It is okay if our pronounciation is off sometimes. It’s not like you have to speak like Rowan Atkinson in Malaysia. But there are certain ‘taboo’ words that we cannot mispronounce at all cost otherwise we are going to give it a different meaning.
It’s okay but what happened last week at church was something most people cannot stand laughing, especially when this fellow has a problem with pronouncing L with R and L with R.
You know something like Brain or Blain? He reminds me of my school teacher who had a similar problem. I remember during our first lesson, our class had problem containing their laughter when the teacher read a paragraph aloud like this :-
Kamus mengandungi cili cili (ciri ciri) yang tertentu.
or
Pelompak itu melalikan dili apabira pihak bank menekan roceng keseramatan.
That’s not the best part. The best part is, she’s actually a Bahasa Melayu teacher. When there are such teachers in my school, we know our education system is basically screwed. Fortunately, no one failed their PMR oral test. Let’s get back to the incident at church. It happens when this guy was asked to make a simple announcement.
He did great but there was a small hiccup. I noticed few people at the back was laughing when he said “May the Lord bress us”. Okay, nothing funny with that in writing but when it is spoken as it is, it sounded like Breast. So I asked my brother, “Is it me or did I just heard him said breast?”. My brother replied, “Yes he did”.
Then I saw few people were trying to contain their laughter when the guy continued by saying “Please Bress us more, Father”. I almost laughed, but I restrained myself however. It was really hard trying to contain it when something ‘crude’ was being uttered on the altar of the church, which is rare.
Having said that, I am sure the Lord is wise enough to understand what the guy really meant, otherwise I would not know how to react if I am bless with ’something’ else should He answered that guy’s prayer. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind either way. Just don’t bless me with a pair of new breast though.
