Propaganda And Patriotic Labels.

Stampgal, not quite text-speak - they didn't have it in the 1950s

In Malay (and Indonesian) in order to create a plural noun, you simply repeat the word. You can do this by writing it twice 'khabar-khabar' or using a '2' - 'khabar2'.

'Khabar' means 'news'; a common Malay greeting is 'Apa khabar' - 'What news?'. 'Khabar2 angin' is literally 'news from the wind', or 'rumours'.

Fascinating!

Tonymacg, thankyou! I would never have worked that one out...
I didn't really think it could be text speak - That's just how my modern eye/brain was trying to process it after years of exposure to Fones4U and ToysRus
What a great translation, news from the wind = rumours. Language is a universal human skill. The whole gamut of human experience in the world can be found in languages, in the huge range of concepts and ways to express them. I love it!

Posted this else where, but I think applicable here.

Stampgal, I completely agree about the fascination of languages. I feel very sorry for all the single language-speakers: they miss out on so many fascinating new ways of seeing the world.

I wish I could make something more interesting out of the Chinese, but the last two characters together just mean 'rumours'. The second character means 'words' and the first has the principal meaning of 'rumour', although it has a secondary, less common, meaning of 'ballad' or 'song'.

The Tamil I'll have to leave to someone who knows it. I don't.