It's official. The standard of the English Language in Malaysia is going to the dogs. And you know it is beyond hope, when even the newspapers have glaring grammatical errors.
Without naming the newspaper in question, I cite two glaring errors:
1. "Daughter pinning for dad". I am trying to imagine the poor girl pinning her dad on the wall. It's pining, not pinning. Mind you, this was on the headlines, not in the text itself.
2. "... comprising more than 800 stalls maybe an attractive shopping destination...". Can somebody please tell the writer that there is a difference between "maybe" (one word) and "may be" (two words). Perhaps the writer was trying to reduce the character count for the article, and a space counts as one character.
There was a time when teachers used to encourage students to read the newspapers as a way to improve their English. The advice is still sound, but I think it is best that the teachers qualify the advice with the proviso that they avoid the local newspapers like a plague!
2 comments:
I couldn't agree with you more. There are more and more glaring grammatical errors surfacing in our local newspapers nowadays. However, I would like to know which newspapers are you referring to in your blog.
Hi,Chong Beng,
Apologies for the very late reply, as I seldom check in for comments on my highly-inactive blog!
In response to your enquiry, the newspapers that I am referring to are, of course, the New Straits Times and The Star. Both are equally guilty of such crass and unforgivable errors.
Post a Comment