Confessions of a Cereal Killer

Dear Nobody,

Just the other day, when I was bumming around the rest area in my faculty, I came across something very interesting. But before I get to the interesting part you have to bear with me while I explain the situation a bit.

So I was at the rest area when I decided I needed to use the toilet downstairs. So I went down to the basement, and in front of the toilet I saw a couple of old, used office desks and other furniture taking up a lot of space in the landing area. They were all piled on top of each other, all together and were bound with some raffia string, obviously waiting to be taken away.

Now the interesting bit is, there is a notice on the furniture, stating that it is to be disposed of. But instead of ‘untuk dibuang’ or something like that, this is what I saw:

“UNTUK DIKONDEM”?? I stood rooted to the spot and started laughing. LOL! Really, is that really supposed to mean ‘to be discarded’? If I’m not mistaken, it seems like the word ‘dikondem’ sounds like it’s borrowed from the English word ‘comdemn’. This BM language really cracks me up. I can stand words like ‘pengimplementasian’ (borrowed from implementation), or even ‘di-clampkan’ (‘to be clamped’, yes it’s true) but this is THE bomb! At first I doubted whether this word even exists until a quick flip through Kamus Dewan* confirmed that it exists, and it means ‘sudah rosak sama sekali dan tidak boleh dipakai lagi’. (‘di-clamp-kan’ doesn’t, though. Apparently it’s only valid in UM)

It’s funny and strange (although some might say ‘di-clamp-kan’ is funnier and weirder) not only because the word is borrowed from English, but also because of its meaning. Using this word in this context, it’s not really suitable. It really sounds a tad bit too dramatic, don’t you think? I mean, come on! ‘Condemn’. ‘Untuk Dikondem’. Sounds like they’re sending those desks to hell or something. Poor desks. Doomed forever. Sentenced to eternal damnation.

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Goodness! I mean, like, really…

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Well, that’s what I thought, until I searched the word ‘condemn’ on dictionary.com and I this is what I found:

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Hmm, looks like I underestimated the meaning of this word. But do you think it sounds less ridiculous in English? Think about coming across an abandoned building about to be demolished with a sign on the front that reads ‘to be condemned’? Well, I don’t know about you, but I would fucking laugh my ASS off if I saw that!

And now, I’m going off to pray for those poor doomed desks. May God have mercy on them.

The Stumped One: Signing off – Peace out, weirdos!

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*many thanks to the brilliant Charmian Choo for the use of her Kamus Dewan

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 9:01 am and is filed under 'My 2 cent's worth on other stuff/people'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.