Wordflay

Theater critic Gibbs Cadiz’s anecdote about an otherwise attractive prospect’s unfortunate handling of subject-verb agreement, which he related in his most recent blog post, had me chuckling for a while when I first read it. As someone who breathes and lives with words on a daily basis (especially now that I work as the writer/editor of a new travel-related publication), I can totally relate to his experience. I can’t help it; I have long been very sensitive to how English is spoken or written. And mind you, not only writers and editors acquire this sensitivity. Ask any good English teacher around and he or she will tell you how they struggle checking through tower after tower of their students’ reports and terms papers, bad grammar and all.

Incidentally, this reminds me of a very short story a friend, BJ Patiño, had written. The story, titled “Missing an ‘S’” (first published in Sleepless in Manila), has an English teacher reading a suitor’s love letter while on a break from checking papers. Here’s the highlight of that letter:

“I am happy to know you. I care you.”

Hilarious. Even more hilarious, perhaps out of fatigue, the teacher graded it with an F.

Another friend related a story one time, about a friend of hers who, during a pretty good fuck, heard the apparently ecstatic guy exclaim: “I’m going to make love to you twinty times a day!” Something snapped in the girl when she heard that, and she reacted by totally pulling away from the startled guy. She was that turned off.

That’s not all. I heard this one from a friend from the theater, wherein she overheard a conversation between two friends while riding an elevator. It went something like this:

PERSON 1: Ano ba ang difference between confirmed at confeermed?

This friend of mine thought this person was joking, until she heard the other person speak:

PERSON 2: Pag confirmed, ibig sabihin hindi pa sigurado. Pag confeermed, sigurado na iyon.

Unbelievable, isn’t it? I laughed when I first heard it, and so did my other theater friends.

And finally, I have an older female colleague—an advertising executive—who calls prospective clients (hotels, resorts, etc.) every morning at the office. There is one that she calls to fairly frequently, and until very, very recently she would start by saying:

"Good morning. Is this Discovery Suites (pronounced suits)?"

I had to keep my mouth shut every time she pronounced “suit(e)s” for fear I might correct her in a tactless way. Sigh. Thank God she learned how it say it properly.