Thursday, June 09, 2011

Language matters

I'm gonna be really frank in this post. And when I say frank, I mean, really FRANK, honestly transparently FRANK. Haha cuak lettewwww

Because I've been contemplating on whether to write or not to write on this as it may seem offensive to some. But who cares anyway. Haaa double cuak lettewww

I was looking through my old album and found something I deemed quite amusing. Why? I'll tell you why. Remember when we're a kid and we used to write or text our friends in a language that we thought is really really cool? We? Ok this may not happened to you, but I did this in my teenagehood. haha mcm membuka aib la pulak but it's better than using someone else as an example, right?

Exhibit A
Ok this is fun isn't it? Adding -er to a word that actually ends with an 'a'. Gila= Giler. Omg cool gila kannn. Feels like the coolest person ever when you write like that >.<
Example; Aku punyer kereter ader banyak giler roder. Hahahaha. When I look at what I wrote back then I always think of how ridiculous it sounded. Why? because I'm a Penangite and a Penangite don't speak or write with an -er at the back. Unless you went to boarding school elsewhere in Kajang and you need to converse in a KL accent to fit in. That is allowed. hihi

Exhibit B
'Spesel?' 'Skool?' Whatthefish man, whatthefish. hahaha. And 'mizz u guyz'? Wow that is super cool. My spelling teacher in kindergarten must've been so disappointed. But what to do, you were 14 and all you know is, that kinda language saves time and sounds cool, right?

Exhibit C

Ok no visual images for this but it broke my heart to see English written in a, ermm, how do you put this delicately, ermm, in a slightly broken way. hihi. Over la kan nak heartbroken sebab ni, but seriously. Say you were browsing through facebook statuses and you found this,

" ToDay shOpPing wiTh pRettY fRieNds. We watChiNg moVieS aNd eaTing tHe McD. My fEet veRy huRt becAusE wAlKiNg A LoT."

What harm would it bring to add a simple 'are' or to eliminate certain inappropriate '-ing' and 'the'. Huhu. And you know what makes it look weird too? The asymmetrical use of CaPiTaL letters. It'll be wayyyy better to update statuses in Malay instead, bahasa ibunda that we're all familiar of. Plus, it'll save you the embarassment of silly grammar mistakes and people's annoyance of the big and small alphabets.


Ok I know my English is way below perfect, or way below average, but, at least try to make it sound good, right? An error-free English sentence is just a Google-click away. Go google and even microsoft can help me correct my grammar.

Not trying to belittle those who write that way but just being frank that I don't enjoy reading them. And FYI, I've done all three exhibits and looking back, oh how ridiculous I was back then. haha

2 comments:

Mitch said...

I couldn't agree more on the exhibit C. I think it's not a question of proficiency in the language, but rather, a question of whether you care or not. I used to politely send a personal message to someone to correct their mistake in the Facebook statuses that they've just updated. I could clearly tell that they did't really appreciate it. Even worse, they would feel offended and went all "What are you a grammar police?" However, I should give them credit for having balls you know. I've always wanted to get everything correct that sometimes I spent almost an hour perfecting a Facebook status and ended up not posting anything.
p/s: Just like I took quite some time proofreading this comment so it's not grammatically erroneous. =)

IkaZainol said...

Wow at least you have the guts to tell 'em wrong. Maybe a grammar police should really be around, that'd save us the time wasted reading language used that way, right?LOL.
and thanks for dropping by! :)