#1110 Under Maintenance, Drawords, Word Of The Year: Unfriend

Show 1110 Wednesday 18 November
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.

Today’s mistake comes from a message on twitter by Lang-8 which is a website I like and I follow them on Twitter. A while ago, they wrote this message on Twitter:

Lang-8 is maintenancing now. Please access again after an hour.
Lang-8, Twitter, 26 May 2009

What’s wrong with that message?

Maintenance is not a verb, it’s a noun. So it’s strange to say the website is maintenancing.

Instead you could say: Lang-8 is currently under maintenance.
Or: Lang-8 is currently down for scheduled maintenance.

By the way, although maintenance is not officially a verb, as far as I know, some people use it as a verb.

Here’s an example someone was talking about on their blog.
It was a note that they found taped to their door.

WE WILL BE ENTERING YOUR APARTMENT ON THURSDAY JANUARY 24, TO MAINTENANCE HEATER FILTERS

What do you think about using maintenance as a verb?

click here

Today I’d like to tell you about this site: Drawords.

I think it’s an interesting idea. An artist posts a new drawing every week and people can submit captions. And then he chooses the best one and then posts it the next week. And he’s planning to make a book out of all the best drawings and captions – and if he uses your caption, then he’ll send you a copy of the book.

Here’s an example of one of the captions. The picture is of a guy mowing the lawns and he doesn’t have any feet. And the caption is: They wanted an arm and a leg for the mower but Jim talked them down.

There are two idioms there. An arm and a leg means a lot of money and to talk someone down means to get the price reduced by negotiating.

STICK NEWS

Kia ora, in Stick News today the New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen “unfriend” as its word of the year.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, "unfriend," is a verb, which means: "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook."
They chose the word as their word of the year.
But some people aren’t too happy about the selection. They say it should be defriend.
An Oxford spokesperson said that their researchers found that "unfriend" was more commonly used.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday 18th November.
Kia ora.


conversations with sarah
#703 Do you say unfriend or defriend?

Step 1: Repeat Bob’s lines.
Step 2: Read Bob’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Bob Do you say unfriend or defriend?

Sarah Ah, I still haven’t got around to using Facebook, so I don’t say either.

Bob How about other sites?

Sarah Um, YouTube is unsubscribe and Twitter is unfollow, I think. So, yeah, I’d probably go with unfriend over defriend.

links

today's STICK NEWS pictures

music

show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
artist site

WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

cws start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky
album: Dj Spooky's contribution for the 'One Laptop Per Child Project'
track: Moon rain
from: New York, United States
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

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