It has been said that it is easy to learn English but difficult to master it. Grammatical rules are at times confusing and difficult to remember. Just last Monday, The Straits Times carried a ‘Speak Good English’ quiz. Here are some interesting yet amusing examples of common grammatical errors:
1. No footwears allowed- ‘footwear’ is uncountable noun- If we add ‘s’, it means that something belongs to the footwear!
2. We discussed about the holiday but I was not really paying attention- No preposition ‘about’ is required. The verb ‘discuss’ behaves like the verbs ‘consider’ but not like the verb ‘talk’.
3. Once you get this letter, revert back to me- ‘Revert back’ means to ‘go back back’. ‘Get back to me’ is more appropriate.
4. The staffs are specialists, recruited from all over the world-’Staff’ also means ‘stick’ or ‘rod’ which is countable. When we use ‘staffs’, we are saying that a collection of sticks were recruited instead of a group of employees!
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