Most Commonly Misread English Words and Brands

I have thought of the English words which are the most-commonly misread by my fellow-countrymen and maybe of foreigners other than Americans.

Read it as in reading Tagalog/Filipino words. Although I have consulted dictionaries to confirm my little knowledge, I preferred to write how it is read the way we read the letters in the Filipino alphabet.

new = nu/nyu

visage = vi-sij (hitsura, appearance)

In French it is read as = 're-zer-vwa' and became acceptable in the English Language too.

Idiom Decoded: 'below the belt'

This phrase is an Idiom (a phrase or word that does NOT imply or talk about LITERAL meaning) that means ‘not fair or unjust’. Meaning, an act or move that aggrieves, hurt or pained and even saddened another person. ‘Below’ represents ‘under’. ‘the belt’ here resembles  ‘boundary or limits’ that have been ignored or forgotten. We are talking more about connotations of each word not its LITERAL meaning or sense. 

Idiom Decoded: 'in black and white'

Here is another Idiom used in a sentence and the real meaning elaborated, you can find similar posts like this on the 'Idioms Decoded' page of this blog. Click on that page title on the page category found on the right sidebar.

We can hear this from movies - sometimes an employee was requested to provide a resignation letter in black and white after he said to have mentioned he is quitting job.

Idiom Decoded: 'In the Flesh'

Idiomatic Expressions (talinhaga in Filipino language) – are phrases or words that does NOT imply or talk about LITERAL (word per word) meaning.

One of those idioms is:

'Confusing Words' Hacks

Here are three pairs of words we sometimes interchanged when writing sentences. 

Your

 - denotes ownership or possession, always precedes/come before a noun.

e.g.

-  your car (you own the car)

-  your attaché case (you own the attaché case)

- your grandchild

- your company

Three Ways to Shorten Words or Phrases

Abbreviations

- are shortened words formed by deleting some of its letters with the replacement of a period.

- mostly used to address people’s occupation/political rank/educational attainment- usually starts with a capital letter WHEN preceding a proper noun.

- when occurring in a sentence without a proper name that comes after, it is just written in lower case.

e.g.

Dr. = doctor

Engr. =  engineer

Gov. = governor

Col. = colonel

Confusion Buster: "We" and "They" Substitution

Like many of students who have encountered the pronouns “we” and “they”, I also get confused in substituting nouns with these plural pronouns —  especially in sentences where I thought I was included with the ones being referred to. Like for example the nouns “youth”, “students” or “children” (when I was still a student) used with another noun like:

1. The government leaders and the youth are expected to join the Recycling Summit.

I was assuming before that being a “youth” too when I was in highschool or college, I was among those who are being talked about that is why I get confused whether to change the compound subject to “they” or “we”.

English Lesson 5: Written-English Reminder

Many are raising eyebrows seeing these words thought to have been written mistakenly:

i.e.

two-page

nine-stage

three-year-old

Commonly Misused English Words

These are just three of the words we used everyday that we never noticed that is wrong:

We called the writing material pentel pen  when it should have been felt-tip-pen. Pentel is a brand/manufacturer name.

"Compliment" versus "Complement"

Here is another set of most commonly interchanged words. Both words have the same spelling except on their sixth (6th) letter of each - "i" and "e".

Two Sets of Most Commonly Interchanged English Words Decoded

Hello everyone, some of  us knew the difference between words with almost the same spelling but has "c" and "s" as their distinction - that when checked are both spelled correctly though each has a different function. And for those who still get confused with it, I hope this would help.

The two functions I was referring above is as a noun (refers to name of persons, place, things and events) and as a verb (words denoting action).  Take note of this simple reminders: