Monday, November 20, 2006
I started a joke…
I notice there is some ‘connection’ between German words and Singlish words, particularly after seeing the word ‘aber’ which means ‘but’ in German.
Phua Chu Kang, the comedic madcap (now not so – thanks to fatigue) contractor, used to be admonished by the Powers that Be, our former Prime Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong recommended, in front of the entire nation during his National Day Rally speech, that he go for English remedial classes. Within the next few days the Straits Times published articles about Singlish – about what was the appropriate English word to replace the Singlish one. One of the words was ‘ah-ber-then’ which functions something like ‘duh!’
And it happens that German has a word ‘denn’ (which means ‘because’, and not ‘then’ as its pronunciation suggests).
Hence ‘aber denn’
So I post it up on the IVLE forum for German Level 1.
I notice there is some ‘connection’ between German words and Singlish words, particularly after seeing the word ‘aber’ which means ‘but’ in German.
Phua Chu Kang, the comedic madcap (now not so – thanks to fatigue) contractor, used to be admonished by the Powers that Be, our former Prime Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong recommended, in front of the entire nation during his National Day Rally speech, that he go for English remedial classes. Within the next few days the Straits Times published articles about Singlish – about what was the appropriate English word to replace the Singlish one. One of the words was ‘ah-ber-then’ which functions something like ‘duh!’
And it happens that German has a word ‘denn’ (which means ‘because’, and not ‘then’ as its pronunciation suggests).
Hence ‘aber denn’
So I post it up on the IVLE forum for German Level 1.
