Where Do They Get Them From?

Being involved in the Malaysian debating scene has taught me a great deal about the way young Malaysians use the English language, or try to anyway. Now don't get me wrong - even though I teach English for a living, I'm not going to moan and groan about the appalling standard of English among my young charges. I think I'll leave that to other worthy voices, like the editors of the excellent Star Online Mind Our English page.

Now, in the debating world, you see all sorts when it comes to English usage. You get complete linguistic basket cases who can't even speak for more than a couple of minutes without raping the English language with their every utterance. Or you might get wonderfully electrifying performances from smart young orators worthy of Cicero. And most of the time, of course, you get something in between.

During my recent trip to the Borneo Cup in Kota Kinabalu, I saw examples of all three of the above categories, although I must say that the standard of English, if not always the standard of debating, was much better this year.

But English is not the only criterion for success in debating, nor is it even the most important. Debates are normally judged on three criteria - Matter, Manner and Method. Matter refers to the substance of the arguments put forward and their supporting evidence and rebuttals. Manner covers the style and delivery of the speaker and, obviously, the standard of his or her English. Finally, there is Method, which refers to the way the case is structured, and how the team work together to put the case forward effectively.

However, despite the fact that I have to pay more attention to the arguments in a debate, not the way they are worded, I can't help noticing aspects of the debaters' language. One example came after one of the quarter final sessions which I judged. The students came up to me during the coffee break for an oral adjudication. One of the boys in the team asked me for advice on his language. I said "fine, but you used a couple of words you shouldn't have used".

One of the words he used in the debate was that quaint old English parade-ground expletive 'bollocks'. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I heard the word coming out of his mouth as if he were an English football hooligan! It was like Snow White telling one of the seven dwarfs to F*** off!!

Now the word 'bollocks', if you look it up in the dictionary, is a rather coarse word referring to a man's genitalia. It can be used to express utter disgust or disagreement, as in "bollocks to that!" or it can be used to say that something is rubbish or nonsense, as in "you're talking a load of bollocks".

So you can imagine the look on the poor boy's face when I calmly informed him in my best professorial voice that 'bollocks' is just a couple of ranks below the F word in the lexical naughtiness rankings!!

Now, it's at times like that when I realise that English language teaching courses in Malaysia just don't teach this kind of words to kids. And yet when they go out into the big wide world, get a job and hopefully interact with English-speaking people, or watch English language TV programmes, they are going to hear all sorts of swear words and slang expressions. And they won't have a clue what to do with them!

I daresay that our young Cicero had heard the word being used in the context of the English Premier League, that bastion of linguistic cleanliness and innocence which is so popular among Malaysian TV addicts. So by extension he thought he could use the word in the formal august confines of the debating chamber without giving his adjudicator a cardiac arrest!!

A similar story happened a couple of years ago when I adjudicated a debate in Shah Alam in mainland Malaysia. One of the debaters in that particular round will always stick in my mind. He was bald, built like a basketball player and wore very big and expensive looking bracelets on his wrists. When he spoke, he sounded just like one of those gangsta rappers you see on MTV - his performance liberally punctuated with the street argot and body language of a loose-limbed, happenin' homie. Basically, I hardly understood a word.

So afterward, I asked him where he learned his English. He told me he had picked up most of his English from the lyrics of rap and hip-hop songs. The scary thing was that he was a student in my own university, where the students study English up to 20 hours a week, and gangsta rap is definitely not on the syllabus! Needless to say, our homie didn't win the debate!!

This reminds me of an old joke about the king of a distant Pacific island who visited London to meet Queen Elizabeth. When he met the Queen, and she asked him if he had had a good flight, he replied: "weeee weeeee fizzzz wooo wooo didididit diditdidit crackle I had a very fine flight thank you your Majesty!"

Later on, the Queen asked him how many wives he had, to which he replied "crackle crackle fizzzzz weee woooowooooweeee I have sixteen wives your majesty" After this strange form of conversation went on for some time, the Queen took her foreign guest aside and asked him bluntly "Your majesty, just where did you learn your English?"

To which he replied "weeee weeee ooooweeeee crackle crackle fizzzzz the BBC World Service!"

See what I mean?!