a malaysian abroad

Did you know I suffer(ed) from mild dyslexia? It’s been a while now, what with all the typing I do as opposed to physically holding a pen and writing, but back in the day I would have a difficult time when writing a “b” or a “d”: I would do the downstroke then draw a blank as to where the little “o” needed to go. No matter how hard I thought about it, I needed to make that extra circle first, and only then would my mind see and recognise the character and tell me if I got it right or not.

Then while talking, I tend(ed) to also transpose syllables, or sometimes vowels, within a word. Not very advisable when in Malay some words have very different meanings when transposed in this manner. I can’t think of what I would transpose, but here are examples of some interesting similar-sounding words: hantu means ghost, but tuhan means god, while kelapa is coconut, but kepala is your noggin! I didn’t go as far as beseeching people to pat my hiccup when I meant for them to pick my hat up, but it is a form of Spoonerism, I believe.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, that other day when I was wandering around Bangsar Village in between “appointments”, I passed a Häagen-Dazs® outlet that had a message addressed to a fellow blogger. How on earth is she supposed to read the message when she is halfway across the world? I thought to myself. There was no one around to question about this gross oversight — the outlet looked strangely dark, closed, deserted — so I decided to do what little I could to pass the message along: I took a picture, and am posting it here:

Engrish message for Costumer?

… of course, on second thought, maybe it’s just another case of poor spelling and/or transposed vowels…! That would explain the dark and deserted place: when an ice cream shop like Häagen-Dazs® has its “electric break down”, there’s no use trying to do business, riiiight?

Seeing this reminded me of another sign I saw a few years ago, that might have indicated that shop was where you would want to go if you needed a “prostitute with marijuana, immediately!”

Do you need a pot ho stat?

I can’t poke *too* much fun at the above, though… I myself suffer from bouts of bad spelling; take Buddhism and Gandhi: I *know* there’s an “h” in there somewhere, but I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around where that “h” goes! As such, I thank spell check every time, otherwise your eyes would bleed at the sight of Mahatma Ghandi and Gautama Bhudda. Nowadays I tend to transpose the letters “s” and “d”, but that’s more sloppy typing than anything else.

I am therefore very thankful for all things typed, and for in-built spell-checkers! Now all I have to deal with is deciding whether to go with US or British spelling. Some days one wins, on other days the other wins. I don’t mind losing the extra “u” in honor/honour, but I think neighbor looks weird, and there are only a few words that look correct when ending in -ize. So my screen is usually littered with red squiggly lines no matter what, LoL!

I’d love to hear about funny signs you have spotted along the way … engrish.com is a good place to go, too.

Cheers,
*lynne*

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