THE POWER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

One of the saddest reality in Malaysia is that, not many of our mono-lingual Gen Zee kids, both Chinese school and national school educated, will ever appreciate these clever one liners.

Probably some of the International schools educated kids will. I mourn the day when the myopic powers that be, foolishly decided to convert all Malaysia's English medium national schools into Malay medium schools, which gave rise to our tri-silo system of schools, that will forever split our kids, into 3 different and disparate groups of so called Malaysians. Most of Malaysia's Gen Zee kids, will never appreciate this delightful quirkiness of the English Language.

1. If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?

2. If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?

3. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

4. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

5. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

6. Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

7. When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?

8. Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist?

9. Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?

10. Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

11. Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

12. "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

13. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, dog trainers debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?

14. What hair colour do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

15. Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the postmen can look for them while they deliver the mail?

16. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

17. No one ever says, "It's only a game" when their team is winning.

18. Ever wonder about those people who spend RM 8.00 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backwards: NAIVE

19. Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

20. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhoea, does that mean that fifth one ENJOYS it?

Stay sane and have a good lockdown day everyone. In Malaysia we are having another one of our series of completely ineffective, poorly enforced, half hearted, half baked lockdowns.

Yusuf Hashim

2 June 2021