Please can you off the light?

garyhusler — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:15:15 +0000

Another very common mistake that Malaysian speakers make is making all kinds of words into verbs, when really these words shouldn’t be. In the example in the title, the word ‘off’, which is normally a preposition, has become the main verb in the sentence. This mistake actually comes from shortening down the correct phrasal verb ‘turn off’. The correct version should be as below:

Please can you turn off the light?

Below are some more common verb problems and their correct counterparts:

Incorrect Verbs	Correct Verbs
She friended me on facebook.	She added me as a friend on facebook.
On the AC, please, because it’s really hot.	Turn on the AC, please, because it’s really hot.
I asked him to less the price but he said no.	I asked him to lower the price but he said no.
I tried hard to advice my friend.	I tried hard to advise my friend.
The car was horning loudly.	The car was beeping loudly.
My grandfather dead last year.	My grandfather died last year.
Some people up the price for foreigners.	Some people put up the price for foreigners.

If you are not sure whether a word is a verb, you can easily find out by looking in a dictionary. The dictionary definition will look something like this:

Die v stop living

The v means verb.

Try listening out for other people who make the same mistakes as above and you will notice that this particular mistake is very common in Malaysia.

My brother is an intelligence person.

garyhusler — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:46:37 +0000

A lot of Malaysian speakers of English make the mistake of confusing nouns with adjectives in both speaking and writing and so come up with sentences like the above. In this post, I will show you some other common errors and give you some quick tips on how to avoid making them yourself.

First, let’s look at the title of this post and a couple of other similar mistakes.

My brother is an intelligence person.

She gets very emotion when she watches sad movies.

The new seatbelts are very safety.

He was confidence in his language ability.

In all of the mistakes above, the word in bold is a noun when it should have been an adjective. What’s a noun or an adjective? I hear you say. Well, a noun is the name of a person, things or ideas and an adjective gives us more information about the noun, telling us what kind of person, thing or idea it is.

A cat.

A big cat.

In the above, ‘cat’ is the noun because it is a thing, and ‘big’ is the adjective because it tell us what kind of cat it is. It’s a big cat.

The next question you might ask is how to tell the difference between a noun and an adjective when they look very similar. For example, ‘different’ and ‘difference’, or ‘intelligent’ and ‘intelligence’.

Well for this, you should look at the way the word ends. Look at the following table to help you:

Common Noun Endings	Common Adjective Endings
-tion / -sion	-al
-ance / -ence	-ant / -ent
-ness	-ous
-ism	-ist
-ity	-ful
-ment	-y
-th	-ed

So, going back to our previous examples of common mistakes, you can see that the mistake is thinking that the word used is an adjective when it is in fact a noun. The correct sentences should be as follows:

My brother is an intelligent person. (Adjective describing ‘person’)

She gets very emotional when she watches sad movies. (Adjective describing the person’s feelings)

The new seatbelts are very safe. (Adjective describing the new seatbelts)

He was confident in his language ability. (Adjective describing his feelings about his language ability)

So, in summary, ask yourself whether the word should be a noun or an adjective, and then remember the common word endings for both nouns and adjectives. With this little formula, you won’t go wrong. Hope this helps!

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Please can you off the light?

My brother is an intelligence person.