Adverbs aren't adjectives

I have often wondered why so many people have apparently insurmountable difficulties in getting their parts of speech right. And some go into hypercorrection mode and commit hilarious blunders.

This morning, the Straits Times published a report about a commotion at a bubble tea cafe. It was just hours before all bubble tea cafes were required by law to close owing to the deadly pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China and has now spread to the entire world. There was a long queue of customers when an argument took place between a delivery man and the cashier at the bubble tea cafe. Here's the news report.

The cashier told the delivery man who had placed his orders that it would be 'a f*** long wait' and the delivery man took offence. The spokesman for the bubble tea cafe apologised for it's employee's 'uncouth choice of adjective'.

The biggest mistake the bubble tea cafe has made is to imply that it would have been wrong if it had called the police. The delivery man's reaction was out of proportion to the provocation.

There are different gradations of offensiveness when 'f***'  is used in speech:

1.  'It's going to be a f*** long wait'.
2.  'You will have to f*** wait'.
3.  'F*** you! Can't you wait?'

No. 3 above is of course the most offensive because the offensive word is applied directly to the addressee. No. 2 is less offensive but it is certainly more offensive than No. 1 because the F word qualifies or makes a direct reference to the addressee's action.  No. 1 is least offensive - the F word is merely used as an intensifier and it's not directed at the addressee himself or his action.

But I have observed that in Singapore, people tend to react far more strongly to the F word than anywhere else in the English-speaking world. I once heard an exchange at the supermarket between an old man a younger man who was probably an American tourist. The younger man said, 'It was a f*** accident'.  The old man was livid. He shouted, 'Why must you f**** people up?' There seems to be a universal confusion here between No. 1 and No. 3. I have noticed that the effect is different when the offensive word is an equivalent Chinese or Malay word. The reaction is usually more reasonable, probably because the difference between No. 1 and No. 3 is more easily understood in the listener's own language.

Of course there is no place for anyone in polite society to use the F word and I absolutely deprecate the frequency of its use in recent years but a person's reaction must be reasonable. Shouting and threatening the staff like a maniac which was what the delivery man did in the video must never be tolerated. The bubble tea cafe should protect its staff and I am very disappointed to see that it was very quick to say that it did not call the police, as if it would have been wrong to have called the police.

The second error of the bubble tea cafe is much less important:

We have counselled our staff and he is in deep remorse over his uncouth choice of adjective. 

The F word used by its employee is not an adjective but an adverb. This post is only about adjectives and adverbs and I will ignore other problems in that sentence.

I've been told that I should spice up my blog posts with colourful illustrations.

This is something I took from the internet:

The adverb-adjective confusion is a huge topic in grammar. But what is more annoying is the hypercorrection that leads to comical errors. I have given many examples in this blog including the incredible errors made by our embarrassing Speak Good English Movement, the eternal source of bad grammar.

Here's a simple rhyme which doesn't help much because it's so brief but I thought I should post it just to please my critics who deplore the lack of colourful illustrations in my blog.