Friday, January 16, 2004

Linguistic bliss

As my moonlit teaching sessions pick up, I'm starting to discover things about the English language that we all, as mother-tonguers, take for granted - it's when you have an investigative 16-year old who fancies himself as the new David Frost (Ilana Dayan anybody?) that you realise the shortcomings in your own knowledge, as well as the oddities that exist in the language (especially when you can feel that same 16-year old's eyes burning deep into your soul, demanding an immediate and clear answer). As I know some of you out there fancy yourselves as 'writers', you might want to check out this list of the 100 words most commonly misspelled, according to a certain Dr. Language (who the f**k?...), or this chaotic piece of rhyme which perfectly illustrates the hardships us wannabe English teachers face in our frontline battles...