Manglished

While its normal for the ordinary joe to mispronounce spoken English, I think its appalling when our radio and TV professionals do it. This little exchange on radio happened some time ago. I won't mention the station ID.

DJ (excited): Correct!! And the weiner of the contest is.... Bryan!!!!

Bryan (shocked): What did you call me?

If you must know what a weiner is, its the long brown thing between the buns.


My gf swears the DJ meant "winner" not "weiner" but I wasn't so sure.

If the ads on Astro are any indication, mispronunciations in the media is becoming as common as pisang goreng or is it goreng pisang. Here's a couple more typically mispronounced words.

character: ker-rack-ter
contact: kern-tact
liaise: liars

Oh by the way as mangled as our language is, I've never come across anyone who says "My England not powderful" no matter how ulu they are. I conclude this fancy line only exists in the heads of dumbasses.

Anyway apart from turning us into a laughing stock, inarticulate DJs promote all kinds of bizzare pronunciations to the public, in time turning us into a nation of "ker-ract-ters" who "kern-tacts" and "liars-es" with one another. Now you have to admit that's a little strange coming from a country that takes its language seriously.

But some countries are happy to take a more liberal stance towards comunication. Check out this pic I snapped in Jakarta a few weeks ago.


Chicken bebas pilih?

Chicken, rice, iced lemon tea (small) gloriously spelt out in English on a Bahasa Indonesia ad?

What wouldn't I give to see ads like this in Malaysia :P