5/21/2005

hokkien

one of the first languages i picked up, and first words, wasn't mama or papa. it was "OI! KUA SI MI LAN?"

oo. i am serious. for those who don't know, that's the fujian (hokkien) dialect. which some people like to refer to as taiwanese. to me, it's my home language. to be honest, my parents and i speak more in mandarin than in either hokkien or english, but i can swear fairly fluently in hokkien... yer... thats how my family is like. we are damn open with each other.

back to what i was saying, kua si mi lan, also equates, "wtf you looking at." literrally. of course subsequently came the "lan jiao" aka penis, and "cheebye" aka vagina... erm well, not in such nice overtones... hehehe. no i didnt have some sub human upbringing. my parents were uncouth people who were brought up in the village, in uncouth neighbourhoods who worked hard for their money in the most uncouth of places. rough tough people in a rough tough world.

then of course, my dad was also a police in a time where "policemen wear shorts".

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so in his opinion, to fight evil, well.. you fight with evil! so if the criminals yells out "mata lai liao ah!!! gin ah!!! wa neng ki jit dao hit dao" (or, "police are coming!!! hurry!!! let us go here and there... blah blah blah") my father wud be yelling "na beh, li ai ki tou lou!! kan ni na!!" (ur.. mum? where u wana go!?!?!fuck ur mum!!) something along those lines....


both of them do try and keep it clean when i was young, but u know, it's never easy when it's a part of u to swear the fuck off your heads. of course the good part is, i learnt at a very young age what NOT to say to your elders and friends, least you scare them off.

i don't remember now if it was my parents who actually told me to stfu on such words or isit just a natural thing that i copied from my parents, aka, fake it infront of ur relatives n friends. so naturally, at the beginning of my life, i was a sweet, quiet, wholesome little angel.

or not.

essentially at home though, to prevent me from using much of those well learnt words, i was either to speak english with dad since at that time his english was considered well spoken... or with my maids anyways, or speak mandarin through out. i opt for the later. not so confusing.

of course when we are gossiping about mum, english is the way to go. if u didn't notice by now from that last paragraph, mum knows 0 english. nothing, zilch, nada.

so between me and dad, we have LOTSA stories. including secrets like my friend having abortions and so on. while i can trust my dad not to holler to the neighbourhood at large, mum is another story.

but they both used to think my hokkien became non-existent, for some odd reason.

so one day, they were gossiping about ME!!!! by then u know, i had stop conversing with either in hokkien, and feign ignorance about most stuff they talk about. mostly because it involves me running errands.

watching tv happily, dad was telling mum in hokkien (for the sanity of everyone and so i don't type twice, i am guna type everything in english.) "eh, our daughter... she said she wanted to be nun you know..."

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"wtf. she can never be a nun la, look at her, bad habits everywhere... undies here, socks there, cuss worse than a pirate, and me... she will grow out of that notion la."

if you're wondering about that topic, yer i did consider being a nun once upon a time. coz guys are just too troublesome. so whiny. so attention seeking. nia eh. nvm. on with the convo... which by then have picked up my interest a fair bit...

"that's what i told her too. can u imagine her meditating? i think the Gods will start laughing and then it be the end of mankind"

by then i was barely controlling my temper. and they were sitting RIGHT BEHIND ME!!! the audacity of parents!!

mum started laughing at this point.. "imagine if she joins the church or temple (i haven't made clear at this point where i was going, and parents were buddhists), she guna convert them to download music for her and then have disco right in the temple!!"

"you think? they will be all wearing colourful stuff. oh man, i can't bear to think of it... and considering how much she likes tv, all the beds will be affixed a tv stand or something coz of her"

me "WEI!!! U THINK I CAN'T HEAR ISIT? I AM SITTING JUST HERE HOR!!! WTH MAN!!!!!"

both looked at each other like this O.O.

"you can understand ah?"

me "erm.. i DID grow up with u guys u know"

subsequently they gossip only when i am asleep. not that it's very successful.

if you're wondering... my friends too did mention the same things about me converting the nuns rather than they converting me. besides, i abandoned that idea since i decided that living on the outside might be better. mind you, i have all the respects for people who decided to leave the normal paths of life and dedicate their lives to their gods. but, alas, for me, i happen to love God and life in the normal way.

sad eh?

what lead me to posting this crap now?

reading this site. totally written in hokkien, albeit some of the spellings is obviously up to the writer, he isn't that far off the mark anyways. as long as lim peh can read, can liao. hehe... i laughed so hard reading his blog, whoever wrote it is a damn genius. it ensures the readership to within a certain boundary, if not, u know, people can ask their friends to translate.

while talkingcock.com uses them in the pure form of singlish, hokkienlang is entirely.. hokkien. so classy!!! omg XD reminds me of dad and all his "wa lan eh..." when he was younger.

now if anyone says this, first question he ask wud be "where is your penis (lan)?"

second would be "what's wrong with your penis? got disease ah?"

damn, gotta love my "dysfunctional" family, as my ex teachers would call it.


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