Humour
Learning the Local Lingo? English How She Is Not To Be Spoke!
by VARIOUS PROMINENT PERSONALITIES
Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,"
- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss U.S.A. Contest
* * * * *
"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
- Mariah Carey
* * * * *
"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life,"
- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for the Federal Anti-smoking Campaign.
* * * * *
"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,"
- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward.
* * * * *
"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,"
- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.
* * * * *
"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it,"
- A Congressional candidate in Texas ... ["W", you say?]
"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
- Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark
* * * * *
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
- Al Gore, Vice-President of The United States of America
"I love California . I practically grew up in Phoenix .."
- Dan Quayle, another Vice-President of The United States of America
* * * * *
"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
- Lee Iacocca, President and CEO, and later, Chairman of Chrysler Corporation
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
- Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst
* * * * *
"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
- Colonel Gerald Wellman, Instructor, U.S. Reserve Officer Training Corps
* * * * *
"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
- Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina
* * * * *
"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
- Keppel Enderbery, Australian Cabinet Minister
* * * * *
"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."
- Mark S. Fowler, Chairman, U.S. Federal Communications Commission
* * * * *
"I don't want to live here in Ummrikaa and Kaneta. It's a land of illiterates!"
"What do you mean, Grandma?"
"Look for yourself. Go out on the street and you can't find a single person who can speak Punjabi!"
- Sardarni Sahib Kaur, Grandmother of the Editor, sikhchic.com
March 13, 2010
Conversation about this article
1: Sangat Singh (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), March 13, 2010, 2:05 PM.
If I recall correctly, the following story was quoted in Sir Ernest Grower in his book, "The Complete Words": "I recall an old story of an Indian official who, on finding his British superior laboriously correcting a letter he had drafted to a brother Indian official, remarked, 'Your honour puts yourself to much trouble correcting my English, and doubtless the final letter will be much better literature, but, it will go from me Mukerjee to him Bannerji, and, he Bannerji will understand it a great deal better as I Mukerji write it than as your honour corrects it'. Do you want some more examples of "English as she is spoke"?
2: Parmjit Singh (Canada), March 13, 2010, 9:31 PM.
Sardarni Sahib Kaur's comment I love. However, it is the polar opposite of all the others. Her's is the lingo of the independent heart spoken perfectly.