The past tense of "Say".

In today's language, the past tense of "Say" is "was like", as in:

I told him to leave.

He was like "Why?"

I was like "You're so gross!"

Negativity.

There is a lot of negativity in the world today.

I wonder why.

Citizen journalism.

I think the thing that bothered me the most about the Occupy protests in Hong Kong from late September to December 2014 was the reporting of events on social media. Unsourced, unchecked, unvetted stories were being posted, videos that had been edited for effect, images that distorted the facts - this made me more upset than the violence shown by both sides.

I had trouble expressing this idea, but Episode 5 of Season 3 of The Newsroom said it for me. Here's an excerpt of that episode.

Mickle and muckle.

I would like to shoot the teacher who taught his class this line:
"Many a mickle make a muckle".
The student used this when trying to say "Practice makes perfect".

A little research would have shown the teacher that "Many a little makes a mickle" goes back to the 17th century, and is now obsolete.

This is all in the context of the Hong Kong Examinations & Assessment Authority expecting Form 6 students to be able to use a wide vocabulary during their written and oral exams. The teachers tell their students to use big words, but don't explain the difference between a big vocabulary and a strong vocabulary.

In my not-so-humble opinion:
A vocabulary is the number of words of a certain language that you know.
A big vocabulary means you know a lot of words.
A strong vocabulary means you know how and when to use certain words.

Mickle and muckle make for inappropriate vocabulary that is used in an attempt to impress the examiners.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/many-a-little-makes-a-mickle.html

At 57.

Here's a thought that used to cross my mind.

 "When I turn 57, my age will be the same as my birth year. I wonder what my life will be like."

Now I know.

O-U-G-H

There’s a good reason why English is such a difficult language to learn.  Take, for example, the letter combination o-u-g-h.  I can think of at least seven different ways to pronounce it.

“Bough” rhymes with “cow”.
“Cough” rhymes with “off”.
“Tough” rhymes with “stuff”.
“Though” rhymes with “so”.
“Thought” rhymes with “court”.
 “Through” rhymes with “blue”.
And I have no idea what rhymes with “thorough”.