UnNews:Bai-Ling Gual Now Believed To Only Speak One Language
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| Bai-Ling Gual Now Believed To Only Speak One Language | 
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23 February 2008
RATTANAKIRI, CAMBODIA – Bai-Ling Gual, an orphaned ethnic Khmer from Cambodia, discovered in a remote village two years ago, is now believed to speak only one language, despite her homonymic moniker. This comes after an intense two-year study by the International Literalcy Agency, an agency based in Australia that determines whether Asian names actually have anything to do with the things they “literally” sound like. Previous well-known subjects of the agency’s inquiries were Bang Gong, a South Vietnamese immigrant to the United States, and Wang King, a British-born, Hong-Kong engineer.
“We do now have reason to believe that Bai-Ling Gual, is in fact, not a bilingual person”, announced Michael Blight, the lead scientist in this most recent study. “She only speaks Cambodian”. The news came as a blow to the mostly white audience at the press conference, many wondering how they will still be able to continually ridicule Asians. “How can we make fun of these people”, someone shouted, “if their names actually are their names? All of our jokes are ruined.”
And he may have a point. This is the sixteenth time that the ILA has researched this phenomenon, and the fourteenth time it has rejected “literalcy”. The two times that it conferred literalcy, were in the cases of Jon Wan Bang, a twenty-two year-old criminal arms dealer, whom, indeed, really did want to bang – all the time (In fact, his sexual exploits became the stuff of legend), and Bong Yu Suh, who in fact smoked from a bong his entire adult life, until he died at age twenty-five.
In addition, statistics show that the use of Asian names to make derogatory cultural jokes has declined over time, and studies do not seem to show that this trend will be reversing anytime soon.
But one young woman present disagreed with the atmosphere of worry. “As long as coins make noise, and metal vibrates, we’ll have jokes about Asian names”, offered Rosemary Barnes, a thirty-two year-old aspiring comedy writer.
Asians themselves have long been displeased with this insensitivity to their culture. An Asian man present at the meeting – who declined to give his name – said this was the equivalent to the jokes that all whites are drug dealers and that all blacks are Harvard-educated tight-asses. “How would blacks feel if all I ever did was talk about how smart they were and how much money they had? They’d feel like automatons.”
Rich black automatons aside, the issue has taken a very serious turn in the lowly Asian-populated Australia, and the government seems hopeful. “The discovery of Bai-Ling Gual’s lack of bilingualism is a step toward finally reconciling the Asian and Caucasian communities”, said a parliamentary official. With some time and healing, we’ll eventually make things work.”
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This article features first-hand journalism by an UnNews correspondent. |