Friday, October 19, 2007

Pillow talk

Ralf, the sweet guy I'm dating, speaks in a mixture of Singlish and Sindarin. It's a local patois that I find quite intriguing and very grassroots/blue collar. He's teaching me some Hokkien tht I hope to use for comic effect one day.

Sometimes I use English words that he's not entirely familiar with. He's always wanting to know what I mean, so will keep bugging me until I explain it in a way he understands. The other day I wrote on my facebook that I was "feeling ironic". He wanted to know what "ironic" meant. He said that he thought it meant "something a bit strange." So I tried explaining it, "It's like when something happens that you don't expect and it takes you in an unexpected direction."

He asked for clarification. I struggled to find an explanation for "irony". Perhaps I could draw something from literature, or modern poetry.

"It's like rain, on your wedding day," I ventured. What other examples could there be, I wondered.

"It's like a free-ride, when you've already paid," the words sprung to my mind brazenly.

"It's like good advice, that you just didn't take." Oh yeah, these were good examples. "And who would have thought, it figures," I finished.

I looked around cautiously, in case the literary gods would strike me down.

He seemed to understand the examples though.

3 comments:

Sam said...

hahaha.. Apparently those aren't examples of irony? I dunno, I remember there being something on the net about how it's NOT.

Oh Alanis.

Leon said...

Sam is right. It is more than just bad luck, which is what Alanis sings about.

It's bad luck if it rains on a charity festival. It's ironic if the charity is collecting for a drought crisis.

I can't believe I'm telling David something about words/grammer...!

No Milk Please said...

irony is a concept that is very difficult to pin down. what alanis sings about is tragic, but not irony. your definitions are as good as any...