Pulanglah sebelumku run away,
Aku menanti kamu everyday,
Aku menunggu dari Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday,
Tak ingin tak perlu...
Pernah dengar tak lagu ni? Catchy kan?
Aku suka.
Tapi ada gak yang tak suka. Katanya merosak bahasa bagai. Kalau kita dok fikir benda-benda remeh macam ni sampai bila kita nak maju? Memang le bahasa ni penting. Tapi tu pun nak ralat kah?
Orang dah sampai bulan, kita still sibuk gaduh pasal lagu.
Ok aku tak nak emo.
Actually aku nak story pasal sorang pekerja hotel yang aku kenal sepanjang 12 hari aku menginap kat hotel di Miri minggu lepas. Namanya Simon Siga, berbangsa Iban, kulit putih dan beperwatakan menarik.
No no no. Aku tak nak story pasal perwatakannya. Tapi aku nak story pasal kepetahannya bercakap in English.
Sumpah aku ingat dia ni study kat England the first time aku jumpa dia sebab English nya memang CNN punya level. Lengkap dengan nahu dan lenggoknya. Kalau dia bercakap kat telefon, mesti korang akan ingat dia ni orang putih.
Siyes!
So one day, aku yang kebosanan kacau dia kat reception. Aku tanya le, mana dia belajar dulu. Dia kata dia belajar kat Kanowit. Satu pekan kecik kat bahagian Sibu, 4 jam kalau naik bot laju.
Ok I was amazed.
"How do you learn to talk like that?" I asked considering Kanowit is just a small town. There goes my theory of him studying in Wales atau Northern Ireland.
He told me, he once had a grandpa yang pernah bekerja kat kapal laut yang berlayar jauh. Everytime his grandpa balik, dia akan bawak macam-macam benda pelik. One of the benda pelik was a cassette.
Korang tau kan cassette tu apa?
Turn out it was a cassette of an old English love song. He thought the language was weird but interesting rather. He listened to it day in day out sampai dia hafal setiap lagu dalam cassette tu.
"Wait wait wait. You learn all this just by listening to some English song?" I was stupified.
"Of course no la sir. The cassette was the trigger. I learn my English when I studied in University. Amazingly I didn't understand the meaning of the songs until I learn English." He laughed, showing his neatly lined white teeth.
"You could be somebody in TV you know." I said.
"Perhaps I can give you an autograph one day."
Well kawan-kawan, what I'm trying to coin is, we can't be too fanatic dalam bab merosak bahasa ni. Mana tau ada anak-anak kita yang start berjinak belajar English dengan lagu yang cegini.
Aku sayang bahasa kita. Tapi aku praktikal untuk kemajuan.
Sekian terima kasih.
AKUBUKANSUPERMAN: Come let us speak London