Sunday, February 20, 2011

something to ponder about

Well well well now if it isn't Miss Hanan blogging on her blogspot again... Sorry for being M.I.A. once again and sorry for being sorry that I was M.I.A. countless of times. Alas! I have found the time and effort to post yet another opinion or something that I would love to share with all of my followers. Do read and drop your comments. We can discuss about this issue together! :D



"I went to KLCC just now and while I trying a Nike sport shoe, I saw this guy so cute too in Stadium. OMG blushing and my heart go fast dup dap dup dap. He look like the guy from Taylor Swift music video. I die :)"

Now now, before all of you get excited, I'm not going to talk about the brand Nike nor am I going to talk about Taylor Swift. It was a spur of the moment thing so her name suddenly popped, you know....

In this post here, I'm going to touch on the topic of Broken English. For those who don't know what's the definition of broken english (which I highly doubt), it's a term to describe the grammatically incorrect English of some native-speakers. In other words, it's english but spoken in a manner like the context above.

For people who are really fluent in this particular language, those who converse or write in broken english or simply fail to speak the language correctly are a huge pain in the butt. They find it so hugely irritating that they feel like slapping the other person across the table (of course, the one who's speaking english brokenly) and tell them to go to school again. It is a disgrace for some people of "standard" if one cannot speak the english language correctly. The normal reactions would be;

Exhibit A. Posh lady wearing designer brands.
"It's caviar... Don't you know what that means?" "I'm speaking in english so you best reply in english too!"

Exhibit B. "Cool" school girls.
"You know what, the other day I saw her Facebook status and she said like, 'I wants a boyfriend so that I happy'. HAHAHAHA. Check your english first or else no one wants you! LAME." "Teacher: The cheers girls please stay back after school. Students: Hahaha cheers?? CheerS? And you call yourself a teacher..."

You see, here in Malaysia, being able to speak in english is considered an "honour" or more likely having a certain "status" in the community. The common perception is, if you can't speak, you're a "kampung" (a village folk). My question is, why is the english language so worshiped by us Asians? Sure I get it, in order to be successful and reach beyond our borders, we should know the international language la di da di da...
But why is it a disgrace for a Malay girl who receives Malaysian education to not speak english fluently?
Why are these people who speak broken english shun?
Why?

An individual knows whether he or she is good in being linguistic. Heck, I'm a Malay and I've to admit that my Malay is not strong. But I did not say that I'm brilliant in English either. Dan saya bangga saya pandai berbahas dalam bahasa ibunda saya. What I can say is, instead of telling these types of people to go shove their english somewhere else or just "cakap BM je laaa", we should support them because they are learning. Critic all you want, but all those criticism won't get them anywhere. Correct them if you will and sooner or later maybe they'll be like this;

"I went to KLCC just now and while I was trying a pair of Nike sport shoes, I saw this guy who is so cute and he was in Stadium too. OMG, I was blushing so hard and my heart ran a million miles per hour. He looks like the guy from Taylor Swift's music video. I died and gone to heaven :)"


Be proud of your mother tongue homies! And like the Chinese and the Japs, we too will be just as successful.


Love,
Sam.

1 comments:

k said...

with regards to your quite interesting topic, heres what i think=)
Malaysians speak the English Language for various reasons;(what i mean by this is those who regularly speak this language-as their second language)
1. betterment of life
2. passion
3. boasting
and at times, it's hard to differ which category a person with broken english falls into.-whether they boast, wanna learn or know it's for the greater good.
at initial stage, the language itself was supposedly a tool for communication, where tons of scientific research from other languages are translated into english for the world to also keep up and get updated with the newfound discoveries made by the french, latinos, greek etc which is the main reason why it was introduced in our country and also for us to keep up with the global modernization.
now that we've partially reached our goal, english has more likely become a tool for measuring one's social caste, standard or status. if you can converse well, you intimidate and are one class above. but if you don't you're just...normal. better yet, one class below.
thus we now use it not to keep up with the modernization nor excitedly get our minds fed with latest research but to upgrade ourselves, to reach 'that' so called high standard and basically, to not feel intimidated by someone of the same race who could speak better english than we do. we have strayed from the initial purpose of using/learning english.
and that has somewhat made us judgmental towards each other. with every grammatical error we utter defines our social standard/status and we just can't help ourselves for criticizing them/not being concerned for their terrible english because we ourselves aren't certain of whether they boast, wanna learn or know it's for the greater good.
long-winded i know. but that's what i think=))hope it's acknowledged.