A MYSTERIOUS JOURNEY THROUGH SPACE

OUR GREAT SPACESHIP

The following is not a hypothetical question. It is real!

Let's imagine a huge spaceship has been built-I will tell you where a similar spaceship can be found in a moment. It can carry 500 passengers to anywhere in the universe at extremely high speed. You are lucky to be chosen as one of the passengers in this advanced spaceship. Each passenger can choose whatever they want to do on this ship while it travels through space. What would you do?

Would you want to be the one who takes care and navigates this highly engineered spaceship? Or are you the type who likes to take care of the health of the passengers and become the Medical person on board.

A novel effort indeed! May be you want to be the captain of this ship and manage the entire journey taking care of the ship as well as the passengers. Maybe, some of you may want to start a business on board making a fortune at the end of the journey.

Well, do you know what I'll do? I'll talk to the captain of the ship and tell him that I want to do nothing except to just sit by my window looking through my telescopes and binoculars and enjoy all the strange and mysterious things that passes by as we zip through space. How about that? Would you like to join me and appreciate all the new things that come by? I asked the same question to my Quantum Physics class of about 100 students recently and sensed a resounding "yes" from the floor which would otherwise be silent every time I posed a question.

Now let's just imagine the spaceship is slightly bigger. Much bigger. Let's say it can carry many more passengers. Not 500 or 5000 but 5 billion passengers. And I ask you the same question.What would you prefer to do on such a spaceship? Would you still join me by the window and study all the great things that pass by.

A 5 billion passenger spaceship is huge. But then the earth has 5 billion on it and… yes we're actually on a spaceship that we call Earth. This spaceship of ours in this solar system travels through the ever expanding universe which according to the Big Bang moves further and further away from its neighbours - like two points on the surface of an expanding balloon.

Probably the early species of Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus and of course the surviving Homo Sapiens (that's us) after dinner would sit by their "dwellings" and look up in the sky and wonder what is out there and why they are here on this spaceship, Earth.

So what is my point?

We still ask the same questions today. As passengers on this mighty spaceship, our kids asked a lot of questions at their early age but asked less and less as they grow older. They lack the passion to pursue and understand nature, I mean basic science - mathematics, physics and astronomy, chemistry, biology etc. Of course the other subjects are equally important for the well being of our spaceship.

The present day Homo Sapiens may be involved in so many "complex affairs" and forget to ask basic questions about nature. Much of our present day technologies are the results of many generations of finding questions as well as providing answers about nature - things that pass by the window of our great spaceship - that was quickly captured by the great minds like Newton and Einstein. As the human race inches through to understand nature, for example nanotechnology, nanobiology, molecular electronics plus atoms, protons, quarks -charm, strange, beauty and down, gluons, mesons, leptons etc etc, more passengers sitting by the window will ensure the continuous charting of the wonderful things that pass by our great spaceship, screaming to be discovered.

So to all you kids and over grown kids out there … let us join the great geniuses and minds of our past, present and future and sit by the window in this mysterious journey in our great spaceship.

TRANSLATION

SUATU PERJALANAN YANG MISTERI MELALUI ANGKASA

KAPAL ANGKASA KEBANGGAAN KITA

Berikut adalah bukan pertanyaan hipotesis. Hal ini adalah benar!

Cuba bayangkan sebuah kapal angkasa telah dibina. saya akan beritahu kepada kamu

Classes of English

ACROLECTAL, MESOLECTAL AND BASILECTAL ENGLISH

Acrolectal: Acrolectal Singaporean English exhibits an absence of or a much smaller degree of Singlish pronunciation features than do Mesolectal, Basilectal, and pidgin variants of Singlish.

Mesolectal: This is mix between Standard English and Singlish. At this level, a number of features not found in other forms of English begin to emerge.

Basilectal: This is the colloquial speech.[11] educated or not, in informal settings, and is the speech usually referred to as "Singlish". Here, one can find all of the unique phonological, lexical, and grammatical features of Singlish. Many of these features can be attributed to Asian languages such as the Chinese languages, Malay, or Indian languages such as Tamil, though some cannot.

STRONG and WEAK VERBS

There is more to strong and weak verbs than meets the eye. The distinction is clear. Strong verbs take a vowel change in the past tense. Weak verbs need only a suffix, usually -ed.

More often though, there’s a genuine choice. Take hang. Game or meat is hung. A human being is hanged. There are numerous contexts forhang (curtains, laundry, pictures) and only one for hanged.

Then, swelled or swollen? A financial column refers to “foreign reserves, now swelled by oil exports”. You can have either. I go along with Burchfield, who reckons that swollen implies harmful or undesirable, while swelled is more neutral. (“The audience was swelled by the arrival of two coachloads of tourists.”) Context is everything here: a riverswollen by heavy rainfall is dangerous. But swelled head is always bad.

Spin, spun, spun is almost standard. But span used to be an equal choice for the past tense. It is now rarely seen – “a deviant minority form”, says M.E.U. – but I have noted it in the current press. Span can only be used of physical movement though – “he span the celestial globe gently”.

If spin takes on its special modern sense through spin-doctor – a public relations expert employed by a politician or a firm to influence public opinion – then the past tense is always spun.There is something archaic, or slightly jarring about span which makes it unsuitable for contemporary use.

Then there are oddities of the past tense. Learned has the alternativelearnt (with the same vowel sound). For kneel, the past is kneeled orknelt. Dream has a standard weak past, dreamed (rhymes withcreamed). But dreamt (rhymes with tempt) is also correct.

I believe I use both forms indifferently. There is no real distinction, but Burchfield suggests that dreamt is more common in British English than American.

Which brings us to the great divide. Strong and weak usage is not entirely common to both sides of the Atlantic. I was reminded of this by a recent report of the US Attorney General, that prisoners had “pled guilty”.

Pled (past tense of plead) is standard American, but is used only in legal contexts. Outside the law courts, plead reverts to its normal weak past tense, pleaded, in American and British. “She pleaded to be allowed to go home early.”

Dove, past tense of dive, is entirely American and is making no impression at all on non-American usage. It may be that a strong verb, if felt to be odd or outlandish, arouses a reaction against it. A weak verb, on the other hand, seems to fit in more easily.

A case in point is snuck, past tense of sneak. This used to be dialect or colloquial American, and is now standard American. British English sticks to sneaked. I’d say that snuck has to non-American ears a definite ‘strong’ (in the general sense) sound. To be avoided.

And there are subtleties in slay, slew, slain. This is a bold, colourful word from a rich poetic tradition, more American than British now but providing a good headline: ‘Serial killer slays seven youths.’

However, I see that the weak form is now making headway. The Timeshad a Wimbledon headline, ‘The gigantic giant-killer who slayed the man we love to hate.’ (This was of Karlovic vs Hewitt.)

As I type this, my computer warns me with red underlining that it disapproves of “slayed”. But the weak past tense is coming in. And there’s a slang sense of slay that is used of a comedian, to overcome with laughter. “He slayed the audience.”

I can see no hidden rules in all this. There are simply oddities to be taken note of, and the occasional choice to be made. I think I detect a slight general tendency to favour the weak form – the strong is perhaps a touch too ‘strong’. It is best to consult the latest dictionary.

referred from article by Ralph Berry

HOMONYM AND HYPONYM

Hyponymy

Hyponymy is a relation between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word. The lexical relation corresponding to the inclusion of one class in another is hyponymy.

A hyponym is a subordinate, specific term whose referent is included in the referent of super ordinate term.

E.g. Blue, Green are kinds of color. They are specific colors and color is a general term for them.

Therefore, color is called the super ordinate term, and blue, red, green, yellow, etc are called hyponyms.

A super ordinate can have many hyponyms. Hyponymy is the relationship between each lower term and the higher term (super ordinate). It is a sense relation. It is defined in terms of the inclusion of the sense of one item in the sense of another. E.g. The sense of animal is included in the sense of lion.

Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon.

E.g. the verb cook has many hyponyms.
Word: Cook
Hyponyms: Roast, boil, fry, grill, bake, etc.

Word: color
Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, black and purple.

In a lexical field, hyponymy may exist at more than one level. A word may have both a hyponym and a super ordinate term.

For example,
Word: Living
Hyponym: bird, insects, animals

Now let’s take the word bird from above hyponyms.
Word: Bird
Hyponyms: sparrow, hawk, crow, fowl

We thus have sparrow, hawk, crow, fowl as hyponyms of bird and bird in turn is a hyponym of living beings. So there is a hierarchy of terms related to each other through hyponymic relations.

Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment. E.g.
‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal.’

Hyponymy often functions in discourse as a means of lexical cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid repetition.

Homonymy

The word Homonym has been derived from Greek term 'Homoios' which means identical and 'onoma' means name.

Homonyms are the words that have same phonetic form (homophones) or orthographic form (homographs) but different unrelated meanings.

The ambiguous word whose different senses are far apart from each other and are not obviously related to each other in any way is called as Homonymy. Words like tale and tail are homonyms. There is no conceptual connection between its two meanings.

For example the word ‘bear’, as a verb means ‘to carry’ and as a noun it means ‘large animal’.

An example of homonym which is both homophone and homograph is the word ‘fluke’. Fluke is a fish as well as a flatworm. Other examples are bank, an anchor, and so on.

Translate The Text (SL) Into Bahasa Melayu (TL)

Did you think that

I would really take you back

Let you in back in my heart

One more time, oh, no no

Did you think I’d still care

That there’d be more feeling there

Did you think you could walk back

In my life, oh

So you found you missed the love you

threw away

Baby, but you found it out too late,

too late

And so you know the way it feels to cry

The way that I cried when you broke my

world in two

And baby I learned the way to break a

heart

I learned from the best, I learned from you

Oh baby, now, I learned from you

I remember cold nights

Tears I thought would never dry

How you shattered my world

With your goodbye, your goodbye

Would a sold my soul then

Just to have you back again

Now you are the last thing on my mind

Now you say you're sorry and you've

Changed your ways

Sorry but you changed your ways too

late

So when all you've got are sleepless

night

When those tears are clouding up your

eyes

Just remember it was you

Who said goodbye, who said goodbye

I learned from the best

I learned from you

Adakah kau benar-benar berfikir bahawa

Aku benar-benar akan menerima kau kembali

Membiarkan kau kembali ke dalam hatiku

Sekali lagi, oh, tidak tidak

Adakah kau fikir aku masih peduli

Bahawa masih ada lagi perasaan itu

Adakah kau fikir kau boleh kembali

Ke dalam hidupku, oh

Jadi, kau sedari kau merindui cinta

yang telah kau buang jauh

Sayang, tapi kau dapati ianya telah terlalu

terlalu lambat, terlalu lambat

Dan kini, kau tahu bagaimana rasanya derita

Derita yang aku lalui ketika kau musnahkan hidupku

Dan sayang, aku belajar cara untuk mengecewakan sebuah hati

Aku belajar daripada yang terbaik, aku belajar darimu

Oh sayang, sekarang, aku telah belajar dari mu.

Aku ingat lagi, malam yang dingin itu

Tangisan yang tak mungkin kering

Bagaimana kau musnahkan hidupku

Dengan kata-kata selamat tinggalmu, kata-kata selamat tinggalmu

Akan aku jualkn jiwaku hanya

Untuk menerimamu kembali

Sekarang kaulah perkara terakhir dalam fikiranku

Dan kau meminta maaf dan kau

sudah berubah

Maaf,kau berubah terlalu lambat

Jadi apabila semua yang kau dapat hanyalah

malam yang sunyi

Apabila tangisan mengaburi matamu

Ingatlah itu kau

Kau yang telah ucap selamat tinggal, yang telah ucap selamat tinggal

Aku belajar dari yang terbaik

Aku belajar darimu