Phrases And Sayings

Feature: English for Speakers of Other Languages

By Meri Nana-Ama Danquah


When I was in primary school - or elementary school, as it is called in the US - there was a course titled “English For Speakers of Other Languages,” ESOL for short. It was intended for people for whom English was not their native tongue. While the rest of us sat in the main classroom during the English and Grammar portion of our daily lessons and listened to the teacher wax poetic about tenses, subject-verb agreement, and the proper use of adverbs, a small group of kids - usually the recently-arrived immigrants - was escorted elsewhere in the school building to learn what I imagined to be some form of remedial English.

Technically speaking, English is not my native language, but I was never invited to join the ESOL group. Being that I was born here, in Ghana, a country whose official (albeit not indigenous) language is English, I wasn’t required to take that “special” course. I could read, write, and speak English perfectly well, or so the school administrators assumed. I assumed the same thing, too, and felt about as smug and self-satisfied as a prepubescent could with the privilege that it afforded me to be considered an insider even though I was, for all intents and purposes, a full-fledged outsider, just like the other immigrants.

Whenever the American kids spoke to the foreign kids, they would enunciate their words in a way that was slow and exaggerated. They would speak at least five decibels higher, as if an increased volume could somehow facilitate comprehension. He’s foreign, not deaf or dumb , I’d want to say, but of course never did because I didn’t want to call attention to myself. I didn’t want them to suddenly become mindful of the fact that my speech was as heavily accented as the other foreign kids.

But soon enough, that attention I so desperately tried to avoid did come my way as it became clear to all those around me that the English in which I was fluent was an altogether different type of English than the one spoken in America. My class papers were always returned with numerous markings in red ink, corrections the teacher had made. There were lines drawn through all the “u” s in words like colour and rumour . The ‘r” s and “e” s were reversed in words like centre and theatre .

Tipp Talk—July 20 by GregEnslen.com

Events, activities and other hometown items going on in Tipp City, Ohio, by Greg Enslen

Outdated Phrases

Two weeks ago, I highlighted a bunch of outdated and underused “words from yesteryear” that have fallen out of favor.  This week, I’m going to highlight phrases and sayings that you just don’t hear anymore. Here’s what I collected:

“Ahoy-hoy”: hello. I’d never heard this particular saying, but when I looked it up, I discovered that this was Alexander Grahm Bell’s preferred salutation when using his newly-invented telephone.  The phrase was derived from the nautical “Ahoy,” which in turn was derived from the Dutch “hoi,” meaning “hello.” Lately, it’s become more popular due to its use by The Simpsons character Montgomery Burns, who answers the phone “Ahoy-hoy.”  Due to his “advanced age,” Burns tends to use many archaic phrases, such as “gold-brickers” and “layabouts,” and he once said that a nickel “will buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel, with enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.” “I like the cut of your jib” refers to the jib (triangular sail) of a sailing ship. Countries and ships used to have different sizes and styles of jibs, so one could form an opinion about a ship just by  seeing the cut of its jib. “Jeepers creepers”: a mild exclamation of surprise or emotion. This is a Tara Dixon Engel favorite, along with “gloriosky” and “gee-wilikers.” There are a whole host of these mild exclamations that folks sent in: “golly gee” and “golly gee wilikers” (a favorite saying of Batman’s sidekick Robin on the sixties TV show), “by golly,” dag nabbitt,” “lordy wakes alive,” “holy guacamole,” “for Pete’s sake,” “oopsey daisy,” “jiminy cricket,” “gol-darnitt,” “jumpin’ jiminy,” “jumpin’ Jehoshaphat,” and “well, I’ll swannie!I have to take â € thereâ € ™ s literally an unlimited supply of these sentences, which range from cute and harmless to the layman. â € œJimminy Christmas trees.

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Scrapbooking Titles, Phrases, Captions, Quotes, Sayings, and Ideas

haha im makeing this board were im going to out different sayings and phrases and im put your letting with that! and its

I promise to fill your stream with only life changing phrases and sayings that will fill your heart with happiness from this point on.. haha

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