5 Years Old

Artist: Meng Jit

Then under the guidance of the Art teacher, Mr Lim...

(Left: by Mr Lim Right: by Meng Jit)

=)

Cute!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!!!!!!!

Youths

In Standard English (StdE), youth as a countable noun — that is, singular a youth or plural some youths — refers disapprovingly to young males, usually teenagers, engaged in antisocial or criminal behaviour. It is therefore often found in collocations such as a gang of youths. (This is different from the collective-noun sense of the word, e.g. the youth of Singapore, meaning ‘young people in Singapore taken considered as a group’.)

In Singapore English (SgE), however, youth as a countable noun refers to nothing more than ‘young people’, both female and male. As the extracts above show (Straits Times, both 11 January 2010), the word has no negative connotations: in fact the photographs show young people, female as well as male, doing good deeds.

A linguistic purist might put the SgE usage down to sheer ignorance, but a descriptive linguist would probably argue that it is simply a feature of SgE which sets it apart from other varieties.

Taken from Ludwig's blog: http://englishasitisbroken.blogspot.com/

If she were...

The above is an excerpt from a cross-examination in a law court (Straits Times, 26 January 2010). Interestingly, although the lawyer asks, If Nellie Huang were your mother, the doctor twice replies, If [she] was my mother.

In hypothetical conditional clauses, i.e. those expressing an unlikely or imaginary situation, either the hypothetical past (was) or the past subjunctive (were) may be used. The past subjunctive were is more formal and likelier to be found in formal writing, whereas the hypothetical past was is more common in speech.

The past subjunctive is, however, generally used in American English, which in many ways (e.g. grammar, punctuation) is more conservative than British English.


Taken from Ludwig's blog: http://englishasitisbroken.blogspot.com/