Hi Friend,

Wanted to talk to you about English that is not English. Someone drew my attention to a website that is made up of lists of the 10 best of something. Here it is.

This website isn’t very original in content, but what is worse is that the English is terrible! I think the contributors are mostly Indians or Nepalese or something (I’m looking at the photos and names of the writers). I really don’t care where they are from. Everybody can learn good English and it doesn’t matter where you are from or in which country you were born. No excuses!

Here are some examples of how terrible the English is on this dreadful website:
Top 10 Facts About Electricity

“Being one of the basic ingredients of the universe, the electricity is something that has revolutionized the way life is in this planet.”

Mistake 1: It shouldn’t be “the” electricity because that would mean one kind of electricity and not another kind. What is meant here is electricity in general, so without “the.”

Mistake 2: “life is in this planet.” Inside our planet there is no life at all, as far as I know. A few worms here and there, that’s all. All life is on earth, and not in it.

Top 10 adventure movies for kids.

“There’s no past-time like watching a good movie and there are no good movies like adventure movies.”

Mistake: The correct word is pastime, which means leisure or entertainment.

Top 10 Amazing Facts About Astronomy

“As beautifully explained in the song, in this world, all the entities that constitutes the part of it, whether living or non-living, are distinct and have separate identities.”

This surely is a weird sentence, which no normal person can understand.

Mistake 1: Perhaps it would be a little bit better if it said “a part” instead of “the part.” People and things are a part in the world. If you say “the part” it means there is only one part!

Mistake 2: “constitutes” should be without s. The subject that goes with it is “entities” and that’s a plural.

As you understand, I’m not quoting from this website to have a laugh at people who make mistakes in their English. What is pathetic, though, is that they put texts on the internet that have a mistake in each and every sentence, without having someone check it.

If English is not your first language, always ask an English speaker to check your work before you write an important email or article, or before you publish something. You will learn a lot from this, and in the end your English really will be perfect. But putting out your work on the internet with lots of mistakes in it is just plain foolish.

Start learning more English now, and order just a few more exercises here.

Have a nice weekend,

Jacqueline