Saturday 16 July 2011

Spoonerism: I’ll ask the chicken (Singapore/China/London)

I suffer from Spoonerism and would often say “kitchen” instead of “chicken”.  

(Singapore, 1971)
When given chopsticks at a Chinese café, a Malay classmate at RI (Raffles Institution), Maria, once asked for “spork and foon”.

(China, 1990s)
A student, Englishman Raymond, said when he was in China and asked a waitress if they had any eggs that day, she replied, “Wait a minute.  Let me go and ask the chicken.”

Update 201111:  I was helping out at the Thanksgiving luncheon at the American Church in London.  Aware of how much I dislike wastage, Andy mentioned right at the start that all surplus food would be given to the homeless for whom the church runs regular open house sessions.  An hour later, when we sat down to eat, I said to Andy, 
Tell me more about the soup chicken.  


(For those who have not heard of the concept, it
soup kitchen which is an open house session doling out food to the homeless, sometimes taking the form of a van going out to areas where homeless people congregate — under railway bridges, say.)
(London, 2011)



Update 211111:  
I was on my way to the checkout till in a supermarket when I suddenly realised I was walking through the section on cooking utensils — they are my big weakness, as I love gadgets.  I heard myself muttering aloud, “Oh, this is dangerous, chickenware.”

4 comments:

  1. That is funny. I had never heard of Spoonerism but I suffer from it too! I then found this list of examples, funny...
    http://www.fun-with-words.com/spoon_example.html

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  2. My blogs seem to touch so many common-interest (or common-ailment??) spots in you (cf. the hunting dogs, the anarchists' bookshop) that these blogs could've come from you!

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  3. This isn't quite a spoonerism, but talk of chicken brought it to mind. High Wycombe is on Chiltern Railways. My son always refers to it as Chicken Railways. A nice idea!

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    Replies
    1. Project: start a Spoonerism Club. Or maybe there's one already?

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