Friday, April 23, 2010

Wonderful Singlish or is that just an error?

Apparently the Ministry of Communication wants anyone to report incorrect use of English. It’s brilliant; like the Stasi in post war Germany but with more focus on grammar, everyone is free to inform on everyone else!


At times the use of the English language in print is wonderful, simply magical in its descriptive power. Last week I read in the paper the story of an unfortunate young lady who was the victim of a drugged drink and she woke the morning after to find an older man “outraging her modesty”. “Outraging her modesty”? Where does one conjure up that turn of phrase? It’s glorious in it’s ability to not inform the reader of the facts but to still leave a tone of unpleasantness. Very Singaporean indeed.
However, in the same article is the detail of the man “licking her private parts” and also including the alleged victim’s address. Somewhere along the line the journalist lost their way and flicked from opaque to transparent in the sip of a late-night deadline coffee.


I saw an excellent sign at a taxi rank, see what you think of this one for punctuation. I think it’s alright. ” No Smoking While In Q’ ”How many apostrophes should there be after Q when you refer to the queue?
I’ll see what I can do to get a good collection for you, although I can assure you that this won’t become a crusade for me.
Shovel.

No comments:

Post a Comment