//Ever tried to read a doctor's scribble?//

Yep. But I've still yet to find one with worse handwriting than me. I like to read, and write, and I like to think that my spelling and grammar are of a reasonable standard. My handwriting is not; it looks like a drunken spider has crawled through some ink then attempted to tap-dance across the page

Poor handwriting does not equate to poor English. And on the flip side, I reckon you could train a foreigner who is skilled in the visual arts to reproduce beautiful calligraphy without having a damn clue what it means. After all, Australian tattoo artists manage it with Chinese characters.

cont'd ...

For any one looking for good reads for young
boys and girls - the TASHI series of books
are fantastic to read. The kids love them and
the age group is from kids as young as 4 up to
12 year olds. The language is wonderful as
are the characters.

There's nothing nicer to read than beautifully written cursive script. Both my Mother and Father had lovely writing, as well as one of my former bosses. His cursive writing was as good as you'd get from a trained calligrapher, and when asked if he'd had been taught, he'd merely shrug his shoulders and continue on being real 'pr..k' and walk off! He always used a fountain pen, black ink, and he'd carelessly leave it on his desk (he had his own Office being a Detective Chief Inspector) but some of the troops would gamely plot to 'lift' his pen and he's never see the thing again. Nevertheless our cowardly streaks would emerge, thus his pen remained safe.

A sidelight - He was the lead D. on the Graham THORN kidnapping case. It was his good work that led to the arrest of Stephen John BRADLEY (dec) late of NSW's Goulburn Maximum Security Gaol. And did Mr BRADLEY cop it from other crims, when he was first lodged therein!

Hey Foxy,
No it's not your fault, he's the one that's got a stupid name.
Aussie's don't know what to make of that.
'N[u]g' ??
Why can't he just change it and put an vowel in front of it and call himself Ong or Ang or Ing?
Poor old Mr N[u]g (with his stupid name), it's not his fault... Lol

Dear AC,

Thanks for that but it was my fault.

I had a heck of a problem understanding some of the
accents of people who came into the library. It
wasn't their fault it was mine. It took me a while
to get used to some of them. I remember one Italian
bloke came into the library stood opposite me at
my desk, looked at my chest and quite clearly said -
what I thought was "titis." I blushed bright red,
and said, "Excuse me?" So he repeated the word,
"titis." To make a long story short - it turned out
that he was after information on the middle-ear
infection - tinnitus.

Was I relieved.

Then there's the people who were after information on
"Youths in Asia," or so I thought. Nope. They actually
were after - Euthanasia.

Great fun working in a library.

I was a kid at school in Bathurst in the days when we still had bakers & milkmen delivering their wears in the early morning by horse & cart. The baker was a nice bloke, a pom, who unfortunately, like Foxy's chinaman had not actually learnt to speak the kings English, but some strange dialect. I remember when he was running late one Easter he tried to tell my mother that he was going to do a "weir do er" on the weekend. After much effort he finally got across that he was going to build a door to keep the flies out, a wire door.

All immigrants should have to learn to speak English when they come to Australia, particularly many of the poms & those from that quaint area a north of Hadrian's wall.