First, Murali Sharma concluded his letter "What the new food centres should have" with this proposal: "... we should stop referring to these centres as hawker centres. Surely, a hawker, who is an itinerant trader, cannot stay put at a centre. All 'hawker centres' should be renamed 'cooked-food centres'. "
Separately, Mr Shankar Rajan from the Indian Fine Arts Society -- and clearly unaware of the other letter above -- vigorously defended the term's usage:
"Singapore has a special nomenclature for its food centres, calling them 'hawker centres'. Some language purists tell me that the term 'hawker centre' is a misnomer and should be dropped. Although I advocate speaking good English, we should never do away with the use of the phrase 'hawker centre' to describe our food centres or foodcourts. It is uniquely Singaporean and an endearing term to all thoroughly native citizens. So, let us hail the term 'hawker centre' and keep our food centres named that way."
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What is my own position on this matter? I had argued against the widespread and peculiarly Singaporean usage of the term "parking lot" to refer to "parking space" or "parking spot". And ST has now incorporated this point in its stylebook.
"Void deck" is another misnomer; a "void" when used to refer to "emptiness" is a vast empty space (of Biblical proportion, even!). But I grudgingly accept its usage since terms like "empty deck" or "clear deck" are unlikely to make the cut.
Hawker centres? I agree with Mr Shankar Rajan.
Apart from the still-present mobile ice-cream vendors, itinerant hawkers -- such as the kok kok mee man, the "kachang puteh" man, the candy floss man, the mobile "toot toot" bread man, the goat's milk purveyor, and those amazing fellows on tricycles stacked skyhigh with pots, pans, plastic ware, brooms, feather dusters, etc, etc -- have vanished. There is even a term "vanishing trades" to refer to an entire slew of traditional trades that have, well, vanished.
[That makes these people "vanishing traders"?]
To come back to hawker centres, the adjectival term "hawker" thus lives on in our collective memory and I would hate to see its demise just so purists can sleep better. So, yes, hail the term "hawker centre"; long may it live!
Along the way, Singaporeans have also come up with "hawker food". Imagine a poor sub trying to think of a short and sharp headline -- in place of what is shown below -- if the purists had their way:
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Finally, are you -- ie, a non-American like me -- continually befuddled and bemused by the "shoot-each-other-in-the-foot" campaigning by the US presidential wannabes so far? Fear not, here's an excellent demystifying commentary titled "Empty politics pose biggest threat to US power", written by a non-American, of course:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/empty-politics-pose-biggest-threat-to-u-s-power-clive-crook.html
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