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Something fishy is brewing
Sunday, March 14, 2010 11:25 PM

BAD JOKE ALERT!!

I thought that for this post, I'd share a story of word play and an instance of a plain bad joke :D

So my best friend and I went to The Manhattan Fish Market (it's now halal muslim people!! :D) after our Bugis Street adventure and we noticed that the waiters/waitresses always shouted "Welcome!" whenever a customer walked in.

(Warning. Bad joke ahead. Those allergic to lame jokes, STOP NOW.)





So anyway, they kept shouting and it got irritating after a while, especially since they kept echoing each other. So then I leaned forward to my friend across the table and said, "Why do they keep shouting? Do they think this is some kind of fish market or something?"


***


Rolled your eyes? :D

So there I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for having come up with such a fantastic instance of word play. And I also thought about how learners of English might not get the pun as they would not have known that the term "fish market" is used to describe a noisy place.

I was all gung-ho and ready to prove my theory. But alas! None of the dictionaries on the course page had the correct definition for "fish market"! Even my trusted dictionary.com has let me down! Oh, woe is me..

So I turned to google and searched for the phrase "as noisy as a fish market", and STILL no such term or definition/examples of the term came up.

But there was one that defined fish market in the way that I know, and it wasn't even a dictionary.

KalaRanga Archives: Fish Market Scene:
On the Konkan coast and elsewhere, a fish market is synonym with noisy, free for all
situations. A common usage is teacher to students making noise - "Do you think this is a fish market ?"

The website seems to be from India. Hmm so does this mean that the phrase "as noisy as a fish market" is more Asian than Western? And specifically, is it just found in South Asian contexts, as opposed to the whole of Asia?

Something fishy is brewing my friends! You have the power to put me out of my misery and let me know if you've heard of this phrase before.

And going back to the anecdote that started it all, I know- bad joke. I warned you :p

About this Blog
Nur Rashidah

This blog is a compulsory component of a Linguistics module I'm taking. I, along with my other coursemates, have to note down our observations on the English Language twice weekly.

I'll try to make the anecdotes as entertaining and personal as possible, but having said that I must stress that this is in no way a personal blog whatsoever :)

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