The One That Got Away

An article to the Forum that never went into print. Here's what they did'nt want you to see...


WRITING RITE

Oops… did the title trigger the ire of some readers here? Isn’t the title of this article supposed to read “Writing right”? Well, as the grammatical counterpart of the now famous line, “Eats Shoots and Leaves”, I would like to highlight the importance of, well, writing right. Gone are the days where students adopt a certain procedure when writing. Introduction, Body and Conclusion have all been jumbled into a singular orgy of body text. “I” before “E”, except after “C”? Huh, what’s that?? Who cares, as long as you get the message across?

In recent times, proliferated by the popularity of communicating through SMS on the mobile phone, we have seen many reports on the general decline of the written English. Abbreviations of certain English words are widely used (or abused) in mobile text messages. Sadly, improper abbreviations have also appeared and masqueraded themselves as cool! Sadder to say, such new breed of words are increasingly being imported to schoolwork produced by our young students.

I cringe every time I see “Simon Rox!” or “Paula wuz so babeliciouz” or “Jane lurve Tarzan” text messages on the American Idol program. To all you Dudes and Dudettes out there, it is not cool to write like this! Our seemingly lost youth, in a bid to be different from one another, have misinterpreted the definition of cool. As oxy-moronic as it may sound, there are certain boundaries in trying to be different. Wanna be different? Try this. A says (not “sez”), “arse”, You say, “derriere”; A says “he rox!”, You say, “he’s so singularly/atypically cool!”; A says, “I dun like him staring at me”, You say, “I’m appalled by his blatantly salacious gaze fixated on my nubile torso”. Well, not the best of examples, but you get the picture rite…uh I mean, right? In short, it is cool to be unique and stand out from the rest, but please, do it the right way.

While I do not disagree fervently with the use of Singlish on a daily basis, we should never fully adopt Singlish without maintaining proper English as the basis of the language. In fact, it takes a strong foundation of the English language to understand Singlish, really. In the earlier seasons of local hit comedy, “Phua Chu Kang”, I remember Tan Kheng Hua’s character, Margaret, teaching (more like attempting to teach) Gurmit Singh’s Phua Chu Kang to speak proper English. I broke out in stitches when PCK pronounced façade as “fa-ca-dee” and parquet as “par-kwet”. While it may seem embarrassing to feature a Singaporean character speaking perfect Singlish (read: poor English) on national TV for the world to see, PCK was not entirely erroneous in reading the words the way he did. Well, at least he was not phonetically wrong.

My question is, “how many people not in the building construction industry ever came across the terms “façade” and “parquet” before PCK mouthed them off in typical Singlish fashion?”. In a knowledge-based economy, doesn’t the onus rest on us to find out what we do not know or understand? Simply put, the PCK show is an introduction of our common grammatical errors, a humourous dig at our own silly mistakes, but the rest is really up to us. The PCK show is not an English educational program. In any case, to the naysayer who insists PCK being a negative influence on us, we are in bigger trouble if a weekly half hour show could negate all the many hours of effort put in during school.

While there are basic rules to learning the English language, there are many exceptions that tend to confuse. It is really up to the individual to want to master the language. This may sound clichéd, but read the papers! Watch (and learn from) more English TV programs! Read more novels! Check the dictionary!

Adopt a right writing rite and write right. Rightly written?


redcocoon