Assalaaamu'alaikum!
Alhamdulillah, I'm still alive.
I've been meaning to post some funny quotes by my Malay L2 English students.
I don't think these are cases of slip-of-the-tongue. It's just a case of what we Malays call as 'belasah saja la', or 'to hell with it'.
Sadly, where I am now is not where I put the notes which I jotted down the quotes is. Pahe dok?
So here are some that I remember,
"I quietly agree"
No, he doesn't mean he agrees in secret, he means, he 'quite' agrees with his friends opinion. He kept saying he 'quietly', and towards the end of the discussion, his group member finally got annoyed because she couldn't understand and yelled 'you what??'. Though I caught on to this much earlier because he talked rather quietly.
Another one was the his group member,
"Not at all people" and "Almost people"
This student wanted to say "Not everyone", but ended up saying "not at all people". Like "not at all people are like that, only some people". Her friends picked up on the mistake, but they weren't sure of it themselves.
"Almost people" was supposed to be "almost everyone". This student used her creativity and combined 'most ' with 'all'. So you'll hear, "almost people have a mobile phone".
Any of your students make up their own expressions like this?
1 comment:
"..Her friends picked up on the mistake, but they weren't sure of it themselves..."
Lucky you to have some students who managed to pick up their friends' mistakes. Unlike me, some of my students, somehow understood what their friends said even though I didn't. It made me think - I wasted my 5 years of my life doing my degree, yet I couldn't understand the 'common English' used by them.huhu..
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