Extinct word: Ar Si Keh

No longer in use: an extinct word, Ar Si Keh.

Popularized in the 1960s, Ar Si Keh is a Hokkien dialect. There is also a hand-sign for Ar Si Keh when the boy or girl choose to remain silent. The popularity was strong enough to live into the 1970s. However, when great developments conquered the world in the 1980s, boys and girls fed themselves with new words. Soon enough, into the 1990s, they favor more new words, one they touch every day, the mouse. The power of the mouse further lead them through the super corridor into the international networking highways. When the batch of school leavers left their alma mater in 1977, they accepted a mouse a rat. Now, boy and girl rather say a rat a rat and a mouse a mouse. Now, you may agree that why the old word like Ar Si Keh has become extinct.

I have also mindfully replaced Ar Si Keh with the trending word of the time like unfriend. That means, I’ve forgotten it even after using it before. As I was driving my wife and my son to the wet market today, I was thinking of a suitable article for posting in my blog. I think very hard but I cannot get any idea. Soon I parked by car and put the parking coupon on top of the dashboard. We walked to the Leong Tau Fu seller to get some ingredients to make soup to feast my mum on her 24^th anniversary. My mum had left me for 24 years already. Next we walked to the fishmonger who sold fishes to my father and we bought a Teck Kar Yu. While waiting for the fishmonger to clean and pack the fish, I told my wife to wait while I took my son for breakfast.

We chose to sit on a one and half feet high rectangular wooden table surrounded by six small six-inches high rectangular chairs. A woman with her daughter joined the table minutes later. We started eating our gan mian. Shortly, a Director of Tourism was walking towards our table, I stood up and we greeted with a warm handshake.

Ar Si Keh was spoken by someone behind, it sounded familiar and I turned my face to him. He was a regular customer of the tea maker. The young woman and me agreed that Ar Si Keh means My Cho Peng Yu Liau and we acknowledged we used it once in a while in the past. We also aware that kids today aren’t using Ar Si Keh as there are new terms with new definition coming to them via the internet.

You see, in Facebook, we like to add friend, so we command the cursor by shifting the mouse to the ‘Add Friend’ buttons under the ‘People You May Know’ section. Pressing the springy tab of the mouse with the pointing finger, we hear a ‘click’ sound. The cursor acted, and the ‘Add Friend’ button change its image to ‘+1 Friend Request Sent’. To write this, I’ve to go back into the Facebook to attempt on adding the ADUN Paya Rumput that appears under the ‘People You May Know’. Then, I asked my daughters what is the word to look for if I don’t want that friend in the Facebook. They tell me, it is unfriend.

Through the colorful 5 years from 1973 to 1977, they have used Ar Si Keh. He wrote the wrong answer in the test paper, he asked the gal sitting next to him for an eraser, she refused to lend him and he told her, Ar Si Keh. He sprinkled a few drops of minyak cap kapak on her chair, unknowingly she sat on the minyak. He had done that a few times already. She pleaded with him not to do that again. She grinned and when he ignored her, she threw Ar Si Keh to him with finger slicing finger.

Batch 1977 Malacca High School ! Have you don’t that ?

If your answer is Yes, the reminiscence of it will make you smile in the coming 3^rd Gathering this October 27, 2012. Please contact KK Pak or YL Tan immediately to book the place for you to show your smile to them.

Meliora Hic Sequamor.