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Malaysia apparently has the best English language speakers in Asia, beating out Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China and Kazakhstan - according to a Singapore-based English Language school.

The school, Education First, which released the findings of their English Proficiency Index on their website Wednesday, ranked Malaysia as having the highest level of English proficiency out of 13 countries in Asia.

On the global scale, Malaysia was ranked 11th out of 60 countries, with four of the top five slots going to Scandinavian countries, with Sweden and Norway taking the top two spots and Malaysia outperforming Singapore, Belgium, Germany, Latvia and Switzerland - countries which took the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th spots respectively.

50/50: Confronting the Inevitable by Ryan.Paine (This teen struggled dramatically with the thought of death)

  A Beautiful Mind inspired me to explore the world’s mysteries by Jonesy1106 (“I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible”)

A Goofy Movie taught me how to be a better daughter by jklawls (Parents have their kids’ best interests at heart)

I completely underestimated how much the girls would enjoy playing with shadow puppets. Whenever something so simple makes them so happy, I can’t help but smile!! And this was SUPER simple. Added bonus — the perfect entertainment for whenever a power outage occurs. Our little shadow puppet theater was made from an empty cardboard box with the bottom cut out, and replaced with two sheets of white tissue paper held in place with packaging tape. As for the shadow puppets — you didn’t think I sat there and cut them all out by hand did you?? I am far too lazy for that! Instead, we attached some fairy tale foam stickers to toothpicks with a bit of tape. Of course, just about any kind of foam sticker would work well for this, and they are available in so many different themes: Under The Sea, Dinosaurs, and Fairies to name a few. Very very easy, and the girls LOVED their shadow puppets! They could not wait to put on a show!! A bit of styrofoam (recycled from some left over packaging) inside the box made it easy for them to position their puppets. Dim the lights, turn on a flashlight (my girls adore this Melissa and Doug Mollie Ladybug Kids’ Flashlight), and enjoy the show for hours of creative playtime fun! Have fun!!

A definition tells us what a word means and how it's used in our own time. An etymology tells us where a word came from (often, but not always, from another language) and what it used to mean.

The word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymon, which means "the true sense of a word." But in fact the original meaning of a word is often different from its contemporary definition. The meanings of many words have changed over time, and older senses of a word may grow uncommon or disappear entirely from everyday use. Disaster, for instance, no longer means the "evil influence of a star or planet," just as consider no longer means "to observe the stars."

New words have entered (and continue to enter) the English language in many different ways. Here are some of the most common ways.

generational differences are really cultural differences in societies that undergo rapid change

humor is so dependent on culture, on a shared context, and why jokes that have to be explained are probably not going to be funny.

Culturally and context specific