Funny Malaysian Signs - From Email Forward a Few Years Back

(12 comments

1. 

   10:25 am Cheez says:

   what’s funnier is that they’re not all malaysian.

2. 

   10:39 am Mike says:

   When I first saw this, I covered up the english (and chinese for that matter) and had a friend of mine from Malaysia translate that first sign, and he translated it just like the supposed ‘engrish’ translation. He said they have those signs, because some of the cultures (I’ll which ones to your imagination) which are thrust together in Malaysia have different social rules about the appropriateness of clearing phlegm from ones throat in public. While spit is probably not the perfect word, I, as a native english speaker can’t think of what to call it. Preparation for spitting? Clearing your throat is too broad, as that can be a simple ahem.

3. 

   3:08 pm BuckinaRut says:

   @Mike-
   Granted it’s not formal English but perfectly good for the playground or school bus where I first heard it, plus it is a good onomatopoeia, but “hocking” from the phrase “hocking a loogie” hits this particular nail on the head quite nicely. It isn’t in Merriam-Webster’s, but perhaps that needs to change.

4. 

   4:23 am BeadyEl says:

   My wife - who uses a wheelchair - wants one of those signs from pic #3…

5. 

   10:30 am Mike says:

   @ BuckinaRut I never thought about separating the term out like that, since the whole term includes the expulsion of said loogie. Messers Merriam and Webster, I present for your consideration:
   Main Entry: hock v.
   Pronunciation: \ˈhäk\
   1. The act of clearing mucus of phlegm from ones throat in preparation for expulsion from the mouth,
   Example Sentence:
   Ms. Johnson, Mike hocked a loogie in my hair!

6. 

   10:31 am Mike says:

   Now we just need to have ‘hock’ translated in to Malay, and have it spread the world!

7. 

   5:10 pm BuckinaRut says:

   I just figured we needed the verb, not the object in the phrase. “Hock” would be easier to translate, too, since it is onomatopoeia- all you have to do is approximate that sound using what already exists in Malay. I have no idea where the “loogie” part came from in the slang for a mass of mucus or phlegm, and for our needs, like I said, it ain’t necessary. “Spit” to both of us doesn’t work here, primarily because, at least to me, it’s just saliva not necessarily with or without mucus. Plus, technically, isn’t “spit” also an onomatopoeia? It sounds imitative… how does that translate into Malay?

   Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get this into usage- you and I are on the cusp of language change! Call the linguists and the lexicographers…! Maybe we’d be on a stamp or something in Malaysia. I can just picture it, but I do have a very over-active imagination….

8. 

   12:27 pm Xenobiologista says:

   The “water on road during rain” one definitely isn’t Malaysian. Our traffic caution signs don’t look like that, and wouldn’t be in English.

   As for the throat-clearing noise, I’ve more often seen it spelt “hawk” but that might be a British vs. American English thing. But what’s Engrish about asking people not to spit too loudly? I’ve heard some pretty impressive “ptui” noises, as in the sound of the actual expulsion and not just the preliminary hawking.

   Btw, my sisters and I went out drinking with our American cousin who was visiting. HE spat on the ground and we yelled at him for it. Screw stereotypes about “Asians are rude and dirty” etc.

   The “Jalan Fun Wee Fuck” is vaguely plausible…Chinese names get transliterated funny, especially if they’re in dialects such as Hokkien which unlike Mandarin and Cantonese don’t have well-standardized Romanization systems. “Jalan” means street or road. My English cousin’s husband thought there were an awful lot of roads in Penang named “Jalan Sehala” until we told him “sehala” meant “one-way”.

9. 

   12:32 pm Xenobiologista says:

   Oh and I can’t believe that nobody’s noticed that the last sign is very obviously from a southwestern US state. Look at the text on the other signs in the photo.

10. 

    2:33 pm Lollerskate says:

    ^ LOL Rednecks…

11. 

    11:45 pm Egypt-chan says:

    Um, isn’t the wheelchair one from Little House on the Prairie?

12. 

    2:56 am coffeebot says:

    That’s not rain on road! That’s loud spit!

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