point. The point is that our English teachers  are not taught the adequate skills. If the teachers themselves are wrong, the same wrong would be passed on to the students. Wrong pronunciation or wrong grammar would continue from one generation to the other multi folded. It’s extremely important that we have adequate teachers’ training in place every single year. Otherwise, when you say ‘viper’ for ‘wiper’, there would be unnecessary panic or terrible consequences. My friend wondered what they meant at school when the teacher said, “we make sure every one gets a price (prize) on the school union day!”

The most hilarious one was when someone said “I’m getting young aged (engaged)”, to a friend. The friend however took it as a pun and laughingly replied, “do you mean it's making you look young?”

When I say “there’s ringing in my years (ears)”, who wouldn’t be amused! If you said “I’m going to school for  10 ears (years)”, one could have a hearty laugh imagining you going there to get eight more ears.  A friend of  mine, when she asked which is the exhilarator (accelerator) in her driving class, her driving teacher did get exhilarated. While talking about her driving experiences when she said “Instead of yeast (east), I took vest (west),” there was a roar of laughter!

Learning English is not easy for people whose native languages have phonetic alphabet. My Italian friend Giovanna had such tough time initially in United States. She had to see the doctor for ear pain and went to the hospital.

She explained to the secretary that she has pain in her right ear. When she had to fill in the forms, she spelt it as ‘pen in ryt ir’! The secretary was shocked to see the spellings, but once she explained that she is from Italy, it made sense. In this Internet age, it’s very easy to learn or improve phonetic pronunciation of English.  Just google it and you'd be on your way to ‘Happy learning and better pronunciation’!