It's your funeral: Mind your language this Chinese New Year or shirt happens

Woe is the Chinese person who doesn’t know Chinese.

Just ask Mr Derek Leung.

The Chinese-Canadian, who was an exchange student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2015, had tried to register for a basic Chinese language course but was rejected.

He recently posted in a Facebook group that the school said he was not eligible “as this student’s race is Chinese”.

Yes, it was because he is Chinese like one-time disgruntled Gojek passenger and alleged kidnap victim Jovina Choi.

Mr Leung’s post went viral enough that it was reported by several websites including AsiaOne last week.



A Chinese person not allowed to study Chinese in Singapore because he’s Chinese? How ironic is that?

I know of at least a few Chinese people who wish they did not have to study Chinese in Singapore but were forced to, namely my two kids, my wife and me.

Unlike us, Mr Leung wanted to learn Chinese because he was not forced to in Canada. I assume that being Canadian, he was just forced to like maple syrup and ice hockey.

NTU’s policy was based on the similarly faulty assumption that all Chinese people know Chinese, but that policy has since been changed.

The school said: “The previous policy aimed to give opportunities to students to learn non-native languages. Since 2016, ethnicity, race or nationality are no longer considered when signing up for language courses.”

You just have to declare that you do not know the language.

I guess I would not qualify. I can’t say I don’t know Chinese, but I can’t say I know it well either.

For instance, department store Robinsons was mocked last week for its Chinese New Year decorations using Chinese phrases that don’t make sense. I couldn’t tell because most Chinese phrases don’t make sense to me anyway.



AsiaOne reported: “The banners read ‘cai bao dao fa’ and ‘huan le dao xiao’, which loosely translate to ‘wealth treasure arrives prosper’ and ‘happiness joy arrives smile’.”

Which sound okay to me, but apparently they are wrong.

Robinsons later said that a character was inadvertently left out of those phrases and the error had since been corrected. Ill have to take Robinsons’ word for it.

Perhaps NTU should conduct a Chinese language course specifically for local retailers because NTUC FairPrice also slipped up with a Chinese character recently.



The supermarket chain withdrew a Chinese New Year T-shirt from its FairPrice Xtra stores after complaints about the shirt’s design with a Chinese character I can’t even read.

AsiaOne explained the problem: “While the Chinese character means longevity, the term ‘shouyi’, loosely translated as ‘longevity clothing’, refers to the clothes used to dress the deceased at funerals.”

I didn’t know all that. I could have unwittingly bought the red $12.90 shirt and worn it to visit my relatives this Saturday, bringing deathly bad luck to everyone.

Oh well, I see those relatives just once a year anyway. So I won’t miss them that much.

I wonder what FairPrice will do with all the unsold clothes.

Maybe it can send them to undertakers to dress the dead.

Or to Canada.

What about people who did buy the shirt? Can they get a refund?

If you have one, I’m willing to take it off your hands. It’s like a collector’s item now.

I’ll save it for Halloween.

- Published in The New Paper, 20 January 2020

As a Chinese who can't speak Chinese, I don't know what's Bayfront in Mandarin either

Three weeks ago, I went to a barbershop and asked for the Kim Jong Un haircut to commemorate the US-North Korea summit in Vietnam as normal people do.

The woman at the reception counter asked: “Who?”

I was shocked that she had never of the man with the most famous haircut in the world – and she worked in a barbershop.

It wasn’t like I was asking her to name her favourite Watain song. I would understand if she had never heard of the Swedish black metal band because their concert here wasn’t cancelled yet.

They weren’t in the news at the time, but Mr Kim was. You know, summit and all that. He’s easily the planet’s most famous Korean not in a K-pop band or a sex scandal.

Watain have a song called Nuclear Alchemy. The Supreme Leader has actual nuclear arms.



But in the eyes of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Watain is probably more dangerous since Mr Kim was welcomed to Singapore last June with open arms – but Watain, not so much.

“Kim Jong Un,” I repeated. “The North Korean leader?”

The woman still didn’t know what I was talking about.

So I took out my iPhone, found a picture of my man online and showed it to her.

She said “Ohhhhh” and something else in Mandarin which I presumed was Mr Kim’s name in Chinese.

I got my haircut.

This is sort of the reverse of what happened to Mr Timothy Bon last week – except I didn't shame the woman for not knowing Mr Kim's name in English.



But as someone who can't speak Mandarin very well myself, I empathise with Mr Bon. Big mood.

The 22-year-old had a rough week.

It all started last Tuesday at Jurong East MRT station when a “China lady” approached Mr Bon and asked him in Mandarin how to go to Bayfront.

Like many Singaporeans, including me, he didn’t know the Chinese names of all the MRT stations by heart.

So Mr Bon, who got a C6 for his O-level Chinese, took out his phone to Google what station the woman was referring to.

Seeing him fumbling with his device and the language, she said in Mandarin: “A Chinese person who doesn’t know how to speak Chinese, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Here he was, trying to help, Mr Bon was taken aback by the sudden scorn. So he pointed her to the train heading towards Tuas Link, which is the opposite direction of Bayfront and civilisation in general.

The woman walked off without saying thanks, according to Mr Bon.

Later that day, he went on Twitter to rant about the incident because “it’s cheaper than therapy”.

Well, his tweets went “Jovina Choi during Chinese New Year” viral and were reported by Mothership, AsiaOne, Lianhe Wanbao and even China and Taiwan media.

It got so cray that on Saturday, Mr Bon went on Instagram TV to “clarify the entire situation” and “milk his 15 minutes of fame dry”.

“Guys,” he said to the camera, “I was just complaining. Stop. It’s not that big of a deal. Stop.”

In the two-part profanity-laced IGTV video, he described how on the day after the tweets, it “started spiralling out of fucking control”.

“I was on Facebook just basically replying to goddamn trolls,” he said.

“I just want to make it clear this was never meant to be an attack on China tourists because I’ve been getting so much hate over this…

“I was rude to her because she was rude to me. Was it petty? Yes. Was it what she deserved? Yes. Is it because she’s from China? No. Okay?

“I guess why Singaporeans think this is an attack on China tourists specifically is because I probably tapped into this repressed rage Singapore has as a collective towards rude China tourists.

“So they just took it and this entire thing morphed into a life of its own and it’s just so fucking messy.”

Mr Bon didn’t expect his tweets to go viral.

He said: “I thought it was going to be like a C-average tweet. I have better tweets out, but nobody fucking gets the humour. Okay, sure.”

But at least one good thing came out of it. He said he “freaked the fuck out” when big-time celebrity Hossan Leong replied to him on Twitter: “YOU ARE MY HERO! Mandarin pfft! F9 for me all the way!”

YOU ARE MY HERO! Mandarin pfft! F9 for me all the way!

— Hossan Leong (@HossanLeong) March 14, 2019

Oh. So we’re now just openly bragging about how low our O-level Chinese grades are, are we? I got B4!

We can start a Chinese Who Can’t Speak Chinese support group, or CWCSC for short.

Mr Bon also has a message for my bread and butter:

“Hi, newspapers. Thanks for using my tweet. I hope you enjoy the engagement you get on your page. I hope you enjoy your increase in readership. Let’s talk about compensation. I would like to see it.”

LMAO! Increase in readership? Compensation? That’s hilarious. Who says no one gets his humour? I get it.

He said his “endgame” was not to defeat Thanos but get a Starbucks sponsorship.



Okay, I can’t give him that, but here are the three causes he wants to plug: “Repeal 377A, fuck Islamophobia and get your damn kids vaccinated.”

You can follow his Twitter @Timothy_Bon.

How’s that for compensation?

If that’s not enough, I may be able to afford to buy him a cup of Starbucks coffee after I withdraw my money from CPF.

I’m feeling generous. How do you say “venti” in Mandarin?

- Published in The New Paper, 18 March 2019

Undistinguished: Why I would refrain from making fun of anyone's English

English is hard.

Sometimes you write “extinguished” when you mean “distinguished”, or “it’s” when you mean “its”.

Or “South Korean leader Kim Jong Un” when you mean “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un”.

Or you imply that the travel photos on your Instagram are taken by you when they’re not.



Even I make mistakes in this column.

Recently, I received an e-mail from a reader regarding an article where I spoofed the letter US President Donald Trump wrote to North (not South) Korean leader Kim Jong Un cancelling the June 12 summit.

Remember that? Those were the days.

In the article, I also described how I almost ordered the summit commemorative coin from the White House Gift Shop website.



The reader wrote:

You mentioned that the cost of the coin was US$19.95 and the shipping charge was US$60.50. You further mentioned that the latter was three times more than the former.

Let’s see if that is correct.

If the shipping charge is one time MORE THAN the cost of the coin, it would be $19.95x2=$39.90.

If it is two times MORE, it would be $19.95x3=$59.85.

If it is three times MORE, it would be $19.95x4=$79.80.

The correct way to state the shipping charge as compared to the cost of the coin is as follows: The shipping charge is slightly more than three times the cost of the coin.

So basically, I put the words “more than” in the wrong place.

Just my luck I have a maths and English geek reading my column.

I wrote back to him: “You’re right, of course. In my defence, I was trying to write like Trump.”

The sad thing is that my column is checked by at least four other people before it goes to print, but bloopers still slip through, of course.

Like I said, English is hard.

So I sympathise with the Chinese food court worker who was berated by a self-proclaimed Singaporean for not being able to speak English in the viral video.

Ironically, the day before I saw the video, I sort of had the opposite problem with a non-Chinese food court worker.

This was in the Tangs Market food court in the basement of Tangs in Orchard Road.



My wife wanted me to order for her fishball noodles with the fat yellow noodle, but I didn’t know what to call the fat yellow noodle in English.

In Mandarin, it’s “shou mian”. In Hokkien, it’s “sek mee”.



The only samples the woman taking my order had in front of her were mee pok and mee kia. So I couldn’t even point.

When I said “fat yellow noodle”, she thought I meant mee pok, which is a flat yellow noodle. One letter makes all the difference.

If the noodles were for me, I would’ve accepted the mee pok, having once made a cameo appearance in Eric Khoo's Mee Pok Man, but I was ordering for somebody else.



Eventually, I spoke to the Chinese cook in Mandarin and he immediately understood what I wanted.

But I felt bad that my English wasn’t good enough to communicate with the non-Chinese food court worker.

And I’m a writer!

Despite not knowing how to use “more than” in a sentence.

Which is why I would refrain from mocking anyone making a mistake like not being able to distinguish “distinguished” from “extinguished”.

Let he who is without grammatical sin and does not live in a linguistic glass house cast the the first stone.

Or something like that.

English is hard.

- Published in The New Paper, 25 June 2018

Spelling-gate: Rendangate, rendanggate or rendang-gate? Gee whiz...

Rendangate.



"Rendanggate"?

""

"RendangGate"?



Or "rendang-gate"?





One G? Two Gs? One lowercase G, one capital G? A hyphen?

Can we make up our minds?

The original "gate":

Syonan Gallery: Naming stuff is hard

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

I once told a taxi driver I wanted to go Marina Square and was driven to Novena Square instead.

I was nonplussed.

“You said Novena Square, right?” he said.

Did I?

That was when I realised how similar “Marina Square” sounds to “Novena Square”.

For a split-second, I half-considered getting out of the taxi and taking the train from Novena station just to avoid the awkwardness.

I felt foolish. And I was about to make the cabbie feel foolish too.

“No, Marina Square,” I said.

The driver was not having a good day.

“Aiyah, next time can say properly or not?”

So the cabbie very resentfully drove me to Marina Square while I sat in mortified silence.

Yah, I definitely should've taken the MRT instead.

You know who I blame for this? Whoever decided there would be a place in Singapore called Novena Square when there's already a place called Marina Square.

Why are we so bad at naming stuff?

Yes, that taxi anecdote was just my roundabout way (literally) to get to the topic of Syonan Gallery.



The name of the permanent World War II exhibition at the Former Ford Factory museum was criticised, you know, because Japanese Occupation.

It is roughly the same reason my father refused to buy a Japanese car. We had a Volkswagen and then a Ford. I doubt he had ever eaten sushi. He’s dead now. I’m not sure how he would feel about Pokemon Go or Syonan Gallery.

On Wednesday at the exhibition’s opening, Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim defended Syonan Gallery, saying the naming did not express approval of the Japanese Occupation.

He said:

“Some among older Singaporeans who lived through that dark period feel that the name legitimises the Occupation. Others among them say that Syonan was a painful fact of history, and we should call it what it was.”

But two days later, the name was gone.

Dr Yaacob said:

“I have reflected deeply on what I heard. We must honour and respect the feelings of those who suffered terribly and lost family members during the Japanese Occupation.

“I have therefore decided to remove the words ‘Syonan Gallery’ from the name of the exhibition, and name it Surviving The Japanese Occupation: War And Its Legacies.”

He also apologised “for the pain the name has caused”.

So sayonara, Syonan Gallery, we hardly knew ya.



Also this month, it was reported that Changi Naval Base will be renamed “RSS Singapura — Changi Naval Base” to help commemorate the Republic of Singapore Navy’s 50th birthday this year.

Apparently, our navy is going through some sort of mid-life crisis.

Can't it just buy a sports car and have an affair like everyone else?

The backstory is that RSS Singapura is the name of one of our navy’s first ships half a century ago.

At least one person has written to The Straits Times to complain about the naval base’s waterlogged new name.

Dr Sunny Goh wrote:

“Most people — visitors and taxi drivers included — will pick either RSS Singapura or Changi Naval Base. No one is going to blurt out the entire mouthful in everyday situations.”

Yah, Singaporeans already have enough trouble deciding whether to say Espla-naid or Espla-nard.

Dr Goh also pointed out that the abbreviation of the new name, RSSSCNB, is “unwieldy”.

I would add that at first glance, it appears vaguely vulgar too.

(KNNBCCB, anyone?)



Remember the uproar over Eunoia Junior College?

It may annoy ya to know that’s it’s still Eunoia JC.



Remember the outrage over 1 Sengkang Mall?

The name has since been dropped despite it having nothing to do with the Japanese Occupation and the mall is now Compass One.



And yet people are okay with Tampines, the spelling of which is so close to tampons but it’s pronounced Tam-penis.

That’s wrong on so many levels.

Is the problem the names or is it sometimes our overreaction to the names?

Whatever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never cause me to go on a social media rant?

Just remember, the next time you tell the taxi driver you want to go to Marina Square, enunciate.

- Published in The New Paper, 20 February 2017

Dear Sir,

I read your article with interest as you can imagine, how confusing it can be to direct taxi operators (when I visit Singapore) to the Singapore Institute of Management, which did not work. I then went through a few permutations of "SIM" or S-I-M and in some instances, giving the actual address.

Now, I found that with the more experienced (not older) drivers, telling them about "chee-pow-kai" or the Union Farm Chicken Eating House also works in getting me to SIM.

I can identify with Dr. Sunny Goh's comments which were refuted by accusations that Dr. Goh was "ignorant" of Singapore Navy history. To be honest, visitors wouldn't care. Nonetheless, I suppose in terms of international visitors, only locals would call upon RSS Singapura Changi Naval Base.

Dr. Sunny Goh's comments were pragmatic, and should not be taken as being disrespectful nor ignorant or history.

Singaporeans seem to have a fun, perhaps cynical streak, and it is bemusing to see that taxi drivers now accept the "Durian" as accurate instructions for the Esplanade.

To the chagrin of the naval traditionalists, perhaps one day taxi drivers will be confused over the old "Rasa Singapura" food centre which will be a manifestation of a Singaporean style tension between food history and naval tradition.

Best wishes,
Keith

No, MRT lines did not 'show best performance in 29-year history'

Last week, Oxford Dictionaries named its Word of the Year 2016 and it’s “Chinese helicopter”.

No, that’s a lie because “Chinese helicopter” is two words.

Actually, it’s not a lie. It’s “post-truth”.

And “post-truth” is Oxford’s true Word of the Year.



But isn’t “post-truth” also two words?

No, the hyphen joins the two words to make it a compound word, which is counted as one word.

But ironically, in a post-truth world which we live in now, “post-truth” feels like two words.

What does it mean anyway?

You want the meaning of “post-truth”? You can’t handle the meaning of “post-truth”!

Oxford defines it as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.

I told you that you couldn’t handle it.

To cut all that verbiage, Oxford could’ve just used a picture of US President-elect Donald Trump.

“Post-truth” was chosen because “Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU (European Union) referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.



But can “post-truth” apply to Singapore too?

Take, for example, this online Straits Times headline that appeared on Friday: “North-South, East-West MRT lines show best performance in 29-year history.”



I don’t know about you, but I take everything I read from The Straits Times as an objective fact.

However, in a post-truth world, this online headline went against my personal belief.

It’s right up there with other dubious public transport-related headlines like “Bus fares will be affordable if raised” and “Rise in major breakdowns but MRT gets more reliable”.

And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, judging by the reactions on social media like “You’re kidding??!!!” and “Hahahahaahaa”.

On The Straits Times’ own Facebook page, the report was greeted with some incredulity. One person commented: “Joke of the day. I laughed till I almost hit the car in front!”

Another: “I smell breakdowns coming... they always have a way to jinx the MRT.”

The latter comment was rather prescient as later that day, SMRT tweeted:

[EWL]: Due to a track fault, pls add 10 mins travel time from #Tanah Merah to #Bugis towards #Joo Koon. Train service is still available.

— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) November 18, 2016

Then 14 minutes later:

[EWL]UPDATE:Pls add 5 mins travel time from #TanahMerah towards #JooKoon,due to a track fault at #Lavender. Train svc is still available

— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) November 18, 2016

Yes, it seems that every time SMRT blows its own horn, the MRT just blows.

In February last year, SMRT patted itself on the back for receiving the award for Delivering Value Through Risk Management in London.

Almost immediately after that, the train delays started with four incidents over five days, including a fire that shut down the entire Bukit Panjang LRT system.

Five months later at the SMRT annual general meeting, CEO Desmond Kuek bragged about winning that risk management award and another one for Best Public Sector Campaign given by the Singapore Institute of Public Relations.

Hours later, both the North-South Line and East-West Line were shut down during evening rush hour. The breakdown was so epic, songs were written about it.





A month later, Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew quit.

So was SMRT tempting fate again last week? Is history repeating itself like another NKF CEO scandal?

As it turned out, the online Straits Times headline was wrong.

What the online report actually said was:

“The North-South and East-West MRT lines achieved 144,000 train-km before breakdown in the first 10 months of this year, the best recorded performance for the two lines in recent years.”

And:

“The North-South and East-West lines started operating 29 years ago.”

Somehow, the headline writer conflated the facts and the result was “North-South, East-West MRT lines show best performance in 29-year history”.

The headline on The Straits Times website has since been corrected to read: “North-South, East-West MRT lines show best performance for first 10 months of 2016.”



Unfortunately, the error is preserved in the web page’s URL itself: www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/north-south-east-west-mrt-lines-show-best-performance-in-29-year-history.

And I have the screengrab.

As they say, the Internet is forever. Unlike today’s newspaper, which will be tomorrow's recyclable.

Speaking of which, in yesterday’s print edition of The Straits Times, the headline for the same report went a totally different route: “Rail reliability target ambitious, says SMRT chief.”



This illustrates how the projection of a report can change drastically from online to print. The online version is pretty much just the rough draft.

But erroneous online headline aside, SMRT should just stop trying to shape public opinion with stats about improved performance because no one is buying it.

And that’s the post-truth and nothing but the post-truth.

Meanwhile, to avoid getting stuck in a train breakdown in the near future, I recommend you take a Chinese helicopter instead.

But remember to add a hyphen.

As Spandau Ballet sang, I know this much is post-true.

- Published in The New Paper, 20 November 2016

So atas: Ah Beng boards Chinese helicopter to Oxford without Ah Lian

I have bad news for Madam Goh Beng Choo.

She’s the 64-year-old lady who started an online petition to have the derogatory term “Chinese helicopter” removed from Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in May.

The term is still flying high in the OED. The online version, at least.



I can sympathise.

I, too, started a petition to have the derogatory term “sotong” removed because it is highly disrespectful to tentacled marine life and insensitive to blur Singaporeans of all ages.

The term is still swimming there in the OED. The online version, at least.

In three months, my petition has garnered a total of one signature — mine.

Well, it’s still as effective as Madam Goh’s petition, which had 498 supporters as of yesterday. That is, not effective at all.

To recap, her petition said:

“The term ‘Chinese helicopter’ uses punning to tease Chinese-educated people in Singapore.

“It is highly disrespectful and if it stays in the dictionary, it will give the impression that it is an acceptable term.

“It is actually insensitive and highly derogatory and will hurt millions of elderly Chinese-educated citizens.

"It will pollute the language learning of young generations of Singaporeans.”

Actually, I first heard of the term in the army.

So if Madam Goh really wants to protect the language learning of young generations of Singapore from being polluted, she should petition to have national service abolished.

I’m sure she would get more than 498 supporters for that petition.

The irony is that because of Madam Goh’s petition and the subsequent publicity, even more people learnt about “Chinese helicopter”, thus polluting the language learning of young generations of Singaporeans even further.

And now, as if to add insult to derogation, in this month’s update, OED has included “Ah Beng” — a derogatory term used to describe people whom the derogatory term “Chinese helicopter” is usually targeted at.



“Ah Beng” is defined by OED as “a young man of a type characterised by the wearing of fashionable or designer clothing and by behaviour considered brash and loutish”.

Will Madam Goh start another petition asking for “Ah Beng” to be removed from OED too?

Judging by how successful her “Chinese helicopter” petition has been, I guess not.



By the way, was I the only one to find it odd that “Chinese helicopter” got into OED in March and not “Ah Beng”?

That was like having the Paralympics without the Olympics.

I’m glad that OED has finally remedied that oversight — but now I find it odd that “Ah Beng” got in and not “Ah Lian”.

It’s like having Kong Hee without Sun Ho.

I know some people find China Wine even more offensive than “Chinese helicopter”.



Partly because of the “Chinese helicopter” controversy — first with many Singaporeans not having heard of the term before, then the petition — the addition of new Singapore English words in OED in March was much talked about.

That has not been the case with the latest OED update despite the “Ah Beng” thing.

Other new additions include “aiyah”, “aiyoh” and “atas”, which is defined as an adjective.

I hope this proves once and for all that the tagline for McDonald’s Signature Collection of premium burgers — “Now everyone can atas” — is grammatically wrong.



“Atas” is not a verb, McDonald’s. Oxford says so.

I shall start a petition demanding that McDonald’s correct its tagline after I finish my Burger King Teriyaking beef burger.

Wait, is “Teriyaking” a word?

I can’t find it in Oxford.

Maybe it’s Japanese.



One reason that OED’s latest Singapore English additions aren’t discussed as much could be that, unlike in March, OED didn’t present its new Singapore English words on a convenient list of just new Singapore English words.

This time, they are presented alphabetically on a list mixed together with other new words, like “moobs”, “uh-oh” and “YOLO”.



So you have to sieve through hundreds of words to pick out the Singapore English ones from the others, which is not as straightforward as it may seem.

Sure, “ang pow”, “char kway teow” and “kopitiam” are obviously of Singaporean origin, but what about “cheeba”?

It sounds suspiciously like another word I used to hear very often in the army.

Typically from an Ah Beng.

As it turns out, OED says “cheeba” is actually “a potent variety of Colombian marijuana” or just “marijuana of any kind”.



What a relief.

And I don’t mean from the marijuana.

Or do I?

If “cheeba” had turned out to be the Singapore English word I thought it was, Madam Goh would have cause to start another petition.

Hey, Oxford, “Chinese helicopter” is one thing, but you don’t “cheeba”, okay?

- Published in The New Paper, 18 September 2016

Is Singlish having a moment (again)?

I guess it's a National Day thing.

First, we have Hossan Leong in Today:





Then we have this Time magazine article:



The Today article references Dr Gwee Li Sui as expected. I predicted in May that "any discussion about the Government’s policy on Singlish will henceforth have to namecheck Dr Gwee Li Sui". The Time article doesn't mention Dr Gwee by name - but dredges up Phua Chu Kang.

On top of all that, there's also this Jetstar thing.



Power sia!


EARLIER: Singlish debate redux: Dr Gwee Li Sui is the new Phua Chu Kang

Petition to remove derogatory Singlish term 'sotong' from Oxford dictionary

Hi, will you sign my petition?

I am writing one to have a derogatory term removed from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The term “sotong” uses seafood to tease blur people in Singapore.



It is highly disrespectful to tentacled marine life and if it stays in the dictionary, it will give the impression that it is an acceptable term.

It is actually insensitive and will hurt millions of blur citizens of all ages.

It will pollute the language learning of young generations of Singaporeans and turn them into sotong.

Oh, what hath OED wrought?

Who could've guessed that when a bunch of new Singapore English terms were added to OED in March, we would still be talking about it three months later?



And I’m not the only one petitioning for a derogatory Singapore English term to be removed from OED.

Two weeks ago, someone started an online petition to shoot down “Chinese helicopter”, defined as “a Singaporean whose schooling was conducted in Mandarin Chinese and who has limited knowledge of English”.

The petition has over 450 supporters.

Yes, “Chinese helicopter” was the controversial term I wrote about in this column last month when it was reported that many Singaporeans had never heard of it.

Now the issue is that some Singaporeans — at least 450 of them — don’t want to hear the term any more.



Supporters of the anti-”Chinese helicopter” petition describe the term as “discriminatory”, “humiliating” and “does not sound nice”.

One commented:

“Chinese-educated people are better than English-educated ones because their lessons incorporate moral values and principles, as well as their culture and history. I would think that Chinese who can only speak English should be shamefully called ‘bananas’.”

So one derogatory term is not okay, but another one is?

Maybe this commenter should start a petition to include this definition of Amos Yee’s favourite fruit in OED.

To quote Gwen Stefani, that’s “B, A, N, A, N, A, S.”



Speaking of Stefani, who is ang moh, I’m surprised there isn’t a petition to remove another Singapore English term that some also consider derogatory — “ang moh”.

Wikipedia straight up describes it as a racial epithet.

So shouldn’t there be a petition to change “Ang Mo Kio” to “Caucasian Kio”?

Even Urban Dictionary says “ang moh” is racist.

But then Urban Dictionary also defines “Chinese helicopter” as “When a woman pulls a bloody tampon out and whips it around above her head, spewing red blood all over the walls in a circular fashion.”

Now why hasn’t anyone petitioned to remove that from Urban Dictionary?

At least in the OED, “Chinese helicopter” is flagged as derogatory.

But “ang moh”, defined as “a light-skinned person, especially of Western origin or descent”, isn’t.

Neither is “sotong”, when “used to denote a stereotypically stupid, clumsy, or ignorant person”.

But “sotong” is clearly a derogatory term.

And I know at least one person who would agree with me and I don't mean SpongeBob SquarePants’ neigbour, Squidward Tentacles.

I’m talking about none other than the Prime Minister’s wife, Ms Ho Ching — although sadly for me, it’s “Chinese helicopter” she feels should be removed from OED.

But not because it’s derogatory.

She wrote on Facebook last week:

“I was so surprised to read that the OED had just included the term ‘Chinese helicopter’ as part of their new Singlish entries.

“I had only heard this being used in my late teens in the early 1970s, listening in on the chatter of NS boys from English-stream schools explaining this term they had learnt during their BMT about their NS mates from Chinese-stream schools.

“They had also told stories about being scolded by their sergeants for being ‘blur like sotong’ too...

“Most if not all of the younger generation of Singaporeans would not have heard of ‘Chinese helicopters’, while ‘blur sotongs’ remain alive and current in their vocabulary (even though we now know better that sotongs are actually quite smart and not at all blur)...

“Unlike blur sotongs, the Chinese helicopter has obviously fallen into disuse for decades...

“Given its lack of currency in the Singlish lexicon today, I would support the petition to remove this term from the OED entry.”

So it seems unlikely Ms Ho will sign my petition to remove “sotong” from OED.

Not that I think it will do any good if she does.

The Oxford Dictionaries website says that its policy is “to include informal, slang, or offensive words on the basis of their currency of use”.

Meaning it doesn’t matter if you’re offended by a word — it’s still in.

The OED website also says that as a “historical dictionary”, it is a “guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words — past and present”.

Meaning it doesn’t matter if a word has “fallen into disuse for decades” — it’s still in.

So why are we bothering with all these petitions?

Because we’re blur like sotong.

No offence to the squid or cuttlefish.

- Published in The New Paper, 5 June 2016

EARLIER: New Singapore words in Oxford English Dictionary: Get to the (Chinese) chopper!

Singlish debate redux: Dr Gwee Li Sui is the new Phua Chu Kang sia

Dear Dr Gwee Li Sui,

Congratulations on your article about Singlish in The New York Times on May 13.

Congratulations, too, on the Prime Minister’s press secretary, Ms Chang Li Lin, responding to your article on Monday.

In her letter to the editor, she said you were making “light of the Government’s efforts to promote the mastery of standard English by Singaporeans”.

Wow, a letter from the PM’s press secretary. I’m jealous. For my column, all I get is hate mail from Adam Lambert fans.

As one of my editors used to say: “I don’t care if people hate you as long as they read you.”

Sure, but I bet he has never been called an “ignorant asshat” by an angry reader.

At least you, Dr Gwee, are being read by a higher class of people — not that Glamberts aren’t high-class people. (I’m terrified of them.)

The last time a Singaporean made such an impact at The New York Times was in 2014, when cartoonist Heng Kim Song was accused of being racist for depicting the country of India as a turbaned mustachioed man with a cow.



Way to keep the Singapore flag flying high at the Old Grey Lady!

But the reason I’m writing to you is that I am worried about you, doc.

Reacting to Ms Chang’s letter, you wrote at various times on Facebook:

• “Alamak.”
• “Kena marked liao lor.”
• “Uncle kena buak gooyoo :(”
• “Sigh. Why must so mee siam mai hum?”
  

I don’t know exactly what you meant by these comments since I’m no Singlish expert like you are, but these posts, especially the sad face emoticon plus an illustration of a man being flagellated, suggest that you may be feeling a little distressed.



I’m here to reassure you that everything will be okay.

You see, I’ve been there. I’m a survivor of the Great Singlish War of 1999.

As you wrote in your NYT article, that was the year “the country’s late great statesman Lee Kuan Yew declared Singlish ‘a handicap we must not wish on Singaporeans.’”

Back then, I was the executive producer (and a scriptwriter) of Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd.



The popularity of the Singlish-infused sitcom 17 years ago engendered a debate over language much like the one that’s raging today but even more intense.

And we didn’t even have the Oxford English Dick to back us up then.

Be thankful that all you got (so far) was a letter to the editor from the PM’s press secretary.

What we got was an epic lecture from then PM Goh Chok Tong during his National Day Rally speech about how PCK was leading the youth of Singapore astray.



He said:

“One of the problems MOE (Ministry of Education) has getting students to speak standard English is that the students often hear Singlish being spoken around them, including on TV.

“So they learn wrong ways of speaking.

“Teachers complain that their students are picking up catchphrases like ‘Don’t pray, pray’ and using them even in the classroom.

“The students may think that it is acceptable and even fashionable to speak like Phua Chu Kang...

“So in trying to imitate life, Phua Chu Kang has made the teaching of proper English more difficult.”

And that’s just an excerpt.

I thought the show would be cancelled and banned by the Government.

Worse still, someone warned me that there could be a knock on my door late one night and I would never be heard from again.

Paranoid much?

As Gurmit Singh, who played Phua Chu Kang (and still does for hire), recently recalled:

“PCK was brilliant and won all sorts of awards…

“Then one parent wrote, saying something like ‘I don’t appreciate this, my child is talking like PCK, something has to be done.’

“Boom, that was it. I thought I had to pack my bags and migrate.”

But the TV series lasted another eight years by sending PCK for English lessons, making it Singapore’s longest running sitcom. And Gurmit didn’t have to flee the country.



Looking back, I realise Mr Goh’s speech was, in a way, a blessing in disguise.

For years after that, any discussion about the Government’s policy on Singlish had to namecheck Phua Chu Kang.

This helped PCK transcend from being a mere sitcom character to a national icon — which in turn helped Gurmit pay for a Lamborghini.

You don’t see Tan Ah Teck from Under One Roof in Madame Tussauds, do you?

Phua Chu Kang and his yellow boots probably wouldn’t be in the wax museum if not for the Singlish controversy.



And now it’s your turn.

Because of Ms Chang’s letter, any discussion about the Government’s policy on Singlish will henceforth have to namecheck Dr Gwee Li Sui.

You have essentially become the new Phua Chu Kang, thanks to the Great Singlish Skirmish of 2016.

And you don’t even need a wig or a fake mole.



I can’t guarantee you’ll get into Madame Tussauds, though.

Well, at least not without buying a ticket.

And if you get extremely lucky with your Toto QuickPick buy, you could have a Lambo too.

Do pray, pray.

Regards,
SM Ong

- Published in The New Paper, 29 May 2016

A photo posted by Gurmit (@gurmitgurmit) on Feb 2, 2013 at 6:09pm PST

New Singapore words in Oxford English Dictionary: Get to the (Chinese) chopper!

Look! Up in the sky. It’s a bird! It’s a Chinese helicopter!

It’s 19 super new Singapore English words in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Shiok!

Actually, it’s only 17 words because “lepak” and “sabo” were each counted twice as a verb and a noun.

Wait. “Sabo” can be used as a noun? Really? I think Oxford kena sabo.



Also, the inclusion of “lepaking” and “sabo king” seems rather random as “blur” is also added but not “blur king”. Why so sotong?

By the way, “sotong” is another new entry but is counted only as a noun. Shouldn’t it be counted as an adjective as well? Don’t be such a sotong king, Oxford.

And how is “HDB” a word? It’s just an abbreviation for Housing and Development Board.

Might as well include MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), CPF (Central Provident Fund) and CMI (cannot make it).

And if names of local food and beverage like “char siu”, “chilli crab” and “teh tarik” can qualify to be in the dictionary, where does it end?

Is it only a matter of time before “bo bo cha cha”, “McDonald’s curry sauce” and Workers’ Party chairman Sylvia Lim’s favourite, “orh luak”, all become Oxford-approved words?

A photo posted by Sylvia Lim (@sylvialim65) on Aug 12, 2015 at 4:12am PDT

By the way, remember how a few years ago, the Malaysian tourism minister claimed that chilli crab is a Malaysian dish, sparking a debate over its true origin?

In one fell swoop, Oxford pretty much settles it by defining “chilli crab” as “a dish originating in Singapore but also popular in Malaysia”.

Ha! Take that, Malaysia.

Unfortunately, there’s no word yet from Oxford on the origin of Hainanese chicken rice, which the Malaysian minister also claimed to be Malaysian, so that’s still up in the air.

As a Hainanese man, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the origin of Hainanese chicken rice is… Hainanese?



Food origins aside, probably the most controversial addition to the dictionary is “Chinese helicopter”, which has nothing to do with China or aviation.

Oxford defines it as “a Singaporean whose schooling was conducted in Mandarin Chinese and who has limited knowledge of English”.

According to the 1985 book, Army Daze, by Michael Chiang: “The story goes that a Chinese-educated recruit, when asked what school he came from, answered ‘Chinese helucated’, which went down in the army annals as Chinese helicopter.”



Yet it seems that many Singaporeans have never heard of the term. One person in an online forum accused Oxford of making it up: “Oxford invent new Singlish slang for us?”

A headline on the AsiaOne website asks: “What’s a ‘Chinese helicopter’? Latest Singlish entry in Oxford Dictionary has us scratching our heads.”

A BBC headline says: “‘Chinese helicopter’: Singlish OED entry baffles Singaporeans.”

I am baffled that Singaporeans are baffled by “Chinese helicopter”.

Have never heard of "Chinese helicopter" before! https://t.co/TJCjjMghWB

— Sui-Lee Wee 黄瑞黎 (@suilee) May 13, 2016

Maybe they didn’t do national service.

Even Chinese helicopters know what “Chinese helicopter” means.

In 2005, film-maker and performer Jack Neo starred in a one-man stage show called The Last Chinese Helicopter.

He said at the time: “I look at things from the perspective of a Chinese helicopter. But some things are always the same, no matter how you look at it. If you get a traffic summons, it’s still the same experience, no matter what you’re educated in.”

In a 2004 interview with The Straits Times, Neo’s frequent collaborator, Mark Lee, was asked: “Are you really a Chinese helicopter? You were a student at Jurong Secondary School which is an English-medium school, no? So how come your English is so like that?”

Lee replied: “My first language is Hokkien and I was the last batch of Chinese-educated students in the school. So really, I am really Chinese helicopter.”



Wait, does this mean that Lee, 47, is among the last generation of Singaporeans to be schooled in the Chinese medium?

So no new Chinese helicopters have been produced since then?

No wonder many (younger?) Singaporeans have never heard the term.

Chinese helicopters are a dying breed, soon to go the way of the dodo and libidinous ex-MP David Ong’s political career.

So it’s timely that the “Chinese helicopter” has now been memorialised in the Oxford English Dictionary.

At least we’ll still have Ah Bengs. They will never die out.



I can’t wait for “Ah Beng” to get into Oxford.

And maybe “Ah Lian” too.

Then we can all say in unison another new word in the dictionary: “Wah.”

- Published in The New Paper, 15 May 2016

UPDATE: Petition to remove derogatory Singlish term from OED

UPDATE UPDATE: 'Ah Beng' was added to OED in September 2016

#Cheebyelection over: Can don't 'Chee, bye' & stop abusing his name or not?

Hahaha , ok , its a #CheeByElection or Erection .. https://t.co/1MX7inVAeF

— alibaba (@toukou) March 20, 2016

PAP candidate can be Lau, phua or chow. For the #Cheebyelection

— yokey (@yokey017) March 21, 2016

Which is more kinky.. #cheebyelection #drcheebyelection or #byerection

— Taz (@levraitaz) April 20, 2016

Who’s your (founding) daddy? Raffles Versus LKY: Dawn Of Semantics

Somewhere out there, Sir Stamford Raffles must be feeling kind of miffed.

That is, if he is capable of feeling anything since, you know, he’s been dead for almost two centuries.

A year ago today, if someone were to ask me to who the founder of Singapore is, I would say the guy whom Raffles Place MRT station is named after.

A year ago today was March 20, 2015.

Three days later, Mr Lee Kuan Yew died.

In a message to Singaporeans, President Tony Tan Keng Yam said: “Yesterday, we lost the founding father of Singapore.”

And the President wasn’t referring to Raffles.

After that, it became almost de rigeur to call Mr Lee “the founding father of Singapore”.



And I would have to take a second to stop and swap out the image of a rather dandy-looking British gentleman in my brain for that of an older Chinese gentleman.

Yes, there is a distinction between “founder” and “founding father”, and no one has ever called Mr Lee the “founder” of Singapore.

Unfortunately, people have called Raffles the “founding father” of Singapore.



Hence, my slight confusion.

For many of us, ahem, more mature Singaporeans, we knew Mr Lee best as Prime Minister (or PM), which he was from 1959 to 1990.

Then he was Senior Minister (SM) for 14 years and Minister Mentor (MM) for seven.

After Mr Lee retired in 2011, we ran out of abbreviations to call him. We didn’t call him “former Minister Mentor” or “Emeritus Senior Minister”. (Hello, ESM Goh Chok Tong!)

While we did call Mr Lee “Singapore’s founding father” before he died, it was only after his death that it practically became his default title.

Before I go on, I want to emphasise that I’m not in any way questioning the contributions of Mr Lee to the founding of Singapore as a nation. So don’t come after me, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.

I just want to explore - with respect and dignity - other perhaps more accurate descriptions of Mr Lee that won’t make me do a double-take.

This is where I’m going to get a little nitpicky with words.

Okay, if Raffles was the founder of Singapore, to avoid confusion, could Mr Lee be the founding father of “modern” Singapore then?

That depends on your definition of “modern”.

Because according to Singapore Tourism Board website YourSingapore.com:

“Modern Singapore was founded in the 19th century, thanks to politics, trade and a man known as Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.”

Yes, despite having lived and died before the invention of Instagram, Raffles was considered the founder of “modern” Singapore.

What’s left for Mr Lee? How about “the founding father of independent Singapore”?

Sure, if you don’t mind adding four more syllables to an already mouthful of words.

At this point, you may ask: “Why can’t there be more than one founding father of Singapore? You know what they say, success has many fathers.”

Sure, except that President Tan said “we lost the founding father of Singapore”, not “we lost a founding father of Singapore”.

However...

When Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressed the nation on the passing of his dad last year, he said: “The first of our founding fathers is no more.”



The poignancy of the double meaning of the word “father” aside, PM Lee acknowledged we had multiple founding fathers.

(I’m not sure about his use of the word “first”, though. Did he mean chronologically? Then what about Raffles, again?)

A month later in Parliament, PM Lee further advocated that we should “remember our founders, not just Mr Lee, but the core founding fathers of the country”.

The problem is no one is going to call Mr Lee “a” founding father of Singapore. Everyone uses “the”.

It also doesn’t help that for brevity’s sake, he is often described as “Singapore’s founding father”, not “one of Singapore’s founding fathers”.

What to do?

The apparent solution lies in a written statement from the Prime Minister’s Office a year ago. It said:

“The Prime Minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore.”

Before that statement, I had never heard of the term “founding Prime Minister”. Have you?

It seemed to have been manufactured for the occasion.

Why can’t we just say “first Prime Minister”? Why must we force the word “founding” into everything?

Should we start calling Mr Yusof Ishak Singapore’s “founding President” as well?

Has any other leader in world been called “founding Prime Minister”?

Actually, yes - David Ben-Gurion, who led the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

But despite my misgivings, “founding Prime Minister” appears to be slowly overtaking “founding father” as the go-to term to describe Mr Lee as we approach the first anniversary of his death this week.

At least Raffles should be relieved, wherever he is.

- Unpublished