Small Balls, Big Faux Pas

And people wonder why I am nervous about speaking Chinese or Korean.

Most of my language skills are self-taught. Learnt laboriously through a bizarre combination of comics, kungfu movies, books, dictionaries and friends.

As such, it means my pronunciation is highly dubious and my comprehension severely suspect.

Thus, I try not to massacre the languages unless forced to. I've seen and heard too many horror stories of people committing major faux pas with the best intentions.

Like the recent one I heard.

I was speaking with a young Chinese lady who is living in Korea. Her Korean is probably worse than mine which made her recounting of this story doubly funny.

When we were introduced, the hostess mistakenly introduced her to me as Korean so I immediately greeted her in Korean and did the formal introduction of my name. To which she started and, thinking I was Korean, she hesitantly returned the greeting in even more mangled Korean than mine.

When we realised we were both not Korean (no! really?!!), it was with much relieved laughter and embarrassment. Then I tried to speak Chinese, which sent us both into another level of hilarity.

Finally, out of pity, she asked that I speak in English. I was pathetically grateful.

We started chatting about the Korean culture and language and she told me the story of how her American boss bollocked up his first big presentation to a large local client.

According to her, he went into the boardroom and greeted them by something she verbalised as "chanmaneul". I have never heard this before and the closest I can think of is "cheukamaneul" which is, probably, totally the wrong spelling but essentially means "wait a minute" or "wait".

However, she informed me that it was a major boo boo by her boss as it means "You have small balls". Or so she was told by her Korean colleagues. 

It did not help that the clients were all Koreans. And males.

Although I have not, as yet, insulted anyone's private parts unintentionally in a foreign language, I have had my share of language faux pas.

Like when I asked "whose flying brother's boat and ship" was about when someone was talking about an email in Chinese. And accidentally frightened someone to death when I told him "I love" ("sarang") him because he was interesting when I meant to refer to "people" ("sarahm") as interesting, in Korean. And I inadvertently called someone a biatch when I meant to say she was crazy in Thai. Not that that made much of a difference, really, as she incidentally happened to be both.

It makes me highly nervous using my uncertain language skills but I reckon if you do not practise it, you will lose it.

So till I tell someone, unintentionally, his balls are small, I shall continue to blunder my way through.

Australian a la Generous

I love eateries in Asia.  They not only offer fabulous varieties of exquisite food but also loads of meal-time entertainment.

Just pick up any menu or look at any of the signboards and you would usually find something to amuse you with.  OK, that's not far, not all of them but enough ...

I remember going out to a business lunch once and the client decided to bring us to a local eatery so we could "get real".  I was looking around when I spotted a stall selling "lucksa".  You don't say.  I, of course, got that immediately.  You can never get too lucky, ya know?

Another time I was at a pastry shop and they had a makeshift sign that said, "Bang 1, Get 1 free!"  Now how can anyone resist that offer?

So, it was with great appreciation that I saw this menu spotted and blogged by kennysia.com.  I suddenly had a vision of a well-padded Australian served up in a platter with an apple between his teeth.

Yell G A Y E L L E ... Gayelle!

This was spotted at dlisted.  Apparently, it is now de classe to call someone a lesbian, lesbo or dyke.  The new PC term is gayelle.  Why?  Because the gayelles say so.

Here's what they apparently sent to dlisted:

By choosing gayelle, the feminine factors in “the equation of who is gay and who is not” can reassert their interest in the word gay, as well as, assert a displeasure for the word lesbian. More importantly, however, to choose gayelle over lesbian, would demonstrate a form of action that, most assuredly, would be helpful in restoring the rightful dignity that belongs to the mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends, who have been victims of hatemongering and or a poorly-conceived joke, and or, a lack of sensitivity.

Gayelle is the logical and reasonable alternative, in that, it contains the words gay and elle (the French pronoun for “she”). Gayelle is a word that has relevance to our time, and it’s easy to say, as in the gay-gayelle community. Unlike the capitalized form of Lesbian, which is defined “a native or inhabitant of Lesbos,” and “of or pertaining to Lesbos;” gayelle and the capitalized form Gayelle, in essence, have the same meaning.

The choice is yours. Be hip and sapphic-chic with your preference for gayelle. Define this decade of the 21st-century with a new word and a new outlook. Go gayelle!

Yes, go Gayelles!  *Passes pom poms over*

Miss G, can I point out a few things please?

1. Gayelle sounds like a drag queen from Texas.

2. You need to do more research as one of the dlisted readers pointed out, 

ga·yelle [ ga yél ] (plural ga·yelles)

noun Caribbean
Definition:

1. cockfighting arena: an arena used for cockfighting

2. stick-fighting ring: a ring used for stick-fighting

Rather cocked up, is that not?  And rather false advertising too as I assume you are not fond of cocks.

3. Gayelle was the name of the lady who liked to stand under the lamp post three blocks away.  I don't think she's a gayelle though as she seemed to have a lot of gentlemen friends who were always real kind and gave her rides home.  Sometimes more than 5 times a night!

4. Why pick a French word?  Why not Gaypo as po is woman in Chinese? Or Gaydonna for an Italian flava?  I can even hear your anthem now ... Gaydonna donna donna ... has a ring to it eh?

Today's Insult

Someone made me rather annoyed with them today. As advised by people in the know, he is in hiding till I get over it. If I get over it.

Apparently he heard my promise to him ...

Bloody cravenly coward without an ounce of grey matter. Nothing short of a heroic and bloody death is going to redeem him now. And that death better involve being stabbed by a hundred blunt & rusty swords, torn apart by a dozen horses with poor sense of direction & group dynamics, burnt by radioactive acid & gnawed to death by a billion fleas in his wig. After which I am going to give his balls to Ms Monti.

I Swear ... No, Really ...

A table of us smoked our shishas, drank our coffees, ate our roast lamb legs and tried to solve the troubles of the world tonight. Failing that, we decided to swear up a storm.

Actually, to my great contrition (yeah, right) I started the cuss ball rolling when I revealed I had learnt a new swear word yesterday & tried it out on one of the Nepalese waiters.

"Hey, Mandeep, come closer ... I learnt a new word in Nepalese today."

"Yah , what is it, mam?"

"It's a bad word. Chiknay (I think that's how it's spelt)."

"Mam, not so bad, yah. Not so bad word. Can mean handshome, mam."

"Handshome ... I mean, handsome? Really?! I've been cheated! I thought it meant fecker! Darn!"

"Er, mebbe, mam ..." stuttered the poor, young Nepalese giant.

"OK, so if I add the word maa to chiknay, it would be maachiknay ... which would mean ..."

"Ahhh, mam!" A deep, rosy blush bloomed prettily over his face as he genteelly claps his hand to his boy in silent shock.

"Heh."

For you lot unfamiliar with the lingo, maa means mother.

When I disclosed my conversation to my tablemates, which was made up of two Egyptians, one Malay-Arab and one Sikh (yes, all males except me .. at least the last time I looked in the mirror in the bathroom), we chortled as we pondered the colourful words that paints our world.

We decided that while the English language can convey insults and swears of a fairly crude & virulent manner, Hindi & Punjabi swear words are superbly descriptive and colourful.

Take for instance, calling someone a pondekh (I know my spelling leaves much to be desired but it's a verbal learning for me with no spelling assistance, alright?) is equivalent to calling him an arse orifice. Just wrapping it around your tongue ... the word, not said body part ... has such a tactile vibration that it fairly, er ... rolls off your tongue.

When you want to be a statistic of racial disharmony, you can call an Indian Muslim tulken and wait for the machete to divest you of your new word knowledge. I suppose if it was a MTV video where they can rap the word much like "nigger", perhaps then it may be acceptable. But I seriously doubt it.

The ultimate would be to call someone a blenchod whereupon I would say it was nice meeting you and I hope you had a good life. The translation is too rude to even type out. Yes, you ask, what can be ruder than calling someone maachiknay? I leave that to your imagination.

I'd forgotten that I'd heard this insult before but was reminded when I read someone's blog. I realise now that must be a fairly common insult but it still slays me ... There was classic incident where I heard a bunch of old biddies casting slurs on the local bicycle in India. Said local 711 (always close but never closed) was described as "so black even the broom can sweep her away." How amazing is that insult? So visual! So graphic! So venomous! So Indian!

Please note that I am not casting racial slurs or making political statements but am just expressing my supreme appreciation of a superior form of expression. Bless.

When kidded that I should learn words of more acceptable social standing based on the positive, I took the challenge. As did my tablemates. We sat there in flummoxed silence for a full 15 minutes before we wisely decided to change the subject. After all, why mess with a good thing?

Please direct all hate mail & flames to all the blenchods who taught me all these words.