Ebaby! Blog

Our members are so smart. OK, they’re not smart all the time, like when we added the “report member” button to weed out spammers and everyone pressed it like crazy for no reason, but a lot of the forum posts are really intelligent.

Learning a language forces you to be creative. I remember when I got good enough at Spanish to speak fluidly but I didn’t have the vocab to be very straight forward. So I’d come up with interesting ways to get across what I was trying to say. I think that’s what’s going on in this comment on another soap opera episode about online dating in which Marni discovers her new boyfriend may not be as great as she thought.

Unless taxi-as-relationship is a common cliche in Viet Nam, that’s pretty original. Another member may have coined a clever phrase this week on our lesson about the phrase “ugly duckling”.

I can’t find that expression anywhere with Google and, although it may be an unintentional misspelling, I like “notty” for the double meaning of “not” and “naughty”.

For another member, “ugly duckling” is about more than looks.

Maybe she can meet up with this dejected countryman of hers, who doesn’t include a photo clear enough to determine if his sulking is justified.

As interesting as all that is, we’ll wrap things up with another common mistake on the site. A lot of times people mistake one of the English lessons for a member profile and comment on it like this:

So that wouldn’t be so strange…if it weren’t on our lesson about Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Until next time, stay beautiful like an animated rodent.

Online romance is always a popular topic on English, baby!, so when the latest episode of the soap found Marni with a new online boyfriend, a lot of people chimed in to share their computer-enabled love stories. But in one case, it doesn’t sound like it went very well.

Another member had an almost nursery rhyme tale of failed love.

Of course, everything in romance, from spying to searching for your mate on an ESL website usually works better if you have a sense of subtlety. I’d be surprised if this direct approach drew many responses.

And don’t forget to pay attention to detail. A spammer stopped by the site this week but forgot to fill in the blank her spammy comment.

That’s the kind of mistake that can cost you a job or a date. Of course, it’s no better to make promises you can’t possibly keep. Check out this boast from our lesson on fear of heights.

If you find a “7000 flour” building, I will challenge you to climb it with me, buddy. I wouldn’t start your search in this member’s town though:

But hey, at least she got on the tallest building.