Something New

Posted this yesterday, in Melaka, but an iffy Internet connection meant it never saw the light of Sunday:

For years I've assumed the word loofah, as in the spongy thing you wash your pots with, was a Lancashire dialect word. My assumption was based on a teacher, one of the Brothers, actually, making fun of my use of the word on a school trip - asking where the loofah was in order to help clean a table. I assumed then that the very sound of the word should have alerted me to the fact it was non-standard English, part of the minefield of supposedly incorrect terms used at home that had no place in the classroom. I also thought I'd been dealt with in a snobbish fashion, and it obviously stung since I've remembered the rebuke to this day.

Then yesterday I saw the word on a signboard outside a rather funky little shop promoting the whole recycle & reuse culture in the rather funky new Linc shopping centre, not far from KLCC, where Rozana has her new outlet for the crockery she makes at her Bendang Studio. I was a little surprised to find a bit of South Manchester talk on a KL signboard, but then it occurred to me that loofah might just be a perfectly respectable Standard English term, and a glance at the appropriate page on dictionary.com confirmed my suspicion.

Evidence, I suppose, that you can learn something you sort of knew you knew every day. Wish I'd known that in 1969.