Thursday, September 15, 2011

Gua sulah lapat latuk! Maya olang pun lapat...

There was a Lat's cartoon featuring a Chinese (Hokien) exclaiming excitedly, 'Gua sudah lapat latuk' which means 'I've got datuk (award)'. You see, Chinese characters (the words, not the persons) do not have certain syllables like 'd' as in datuk or 'j' as in 'Nah chee' for 'Najib'.

As for initials of some datukship awards, we used to joke about DPMP for Dulu Pandai Main Perempuan and SPMP for Sekarang Pandai Main Perempuan! Then we had the usual JP for Jaga Pintu and PJK for Pandai Jaga Kereta!

Kee Thuan Chye had a good laugh with his Send in the Datuks in Malaysian Digest:

Excerpt:

"I HAD a good cackle the other day – over a caption that appeared in an article of a mainstream newspaper. It was for photographs of four Malaysian singers who had appeared as the opening acts for George Benson when he performed in Kuala Lumpur on Oct 29.

The caption named them as “Datuk Sheila Majid, Datuk Siti Nurhaliza, Datuk David Arumugam and Datuk Khatijah Ibrahim”. Another one whose picture was not included but mentioned in the article is “Datuk Yusni Hamid”.

Five datuks performing as a prelude to Benson’s entrance. Wow! He might have been bowled over if he had known. But then again, it might not have mattered a mite to a citizen of the American republic that upholds egalitarianism.

To him, it might have seemed that datuks in Malaysia are a dime a dozen. And that only Malaysians seem to take such titles seriously. If Cliff Richard, Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger performed on the same stage and their photographs appeared in a British newspaper the next day, the caption would not read: “Sir Cliff, Sir Elton, Sir Paul and Sir Mick.” You can bet they would be simply referred to as Richard, John, McCartney and Jagger. Or just by their first names."

More:
http://www.malaysiandigest.com/opinion/11320-send-in-the-datuks.html

Link

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