Completed here yesterday Primary 6 Spelling Competition sponsored by banks and the English language Straits Times . Twelve year olds. The crucial five words that separated sheep from goats, in ascending order to the final elimination:
Unequivocal
Mausoleum
Patois
Espadrille
And the last clincher
that, after almost twelve full months in Asia, in a Chinese city-state that has
no equivalent for the practice, the word that in written form completely
bamboozled this writer:
Gesundheit
Early morning, the heat,
lack of a start-up cafe, the supermarket delivery truck bulldozing sleep before
seven (one could go on...), the word simply would not parse.
How could this be foisted
upon innocent young children, even Chinese schoolkids who had been cramming
since kindergarten ( - not "garden" properly)? (A couple of pages
back from the Spelling Comp. report an article on this "unnecessary"
practice.)
In English
there is of course no equivalent to gesundheit, therefore rendering the
eager-beaver Anglo-lovers here doubly disadvantaged (even those of lawyer
fathers and Chinese Tiger mothers).
Furthermore,
in Chinese culture, refined Chinese culture as it is exhibited in Singapore,
the sneeze itself does not exist. It has been outlawed by polite society.
Here among aspirant middle income
classes the practice is at all costs to stifle and choke the sneeze. A free,
full and unrestrained sneeze has not been heard here in nearly a full
twelvemonth. The twisted contortions that endeavour to nip a sneeze in the bud
here are frightful to behold. And dear lord the looks a chap will receive for
the free-flowing at-liberty AHCHOO!...
The poor down-trodden populace
immediately apologetic even for the severely truncated form. A bus full of
strangers, a cafe setting, the library study areas—in the midst of strangulation
and gasping for breath croaking out the deep regret.
Excuse me!
During a time of dengue fever or flu
epidemic did the English administration here possibly administer the rattan?
One is forced to wonder.
Ge - sund -
heit and lieb to all readers and lovers of words.
One can only imagine the global torture
in the colonies had the Germans won the war! Gotterdamurung in the schoolroom
far from the centre. Acres of minefelds.
NB. And "patois" very briefly. This author is not
prepared to join the sneering chorus arrayed against the populace here for
their altogether interesting, inventive and highly entertaining S'inglish. Ney,
non and nyet most emphatically. Far more deserving of ridicule are those at the
top of the greasy pole here, grandsons and daughters of poor indigent
long-suffering coolie navies, flouncing around the place in their Ox-bridge
corkscrew-up-the-rear-passage Queen's Ascot, Windsor and Balmoral contortions. Now
come now I beg you most kindly.
April 2012, Singapore
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