Yee ‘O Lost Souls

I’ve always known that I am not the studious type. So why bother, right?

Okay, I gave up studying because tomorrow morning’s class is math. So what’s the point? Besides, the test is after that class. Get what I mean?

Today I spent a couple of hours or so at the library. Initially I went there to study math, but since I brought my friend along to help her with her English, I ended up doing editing for her work and teaching her English instead. But it was kinda fun. I felt sorry for her. Before this she couldn’t see why her marks were so low even though she tried her best. Poor girl :|.

Sneaky, sneaky me, I gave some of my writing exercises that I only did halfway. Don’t blame me. They were all too easy, boring and repetitive. And besides, I’m already exempted from the class :P. I probably just went there to sign my attendance and for the pleasure of showing my back to the others as I left the class. Hahaha!

I get excited whenever a task requires writing and sentence structuring. I like the challenge. But when it comes to numbers, I go dumb. The only number I want to know, is how much profit I made. Can’t help it I guess. I’m a linguist, not a mathematician.

Today in writing class was quite interesting. We were discussing ‘Chinese English’. How people who are used to speaking Chinese will write in English is a direct translation of how a certain sentence is spoken in Chinese. But I guess the Chinese language is not the only one to blame. It’s just how Asians in general speak. One friend once told me that. He said in Asian languages, most sentences end with a ‘tail’. That’s where you get all the lah, la, ma, ka, ar, lor, loh and the list goes on…

So when they speak English, you end up with stuff like ‘you watch TV, is it?’, ‘that’s your book is it?’, ‘You are so clever one’, ‘later i go play one’. Geddit? I really hate that ‘is it’ abuse. In fact, I’m annoyed by it. It actually took me a while to differentiate Manglish (Malaysian English) and true English. I mean, I had very little contact with other races in high school and throughout most of my school years. The only real contact with Chinese (other races) I made was during a four nights PBSM camp. I noticed that, although these people speak English, their English was different from mine. The meaning was the same, but it was how they said it.

For example, I say ‘Are you going to dinner?’, they’d say ‘dinner time is it?’ See? ‘is it’ abuse again. But fortunately, I managed to retain my own standard of English. Being in Swinburne helps due to the people I met. I saw how real Americans *coughs* speak and some people I met, although Chinese, speak differently. I was in dilemma too, that time. I didn’t want to sound pompous, so tried at a certain level of immitating this ‘Manglish’. But then I realized I didn’t have to lower myself to their level. Like I said, being around people who’s English is their first language, helps. A lot.

Another reason as to why my English was untarnished by Manglish when I left high school was also because I had little contact with other races. My school was 99% Malay and Malays are generally reluctant to speak English among themselves (I’m only speaking the truth here). I should know, because I practically grew up in that environment. I spoke English candidly with my close friends and it became a habit. So I started speaking English with most people in school. Some people wonder why I could speak English so casually and my friends would reply in Malay or English. I didn’t know it was actually a weird thing to do to speak English to your friends outside an English class. Surprisingly, my close friends thought the same thing. It wasn’t until someone pointed it out to us that we realized.

So anyway, I guess in terms of usage and practicality, more Chinese speak English. But when it comes to using correct terms and style, it’s the Malays (I’m referring to those from my school mostly). But you know, if you want to know if they are using correct terms and style, you must first force them to speak it. Like I said, most Malays are reluctant to speak English. They think it’s snobbish to do so. Now it all leads back to the jobless graduates issue. *sighs*

However, being able to write and pronounce things correctly are still as important.

Now, before you people have me tarred and feathered, I must say that I am not a racist. I’m just stating the truth of my observation. If you want a racist, check out the lamer. Lamers hang out with racists and racists should die. Along with all their loser friends. They are one big happy loser family.

Oh yeah, one might wonder why I kept on picking on this lamer business. It’s normal for one to shred their enemies into tiny bits and stomp on them because it’s the fun thing to do. And human nature dictates that you should not stop doing fun things. I will stop once I get bored.

I are off to bed.

Ta’ra.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 8:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.