Monday Thoughts – Botched English

Published on by Yinglan

It constantly amuses, amazes, and irritates me when my mom botches English, whether it’s grammar-related or pronunciation-related.

Like when she would say “raisin” when she meant “rinse”. “Do a rinse cycle on the washing machine,” normal people would say, she would say, “Put it (washing machine) on ‘raisin'”. I don’t know how or why she started saying the words the way she does. I can only recall when we lived in California and used to go wash the car in one of those DIY stalls, at the beginning, she would say “spin the dial to rinse.” That “rinse” suddenly became “raisin”. I’m no grammar-nazi but I tried to correct her a few times to no avail, so I kinda just lived with it.

The thing that annoys me is when she botches names as well, especially names like Amanda and Cindy where she would say “Mandy” and “Sandy”, respectively. I feel bad for those people with those names and I often have no clue which is which.

Botching a person’s name is a big no-no in my book. One’s name is one’s identity, if it’s said or spelled wrong by another person, it would be like taking away that person’s identity.

The most recent English faux pas is the one that irritates me the most. I don’t know when but she started saying “Take a look of the paper.” I don’t know about you but for as long as I’ve been learning English, it’s “Take a look at” , not “of”. I would cringe every time she would send me a document she needs me to proofread and in the email, I see the words, “Please take a look of the document for me.”

Of! Why “of”? It doesn’t make sense. We look with our eyes at something, not of something. Seriously, as hard as I’ve tried to find the logic behind this, I can’t.

I just can’t.

12 thoughts on “Monday Thoughts – Botched English”

  1. Botched names, I can identify with that. My Mum would always call me by my sister’s name which irritated, until I realised she called her by mine. She was the same with our husbands names. I finally worked out it was because she was looking at one of us and thinking of the other. I didn’t mind so much then.

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    1. Well, I think that’s different because it’s your mom that’s calling your by the wrong name. I’m talking about strangers. Like one of my co-workers, her name is Cindy, my mom would call her “Sandy,” I don’t know about you but that’s a little rude.

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      3. You have a real problem with adverbs, especially with humans. Like this: Tom and Mary is going to the movies, when it is Tom and Mary are going to movies. Or, something in nature like the mountains is tall when it the mountains are tall.

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