A group of Singaporeans are fighting to have the term removed from the highly venerated Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
“Chinese helicopter” was among 19 new Singaporean words added to the dictionary database in its quarterly update in March.
It refers to a Chinese-educated person who speaks and pronounces English poorly.
It was supposedly commonly used in the 1970s and 1980s but had fallen into disuse until OED decided to bring it back.
Freelance writer and translator Goh Beng Choo and 185 other like-minded Singaporeans have signed a petition to have the term removed from OED, claiming it to be degrading and insulting, Straits Times reported.
The online petition by Goh, 64, a former Straits Times bilingual journalist, was first posted on Monday on the petition website Change.Org.
Goh said the term was an insult to the Chinese-educated.
“With it in the dictionary now, it will give the impression that it is an acceptable term, when actually it is insensitive and highly derogatory,” she argued.
The term appears to have been derived from a mispronunciation of “Chinese-educated”.
Former civil servant and National Institute of Education Lecturer Tan Teng Lang, who now lives in Canada, e-mailed OED’s world English editor Danica Salazar asking for the removal of the term.
She claimed the term “had long degenerated into a label that equated Chinese-educated Singaporeans with inferior quality and low status in society”.
“It was blatantly intended to belittle, humiliate and demean someone on the basis of his less fluent command of English.”
“Not many younger generation Singaporeans have heard of ‘Chinese helicopter’, much less understand its meaning.
“My friends and I are therefore shocked and saddened that an almost forgotten Singlish term now resurfaces in the OED, rubbing salt into an old wound that never healed.”
Dr Salazar, 32, who was in Hong Kong on Friday, when contacted, said that she was aware of the petition but could not comment on it. She had earlier said the process of including new words was “very exacting and rigorous”.
Goh said she would present the petition to the dictionary’s editorial board after the number of supporters passes the minimum 200-supporters mark.
Read earlier story: Oxford Dictionary welcomes ‘teh tarik’ and ‘lepak’