Hi Aiden,

Unfortunately, I'm unable to attend your online discussion. However, I found the article you'll be discussing extremely interesting and wanted to offer a bit of assistance with the phrases you'd marked in red. Most of these are not English words (as you've probably surmised). The
author does quite a bit of code-switching here (and talks about it as well) among registers (formal to informal) and, because it's a multilingual community, she's able to use words from other
languages/cultures in her 'English' poem. It's really very nicely done and I think it's an excellent choice for your discussion.

Many of these words are foreign to me as well. I used "google" and other resources to find this information:

1) 'It's a long way to Tipperaree'

This is a song title (an old war song). I have heard the title before. Google led me to this (a slightly different spelling, but I am pretty sure this is the reference all the same):

"It's a Long Way to Tipperary"
http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/itsalongwaytotipperary.htm
(lyrics and mp3 sample audio)

History:
http://allaboutirish.com/library/music/tippsong.shtm

2) ..."a baila, which is a Singhalese folk song..."

This is a definition syntactically (an adjective clause), so a "baila" is a type of folk song in the Singhalese culture.

According to this link below, that is in Sri Lanka:
http://www.answers.com/topic/sinhala

3) "The marmalade with roti may also be due to having run out of bread...."

"roti" is the Hindi and Urdu word for bread http://www.answers.com/roti

4) "But the batik ballgown..."

"batik" is a kind of fabric from Indonesia (this is a word which many westerners are familiar because of the popularity of this fabric).

http://www.answers.com/batik

5) "From Laura Ashley to Mark & Spencer, my istanas all built in Windsor...."

istanas seems to be a Malaysian word for palaces.
http://www.kasimabas.com/palaces.html

6) "From kurungs of kashmere..."

Seems to be Malaysian for a type of woman's clothing (dress?). See:
<http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=kurungs&ie=UTF
-8&oe=UTF-8>

Also, the English spelling of the fabric is "cashmere". So, I imagine the "k" is a Malay spelling.

7) "to kain batik ballgowns,..."

Seems to be a Malaysian "shoulder cloth"
<http://www.nga.gov.au/IndonesianTextiles/Code/Detail.cfm?
IRN=68957&BioArtistIRN=90808&MnuID=2>

8) "So mush of me mixed up, sejarah..."

I'm guessing that this is a Malay word for "history"
http://www.answers.com/topic/sejarah-olahraga?hl=sejarah

9) "My anglicised[苂澀9] fancies in tempatan dreams..."

Not sure--it seems to be a Malay word for a region ("regional" perhaps, or maybe more specific to her home region)
<http://www.google.com/search?
q=tempatan&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en>

One thing I particulary love about this poem is her word play with "much" and "mush". For many Indonesians, these are pronounced very nearly the same. It's really a perfect combination the way she "mushes" together the sound and meaning of these words to create a new meaning of her own, an "English" of her own.

Well, I hope this helps. I wish I were able to participate in the discussion. Maybe next time.

Best wishes,

Jim

Online Sked

This page was created by Aiden Yeh and was last updated on February 28, 2005.