Monday, December 03, 2007

Invi

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

Being an avid albeit untalented learner of the English language, I have a bad habit of asking people the grammatical validity of their sentences. This habit may be annoying to others but I see it necessary for me to improve my poor command of the language.

One day, there was a shout-out on an instant messaging software that piqued my curiosity.

"I am invicible!"

Is invicible a valid word? Feeling small that I do not know the word , I mustered all the strength in my cold body to ask him about the word.

Me: assalamualaikum
The other guy: Salamzzzzzzzzzzz. yo yo yo whats up?
Me: Hey, I have a question.
The other guy: k, k, sk wy?
(I assumed he said: Okay, okay, ask away)
Me: What's invicible?
The other guy: La dude........... Go google lah. Don't waste my time.
Me: Heheh, okay. Sorry.

So I did just that. I googled the word. You can learn so much from Google nowadays.

For example, I learned that invicible is not a valid word. Invisible, on the other hand, is a valid word and according to answers.com:

invisible - adjective
1. Impossible to see; not visible
2. Not accessible to view; hidden.

So maybe my acquaintance misspelt the word invisible. Hoping that others would do the same to me, in the sense that others would correct me when I'm wrong, I decided to message my aforementioned acquaintance.

Me: Eh, I think you spelt the word wrongly. Maybe you wanted to write invisible instead?
The other guy: Eh lah, what lah you? Please no try be super clever and be rite all the time. I got this from a song lah! It must be rite. Go shove this word up your nose lah!
(Please no try be? I apologise to my readers for the poor grammar used by the other guy.)
Me: But, I googled it. It is wrong. It should be invisible.
The other guy: Hey you cottage boy! (Maybe he wanted to say budak kampung?) This invicible is not meaning cannot see. This meaning i am super. Cannot be beat. Now go away!
Me: Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

Before I even got the chance to press enter, the other guy decided to go offline. (Did he really? Maybe he just appeared offline to me.)

That was an egg on my face. I didn't know that he took the word from a song. How was I to know?

With my face still red, I googled the term "song invicible". The first result is a YouTube link to a video clip of a song by Muse, which according to the video description, is entitled 'Invicible'.

So this was the song that The Other Guy was referring to. Silly me for wanting to correct him.

After 3 minutes of listening to the song, I found the lyrics to be quite interesting and maybe I could improve my English if I knew the lyrics to the song.

Again, I googled. This time I googled "Muse lyrics".

To my surprise, I couldn't find the lyrics to the song 'Invicible'. Instead I found lyrics for the song 'Invincible'.

I was really dumbfounded. Is 'Invicible' a valid word? Or should it have been 'Invincible' instead?

I looked up the definition for these two words and came to a conclusion:

Invicible is invincible spelt wrongly but deemed to be proper by those who think that people on the internet do not misspell words.

Summary:

1. invicible is wrong.
2. Invisible is a proper word.
3. Invincible is also a word, which according to dictionary.com, is defined as an adjective which brings the meaning of incapable of being overcome or defeated.
4. When someone corrects you, be nice to him or her.
5. Your collection of illegal media is not the definitive source for proper spelling.

Allah knows best.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never realized that invisible and invincible are totally two different words. I always tend to imagine invincible as invisible as far as arsenal the invincible is concerned.

Halim said...

I cannot believe that the author is such a pedant.

Even from the other parts of the conversation, one would actually surmise that 'the other guy' usage of the English language is acceptable at best.

And from the initial tone of his conversation in regards to the author's query, it was a clear indication that sometimes people just do not want to be reminded/corrected of their butchering of the English language.

So I end this pedantic comment.

Cottage boy.

abd said...

Leeds to win the league.

I was not being pedantic, I was only trying to improve my English. I only did what I want others to do to me: To correct me when I am wrong.

Pity him for not wanting to correct his 'acceptable' English.

Wan Fauzan said...

OMG, I had spelled invincible wrongly for the last 20 years. My resolution for this year: To spell invincible correctly.

ciPuding_7 said...

although i usually sing that 'invincible' song by muse, i never know the meaning of that word..

(ohh.. buruknya english aku..)

azzahra said...

how about affect and effect?

Disclaimer: I am neither an English native speaker nor a qualified English teacher.