Lost in translation: Aussie school staircase’s Tagalog slip sparks online snickers

A staircase at Parramatta Public School in Sydney, Australia, was meant to be a nod to diversity.

Each step asked a simple question – How are you? – in a different language: Chinese, Bahasa, Tamil, Farsi, German, Japanese.

Then came the Tagalog step.

Instead of “Kumusta” or “Kamusta”, it read “Kumasta”.

The subtle swop in vowels was a faux pas that left a large online horde of Filipinos chuckling, sniggering and exchanging knowing glances.

“Kumasta” – far from being a jovial, friendly greeting – is Tagalog slang for, to put it mildly, “having intercourse”.

The typo likely would have gone unnoticed, but a Philippine online news site, radar.ph, spotted a photo of the staircase and posted it on its Facebook and Instagram accounts on April 21.

The post has since been viewed tens of thousands of times, and set off a hailstorm of naughty verbal callisthenics among Filipinos.

The most common was a play on the question “Kumusta ka na?” – How are you? – that was rejigged to “Kumasta ka na?”, which translates to the altogether different query: Have you had intercourse yet?

In its original post, radar.ph said the staircase was at Little India MRT station in Singapore.

A little sleuthing, however, revealed that it was, in fact, at Parramatta Public School, in Sydney.

Mr Ben Worsley, Parramatta’s principal media officer, confirmed to The Straits Times on April 23 that the staircase was indeed at the school.

“It was removed as soon as the error was noticed. It will be replaced with the correct word, and the school apologises to anyone who has been offended,” he said in an e-mailed response.

Radar.ph, meanwhile, appended a correction to its original post identifying Parramatta as the site of the staircase.