to-may-to, to-mah-to.

you guessed it right, once again i'll emphasise (BrE) and emphasize (AmE) on the difference between american and british english. might be going deeper this time.

inspired, or maybe annoyed, by the flyfm crew this morning sebab ia kedengaran macam gimik la about the usage of 'eleven hundred ringgit' which means RM 1100. true, americans use that often and we malaysians being educated with british english since primary school might not all know that it means seribu seratus sebab dengar macam sebelas ratus.
in 2nd grade, my teacher scolded me kaw2 punye because i wrote 'color' and 'neighbor' instead of 'colour' and 'neighbour.' i went home and marah2 my mother sebab saya ingat dia ajar salah because what i learned was with the suffix '-or'. my earliest education was in virginia, washington dc. not malaysia or united kingdom. of course we used '-or.'
same goes for judgment (AmE) and judgement (BrE).
and the difference between phrases and words such as windshield (AmE) and windscreen (BrE), license plate (AmE) and number plate (BrE), vacation (AmE) and holiday (BrE) etc. (which, comes from the Latin word et cetera meaning and so forth.)
but times have changed now and i think any kind of english is accepted.

what? any kind? i thought there's just two!

ohmygod you're wrong. have you forgotten australian? and maybe irish? singaporean? and our very own manglish?

it just means that the same thing has many different versions and we just have to accept and adapt.

you see, a language develops. starting from the Tower of Babel until now. the story begins where once upon a time the people in a place called Babel all speak the same language and they have no trouble communicating. then they decided to build a tower to reach the heavens. because of their excellent communication, the tower was built quickly. it almost reached the heavens when God got angry and punished them by making the people all speak different languages. they have trouble communicating and the tower could not be finished. well that was the history of translation, when people worked hard to understand each other and translated their different languages. ever wondered why the movie 'Babel' is named that way? or the most credible translation website is called Babelfish?

(btw, please correct me if im wrong about the Tower of Babel story. it's in the bible aandd..i've never read the original version lah kan.)

and don't get me started on borrowed words:-

sukkaar arabic and sugar english
souvenir french-to remember and souvenir english-memento

okay taknak bagi banyak.
what about the influence of Cockney English in the english language itself?

"why don't you take a gander at our house."

gander comes from hook and gander.
hook rhymes with look, so in the sentence above, gander means look.

Cockney English is kinda confusing for first-timers. for more info, just google it but if you want to hear interesting examples, watch My Fair Lady or a rather cool one, Ocean's 11 (or any of its sequels) and listen to the black bomb guy. he speaks Cockney English. saya tak tipu.

okay? but that's not all. i could fill up an entire dissertation just talking about our own language and bahasa serumpunnya (brunei dan indonesia), let alone combining it with english and its different types.

hope you readers like this additional information.

and another trivial info here, my sangat-garang-tak-ingat-punye chemistry teacher during matriculation was the one who persuaded me to take this course and making me what i am now. walaupun saya sangat suka kimia. walaupun kimia ialah subjek terbaik saya (next to english) masa matrik. walaupun saya kata cikgu, saya nak amik anything chemistry-ish time U nanti. i could have been her star student and continuing her cikgu-kimia-yang-garang legacy, but she gave me a slight nudge in this direction for me to pursue what i love most.

language.

and now i'm doing my best to stop subtitles such as 'lilin bikini' for 'bikini wax.'

owhh. T_T