You must be Kidding!

After all the time I have spent alive, I should be used to all sorts of people mangling, dismantling, re-assembling, concatenating, elongating, mis-pronouncing and even inventing elements of the English language.

But sometimes it hits a nerve, just like the dentist whose drill happens to touch a sensitive spot.

The other morning, I happened to tune into 90.5 FM and my ears were tortured by an announcer talking incessantly about 'kids' - in fact, promoting a sponsor on a breakfast programme.

Since when did baby goats eat breakfast cereal? And if I were a child today, I'd be tee'd off if anyone called me a 'kid'. But then maybe not because I might be inured to it.

An influx (some describe it as a tsunami) of foreign workers and talent has made multi-racial Singapore even more cosmopolitan, if that is possible.

Everyone here speaks at least one language badly whether it be English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil or something else.

After returning to our idyllic isle, I was driven to apply for a "PAssion Card" (no, it's not a typo) because every time I went to buy groceries, I was asked if I had a "per mumblejumble card". After every third attempt, because the cashiers thought I must be deaf, they'd tap on a display which spelt out the name.

Obviously "PAssion" is not a word in common speech these days.

It's amazing how fluently people can shout obscenities in several tongues - and be fully understood. And yet we often have trouble communicating with each other in a common language.

Shortly after our new help arrived I thought she was interested in the World Cup because she was talking about "the ref."; only later did I realise that she meant the refrigerator ('fridge to me).

As far as Singaporeans are concerned, the English language (Singapore version) comprises 25 letters of the alphabet. It looks like someone has decided that the "s", like the Singapore flag, is reserved for state occasions - lest it be misused.

New condominiumz are called levelz and loftz, the plural of kid is kidz (Kidz Zone anyone?). Yecch.

Iz it any wonder that kidz today (oopz, I meant children) cannot zpell and are confuzed?

While I was ruminating on this topic and wondering when and how this massacre would stop, it dawned on me that our all seeing, all knowing, all wise government most probably had unleashed their best brains and computing power on this vexing problem.

Being devilish clever, they have made Singapore a safe and comfortable home away from home for the diaspora of the world so that our languages will be refined, purified and corrected.

As I am not qualified to comment on languages such as Mandarin (I have only a smattering of English, Singlish, Cantonese and Malay) I am restricting my opinion to the English language.

I have noticed, reading the local newspapers, the presence and prominence of investors, professionals and workers from the Indian sub-continent.

Indians have not only excelled in math and the sciences, but also in English literature - Arundathi Roy, Kiran Desai, VS Naipaul just to name a few.

Their children excel in schools in America (the reigning spelling bee champion is an Indian teenager*), the U.K. and everywhere else they have settled.

So there you have it, problem solved and I needn't have worried!




*Anamika Veeramani is an Indian-American who won the Spelling Bee 2010 by overwhelming her fellow contestants by correctly spelling the word, ‘Stromuhr’, a word that is not in use by even one percent of the population in their daily usage.
Anamika Veeramani, 14, is from North Royalton-Ohio and she is the third Indian-American to win the Spelling Bee contest.