To play them such a trick!

Hello again :)

I just read an interesting poem, The Walrus and The Carpenter.

The Walrus and The Carpenter

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd,
because They'd eaten every one.


The Walrus leading the Oysters :)

======================================

First and foremost, keep in mind that this is a children's poem. So don't delve too deep into it or try to analyze it too greatly. Mr Carroll himself stated that it does not have any deeper meaning than to remind children not to trust strangers :)

Lewis Carroll, (born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) despite his stammer, could speak to children easily. He had a love towards spending time with children. His exploration of the boundaries of sense and nonsense has inspired a number of novels.

This poem is for children to enjoy, and also for adults to relive their childhood. It was written with a rhyme scheme of abcbdb. It can be read with a cynical and quirky tone. It uses somewhat simple language and is written with curious perspective of a child.

From the lines in the 7th Stanza, we can come to the understanding that with age comes wisdom and the eldest Oyster had anticipated the consequences of coming with The Walrus and The Carpenter. People may seem nice at first but then reveal their true colours in due time.

This is a good piece of poetry which I would recommend everyone to read (not just the younger generation). It's entertaining, as well as conveys the right message :)

Till next time,

Toodles!

References:
The Walrus and The Carpenter (the poem with images)
Lewis Carroll's Biography

Shh!

Hello, people! :D

Here I am, again to talk to you about language.

So, have you ever noticed that some letters in words are left unpronounced? For example, "Physical".

These letters are called SILENT LETTERS.

Since this blog has been targeted for secondary school students, I'm going to spare you from the elaborate details. We'll just try this step by step and with simple explanations, shall we? :)

[in other words, I will not be using transcriptions]

*Oh and please note that I am only going to touch on the more common ones since there are quite a lot of these :)


Let's start with a word in a song by Miley Cyrus
1. climb (pronounced klaim)
This word consists of a silent B
- words that have a B following an M and the end of words like 'plumber' and 'comb' have silent Bs
[another point to add, don't you think it's just tiring to say 'klaimbuh' or 'plambuh'? :) ]

What about an attractive person?
2. handsome (pronounced haensum)
This word consists of a silent D
- some of the words that have this similar attribute are 'handbag', 'wednesday' and 'sandwich'
[again, saying 'haendsum' or 'wednusdey' is just too much of a fuss!]

Who saves the damsel in distress?
3. knight (pronounced nait)
This word consists of a silent K
- other examples of this are 'knock' and 'knowledge'
[now, can you really imagine someone saying "Soon the 'kuhnait' will save the damsel!"]

Another word for serenity
4. calm (pronounced kaam)
This word consists of a silent L
- similar to this; 'would', 'should' and 'talk'
[it would be a waste of saliva to say 'kalm' or 'shoold']


There are the silent P and S and others too, but these are words that people commonly make mistakes of. If you have any other inquires, don't be shy to drop a comment :)

Silent Letters :)

References:
Pronunciation - Silent Letters
[image] EduTunes with Miss Jenny

Misconceptions

Have you ever noticed that how a sentence is written could easily be perceived differently? Like the word 'drink', when a person says it, it could either be said as a question - Drink? - or a demand - Drink!! - see? When people listen to/read something, there can be misconceptions. This is post will basically explain on the study of 'speaker meaning', or in linguistic terms, PRAGMATICS.

In other terms, pragmatics is the study invisible meaning. A written example would be an ad that writes Warehouse Sale. We immediately understand that they are selling things at (or from) the said warehouse. No one in their right mind would think that people are selling warehouses.

Basically that is what we're going to study today. Are you catching on? :)

Actually, we mostly understand these things due to context. There's the linguistic context and also the physical context.

1. Linguistic context (AKA co-text) is the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. For example:

'bat' - "I accidentally left my bat after baseball practice today"
Here, the speaker would most probably be talking about his/her baseball bat, rather than the nocturnal animal.

'trip' - "Have a nice trip"
It would have been really mean of the speaker to hope for another person falling down. Thus, the speaker was probably speaking of a journey.

2. Physical context is basically from your surroundings - what you see and hear.

From these, come words that cannot be interpreted without context. These are called diectic expressions. Out of context, statements with deixes would be vague and could cause confusions. There are three types of deixes;

1. person deixis - points to people and things
(he, these girls, it, that paper)
eg. These girls are so beautiful.
*the listener does not know who 'these girls' are unless there is a picture of them or the speaker is pointing to the girls*

2. spatial deixis - points to a location
(here, further there)
eg. Why don't you just come over here?
*the listener would not know where 'here' is unless he saw the speaker or the speaker told him/her*

3. temporal deixis - points to a time
(two days ago, now)
eg. I saw Marina two days ago.
*listeners would not know when that was if they did not know what day it was the speaker had said it*

Oh but Pragmatics is a big topic. Maybe I'll elaborate more on it in a different post :)

Hope you understand the fundamentals of Pragmatics so far.

References:
The Study of Language - George Yule
Dictionary.com

But They Sound The Same?

Hello! Have you ever wrongly used words which sound the same but are spelt differently? Like there/their/they're or maybe accept/except?

Or maybe, you don't notice that you've been making these mistakes..

First things first, don't be shy. I make mistakes like these sometimes too :)

But let's get back to the topic now. What are these words? These words are HOMOPHONES!

Homophones are words which have the same pronunciation, but different spellings (or written forms)

Let's go straight to examples so that you can understand better.

1. your/you're

your signifies belonging. whereas you're is a contraction of you are

Misuse: Your stepping on you're own skirt.


2. pail/pale

this: is a pail.

this: is a pale girl.

Misuse: Why are you so pail? Did you lose your pale again?

(oh but losing a pail is not a laughing matter)


3. to/two/too

to is used as a preposition
(yes, to describe ALL the definitions of 'to' would take up a new blog post. you can read about it HERE)
two is more than one
too means very

Misuse: I believe that to is always better than one but too say that would be two much, wouldn't it?


4. than/then

than is used to compare, while then refers to a time in the past/future

Misuse: I love my high school years, I used to be taller then Amar back than.


5. meat/meet

this is MEAT
meet is basically to see (or to come in contact with)

Misuse: Did you meat the butcher for the meet this morning?

Okay so that's all for this time. If you're confused with any other homophones, please just drop a comment or maybe something in the chatbox :)

Idea from;
The Parents

Inspired by;
The Oatmeal
Christine Jalleh

References;
The Study of Language - George Yule
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Substitutes

Okay so remember the last post about adjectives? So, what are adjectives? Quickly scroll down now and find out before I scold you! :D

Now that we've learnt that adjectives describe nouns and pronouns, do you know what pronouns are? I'll give you a clue. They have something to do with nouns. So...?



You're right! Pronouns are substitutes for nouns!

Great. Now we've gotten that out of the way, can you name the types of pronouns there are?

1. Personal Pronouns
2. Reflexive Pronouns
3. Possessive Pronouns
4. Demonstrative Pronouns
5. Indefinite Pronouns
6. Interrogative Pronouns
7. Relative Pronouns

So, do you know any of these?

It's okay. We'll take it on one by one, okay? Now, that's the spirit!

1. Personal Pronouns
- divided into subject and object pronouns
- subject pronouns = I, you, he, she, it, we, they
- object pronouns = me, you, him, her, it, us, them
- e.g.: You like me, but I love him.

2. Reflexive Pronouns
- refers back to the subject of the verb
- myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, themselves, yourselves
- e.g.: All of you better prepare yourselves for activities that I myself had prepared.

3. Possessive Pronouns
- shows ownership
- mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs
- e.g.: This pencil is not yours, hers nor his. It is mine.

4. Demonstrative Pronouns
- refers to something that the reader/ audience is already familiar with
- this, that, these those
- e.g: This is her hat, that is mine, and those are theirs.

5. Indefinite Pronouns
- used when not referring to any particular person or thing
- someone, somebody, everyone, everybody, anyone, anybody, no one, nobody, something, everything, anything, nothing
- e.g.: Someone told me that everyone was going to the party but when I got there I found out no one had come.

6. Interrogative Pronouns
- ask questions
- what, which, whose, who, whom
-e.g.: Which is your umbrella? Whose is this?

7. Relative Pronouns
- introduce an extra piece
- who, whom, whose, which
- e.g.: To whom did you address it?

Do you understand all of this? Oh please do remember that pronouns can stand alone, as opposed to determiners*. What are determiners*, you might wonder? Well, that's a different blog post all together. ;)

Here's a video from Grammar Rock on pronouns :)

Reference(s):
Focus on Grammar - Anne Seaton

Describing Nouns

Mariam. She's a handsome girl. Dark hair, oval face, large brown eyes - she had all that. Everyone envies her beauty and charm. However, if only she was nice, she would be much more attractive.

Okay, so can you guess the topic that I'm going to present? You've got it: ADJECTIVES.
Adjectives are words that describe nouns* and pronouns*. There are a few types of adjectives, adjectives of size, colour, shape, and many more.

So, can you find all the adjectives in the paragraph above?
(try first, and don't cheat :P )













Mariam. She's a handsome girl. Dark hair, oval face, large brown eyes - she had all that. Everyone envies her beauty and charm. However, if only she was nice, she would be much more attractive.

*adjectives are in bold and dark red


As you can see, most of the adjectives come before nouns and pronouns.


A few examples of different types of adjectives:
Size - large, miniscule, etc.
Colour - red, blue, green, etc.
Shape - triangle, round, etc.

Now that you know that, the table below shows you how to put the adjectives in the right order:

	Opinion	Size	Age	Shape	Colour	Origin	Material	Purpose
a	silly		young			English			man
a		huge		round			metal		bowl
a		small			red			sleeping	bag

adapted from: 410 Grammar

Got that? It's simple, really. Have you ever seen words like "youngest", "worse", and "more delicious" ? Those are adjectives which are of different degrees of comparison. Don't understand? Let's make it simpler.

There are three degrees of comparison for adjectives: positive, comparative, superlative.
For example:

Positive	nice	beautiful	good
Comparative	nicer	more beautiful	better
Superlative	nicest	most beautiful	best

See what I meant now? Well, these are called gradable adjectives. There are adjectives that cannot be graded by such comparisons. (i.e.: dead, cotton, impossible) An example of something you should never do is say; Harith's shirt is more cotton than mine. However, it is possible for you to change it with cottony. These are called non-gradable adjectives.

Note: For the use of comparative adjectives, there are two forms; _____er than and more _____ than. As for superlatives; ______est and most _______





References:
Guide to Grammar and Writing (Adjectives)
410 Grammar
Dictionary.com