How'z ur Inglesh?? :)

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Mine:

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 72% Expert!

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@ Tahoe (edit: add Odin here too)

Your score is more impressive (especially the 87% advanced) because you are Dutch.
I couldn't really make a similar statement about me being South African because English has always been one of the official languages there. It also helps that written documents in hospitals are subject to intense scrutiny which makes a guy very careful with his "Ingleeeesh"
 :-)

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Ja, on the subject of what grates me:

1) Using "then" instead of "than" in a comparison. Example "He is taller then me." Lots of folks do that.
2) Using "your" and "were" instead of "you're" and "we're." Example "Your going to get caught and were not going to bail you."


But my number one hate is the abuse of the apostrophe in written documents. When I was studying english at University a professor there told us that an apostrophe is always used to denote an omission. This applies even to possession. In the 'old days' if we wanted to talk about a hat that Fluffy was wearing, we might say "Fluffy his hat is black." That got shortened to Fluffy's hat (the apostrophe denotes the omission of part of the word 'his.' So even though the effect of the apostrophe in modern day usage as above denotes possession, it is actually employed to denote omission. The same applies to "doesn't". The apostrophe denotes the omission of the letter o. That's why it doesn't make sense to have "does'nt." Where is the omitted letter and what is it?  If you stick by that rule, you will avoid all abuse of the poor apostrophe. A common abuse is plurals, for example "Video's for sale." Technically what that means is "Video is for sale" because the omission can only be 'is' for it to make sense. But what about "300 video's for sale?" -- that means 300 video is for sale. Doesn't make sense. The apostrophe is not for plurals, even if the noun is a model number such as Boeing 747. If there are 30 of these aircraft, it is 30 Boeing 747s, not 30 Boeing 747's.
And then there is the use of plurals to denote possession, such as "Fluffies hat" but that is another type of abuse altogether...

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@ Xand... (and all the 99%)

LOL

Yours is the same as mine...and I suspect you are in my age group (I'm 33) because when I did mine it told me 100% of those in my age group scored lower than me...but I did the test before you. He he, its all about timing mate  :-P

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@ Vincent

If you have been thin for a long time you may have an entrenched tapeworm (ETW). I can't provide a link, but basically it is a rare kind of tapeworm that has a very selective diet. What this means is that the usual medicines don't work and the symptoms are not overt. It just means you can't put on weight, and this may become a medical problem as you get older and your digestive chemistry changes. Up until now the only way to get rid of the ETW has been by means of surgery. Recent developments in Australia have resulted in an ingenious method to get the ETW out. I was reading it the other day...basically it works like this:

1) You have a low residue diet for 2 days, followed by nothing the 3rd day. On the afternoon of the third day you have a blood test to see what chemistry you have (it tells them what nutrients you are lacking, which points to what the ETW is consuming).
2) On the 4th day a clinic nurse (or in your case Sioux, because she can probably follow the instructions on the kit herself) gives you a light sedative and then you fall asleep, lying on your stomach, no pants.
3) When you are asleep she takes out a squeezy tube of chocolate sauce (like the stuff you put on ice-cream, but this stuff has been mixed with a synthetic formula based on the results of your blood test). Basicaly, the stuff in the squeezy bottle is what the ETW really wants.
4) A circle of this sauce is drawn around your tradesmen's entrance, and then the lights are switched off and an ultraviolet light is switched on (the ETW will not come out in normal light, and it can't see UV glow).
5) After a while the ETW will emerge to eat the sauce and that's when Sioux can use a pair of white plastic tweezers (glow in UV) to grab the worm (who also shows up nicely in UV) behind the head and roll him up like a bit of spaghetti. It is important not to roll it too quickly or to pull, because the worm could segment and then you have to wait a few days for the pieces to be excreted.

Total cost is about £32 for the blood test and kit, and £67 if a nurse comes to do it (you can get Sioux on the case, so you'll save money there).

You may not believe it, but I was talking about tapeworms with my colleagues just the other day, and I managed to catch quite a few of them with this story, and I'm sure I'll catch a few more...

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@ -D-

Ja, those Ascaris worms are bad buggers. I once saw a kid of ten with an Ascaris infection..it wasn't pretty. The worms finally migrate to the lungs (I can't remember if the mode of travel is via egg or if they physically burrow) but basically this kid was coughing up LIVE Ascaris worms. It is an UGLY UGLY worm, my friend. It is tapered at both ends (there's something creepy about not being able to identify the head of a creature) and when they were collected in a specimen jar, they were flicking and arching against the plastic...tap tap flick tap.

OOooooer I get goosebumps when I picture that again.


@ All

That ETW story I told is utter fiction, but the Ascaris story is real (I gotta admit when I'm pulling the wool, eh?) :-)


@ Glaucus

Ja, medical stories (whether true or made up) just have to be told because they are so tasty  :-P

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@ Vincent

I trust you have done all the usual things like blood tests for anaemia, endoscopy or barium studies for (insert inflammatory or absorptive bowel disease here) ?

Some of these things remain mysteries like the paraesthesia (numbness conforming to the distribution of a certain nerve branch) that I had in the late nineties. It involved the 4th and 5th fingers of my left hand and some of the wrist. It was bad, man. Burning pain that affected my grip. Anyway, here's what I went through for that:

1) X-rays of the elbow (there is a little channel at the back of the elbow through which the ulnar nerve runs (4th and 5th fingers are ulnar nerve territory while the others are radial nerve territory). This channel is called the ulnar groove and if you have impingement there, it can give you disturbances such as the ones I had. Anyway that was clear.

2) Cervical spine X-rays, specifically for the neural foramena. This just means looking at the little apertures on the spine where the nerves branch out from the spinal chord at the neck. These were okay.

3) CAT scan of the neck. This is to look for other nefarious things that could impinge on the nerves as they leave the spine. That was clear.

Okay, so no radiological findings that could explain this. Next stop: neurologist. Now this is where it got interesting. There is a nerve conduction/rate test called an EMG. Basically what they do is test the electrical conductivity of the nerves by stimulating them. How do they do that?
Simple...THEY FUGGEN ELECTROCUTE YOU!!!
I am not kidding. He stuck a 7cm needle in my neck, right down to the nerve, then made me hold a steel electrode in my left hand and connected the two of them via a circuit to a very fancy control unit. Then he turned up the dials and ZAPPPP!!! I was given shocks of increasing strength and my arm was flailing around uncontrollably.
My mate, that was unpleasant, to put it mildly. This went on for about 40 minutes, with the dude changing needle positions and voltages and current. He couldn't find the branch on the forearm (said my forearms were too muscularly dense for him to localise) and this resulted in a lot of probing with that needle, followed by shocks to see if he was in the right place.

What was the result of all this torture? Well, nothing helpful. He just said the conduction was within normal limits at the arm but slightly under at the neck. Nothing was ever found and the condition went away after a year.

So I feel for you, if you've had tests and they found nothing.

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@ Glaucus

I know, it sounds barbaric...but it is true. An EMG is no fun, and they can't sedate you or use local anaesthetic 'cos its the nerves they want.

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@ Cass

"This one especially could have started from a site distant to what you were probing: an acute heart ischemia can cause referred pain to the 4th & 5th fingers"
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I thought of that my mate, but I had no left shoulder pain and my symptoms were chronic, not acute. Also at the time I was playing squash four times a week and I had none of the exertion/shortness of breath problems that I would expect with a cardiopulmonary condition. Believe me, I checked a lot of things before I got the electric needle...