Tomato

Some linguists claim that television has little influence on the way we speak. We learn our accent from the people around us, not from what we hear on television.

My five-year-old grandson Oliver has been staying with me this past week. He uses the American pronunciation for tomato: [təmeɪtoʊ]. He lives in England and he does not know any Americans, so it seems unlikely that he has heard that pronunciation from people around him. I asked him where he learned it from, and he said it was from a programme called Pepper Pig.

This seems quite convincing evidence that he has learned it from the television, not from people around him.

Bad News

There seems to be a persistent perception in the UK and perhaps everywhere that things are bad and getting worse. But what evidence is there to support this?

Of course, there are reports in the papers about murders and rapes and other violence. But what evidence is there that these are widespread and that they are more frequent than before?

So let me ask you a question: Which country in Western Europe has seen the largest fall in violent crime over the past few years? The answer is: England and Wales. (See this BBC report.)

And here are some more statistics: Between 2003 and 2012, the homicide rate in the UK fell from 1.99 homicides per 100,000 people to 1.00 homicide per 100,000 people. And the number of people treated in hospital for violent crime fell by 14% in 2012. (See this BBC report.)

So why does everyone seem to believe the opposite? It seems to me that the popular press delights in reporting bad news; and in the absence of any major wars in the world at the moment (with the exception maybe of Syria), they are now focussing on bad news in the UK.

I really think we have to stop believing the popular press. The distorting effect that they have on people's perception is stunning.

A Nobel Prize

I just read in the newspaper that Simon Cowell hopes one day to win an Oscar.

Well, I am hoping to win a Nobel Prize. I have no idea which category – maybe World Peace? But I reckon that if Simon Cowel can dream of winning an Oscar, I should be allowed to dream of winning a Nobel Prize.

biskut

Why is the Malay word biskut ('biscuit') rather than biskit? If it were derived from the pronunciation of the English word, it should be biskit.

The Malay word must be influenced by the spelling of the English word. People must have seen the word written and not heard it spoken when they borrowed it into Malay. So this is a kind of cross-linguistic spelling pronunciation.

trekking

I was just listening to a recording of a Bruneian female talking to a Chinese female. In it, the Bruneian asks what the Chinese did when she visited Temburong, and the Chinese answers:

rafting and trekking

Subsequently, the Bruneian transcribed the recording, and she wrote down 'checking' for the last word (though she put it in brackets to indicate she was not sure).

In fact, it is pronounced [tʃekɪŋ], so it is not too surprising that the Bruneian heard it as checking.

The problem is that, in many varieties of British English, initial [tr] is pronounced as something that is rather like [tʃ], so train and chain are almost homophones. It seems as if the Chinese student has imitated a British speaker a bit too closely. And the result is a pronunciation that is likely to be misunderstood in most of the world.

This illustrates the fact that it is not very helpful to imitate people from Britain too closely. There are clearer ways of speaking, and using [tʃ] at the start of words like train and trekking is probably not a good idea.

Book on Brunei English

I just saw the announcement on Amazon of my book Brunei English: A New Variety in a Multilingual Society, written together with my colleague Salbrina Sharbawi and soon to be published by Springer.

Trouble is, how are people in Brunei going to buy it, given the lack of bookshops?

But you, dear reader, can get it directly from Amazon! And, at US$106.56, worth every cent!

Yes, alright, it does seem a bit expensive. I'm not sure if there will be a paperback version one day. Perhaps that will be a bit less expensive.

Birds' Nests

This post has nothing to do with language, but never mind. Here is a picture of the bougainvillea in the window-balcony outside the guest bedroom in my apartment.

In the middle, you can see a birds' nest. We have had quite a few birds nesting in there, and we often wake up to the sound of little birds chirping, as we have nests outside our main bedroom as well.

But what is even more interesting is that a new bird has recently nested in the corner of the balcony, squeezing into a comfy spot between some flower pots and the corner: an owl. And now the baby has hatched, so it sits there waiting for its mother to bring it things to eat every day.

I haven't tried to provide a photograph, as I don't want to disturb it. But it is rather special to have an owl nesting outside one's window, no more than one metre away from where I am sitting at the computer and typing this.

Lexical Doublets

There is a great fondness for paired expressions in Malay, otherwise known as lexical doublets. On page 5 of the Media Permata of 13 March 2013, in an article on rumours that circulate in cyber space, we are told that one particular rumour:

adalah palsu dan tidak benar sama sekali

which might be translated as:

is false and not true at the same time

Of course, English also has some lexical doublets, such as rules and regulations, due care and attention, and goods and chattels, but I suspect that they are mainly found in the legal domain and are less common in ordinary language. In fact, in English I would describe 'false and not true' as tautologous. But it seems to be fine in Malay.

whereby

It is interesting to compare sentence length in English and Malay. Here is the final paragraph in an article from page 3 of Media Permata of 12 March 2013 about changes in the speed limit that have been introduced, quoting the Minister of Communications:

Beliau juga menyatakan bahawa perubahan itu juga adalah untuk keselesaan dan keselamatan pemandu kenderaan berat dan komersial di mana dari permerhatian yang dibuat, had laju yang ada pada masa ini telah banyak menyebabkan pemandu-pemandu kenderaan berat melanggar peraturan seperti memandu melebih had laju atau membawa lebih muatan kerana ingin cepat sampai serta mengaut keuntungan yang lebih.

This might be translated (rather badly as) as:

He also said that this change also was for the comfort and safety of drivers of heavy goods and commercial vehicles whereby from observations that have been made, the speed limit that exists at the current time too often causes drivers of heavy vehicles to break the rules such as driving over the speed limit or carrying too large a load because they want to be fast and grab a greater profit.

Obviously, this is excessively long in English, though it seems to work fine in Malay. And this illustrates the tolerance for long sentences in Malay. Note in particular the use of di mana in Malay as a general-purpose linking conjunction. I have translated this as whereby in the English, but we really don't use whereby like that.

One problem is that students often do use whereby in their written English, and this seems to be influenced by written Malay. I sometimes advise students never to use whereby ever again. It is quite a rare word in English, and its use by Bruneian students almost always creates sentences that are too long.

English and Saving

There has recently been lots of attention to work by a Yale professor called Keith Chen who claims that the use of a future tense in a society can predict the amount of money that is saved. (See for example this BBC report. Also, see this posting in Language Log.) For example, German has no future tense, and Germans tend to save lots of money. But in English, we have will to express the future, and people in the UK and USA tend to save less. Apparently, if you conceptualise the future time in the same terms as the present, then you are likely to save money; but if you compartmentalise the future using a different tense, then you are less likely to save money.

This sounds to me completely whacky, though I understand there is some solid research behind it, based on the language used in weather forecasts in different countries. But I have one fundamental problem with it: English does NOT have a future tense. First, will is a modal verb, not a tense. Second, there are many ways of expressing a future action: 'I will leave tomorrow', 'I am leaving tomorrow', 'I am going to leave tomorrow', 'I leave tomorrow', etc. Third, notice that the last example involves the simple present to represent future time.

Let us next consider Malay. Presumably, this is classified as having no future tense, but I don't see any clear evidence that Malay speakers have a tendency to save lots of money. And furthermore, in Malay you can express future time with akan. So, how is akan any different from the English will?

I simply don't understand it. And it seems completely off-the-wall, even if there is lots of good research supporting it.

maging

This morning, I heard on the radio a report that the authorities in Malaysia are trying to promote the use of the words maging ('carnivore'), being a blend of makan ('eat') and daging ('meat'), and maun ('vegetarian'), being a blend of makan ('eat') and daun ('leaf').

One might note that these words take the English pattern of blends, with the first part of one word and the last part of another (e.g. smog from smoke + fog) rather than the more common Malay pattern with the first part of each word (e.g. cerpen 'short story' from cerita 'story' + pendek 'short').

It will be interesting to see if these new words get accepted by the public. My feeling is that words promoted by the authorities often fail to catch on. In Brunei, the authorities try to promote the use of awda ('you'), derived from awak ('Mr.') and dayang ('Miss'). But even though one often hears awda used in official announcements, I have never heard ordinary people actually saying it.

mengerikan

Looking up words in a Malay dictionary can be problematic, as you have to identify the root of the word. I was reminded of this just a couple of days ago when I was trying to find mengerikan in the dictionary, and I didn't know if the root was eri, keri or ngeri so whether I should be looking it up under 'e', 'k' or 'n'. (In fact, the root is ngeri, 'fear', and mengerikan means 'frightening'.)

Just like Malay, English has prefixes and suffixes. But fortunately in English, prefixes in English change the meaning substantially (they are derivational), so for example you look up distrust under 'd' and not 't'; and words like walks, walking and walked which have inflectional suffixes are all listed under 'w', so there is no problem.

Mind you, the problems of looking up a word in a Malay dictionary are trivial compared to the difficulty of looking up Chinese characters. When using a Chinese dictionary, you need to guess the radical and then count the number of strokes, and that can be a serious challenge. In comparison, the difficulties posed by Malay dictionaries are minor.

Pangolin

On Sunday, a bunch of us from the Brunei Nature Society and the UBD club 1stopBrunei went to the Teraja Waterfall near Labi. It was a splendid trip through the forest.

While we were there, we released into the wild a pangolin (ant-eater) that had been found along Jalan Jerudong.

Something I learned from the Media Permata this morning is that the word pangolin comes from the Malay pengguling, which means 'thing that rolls up' (from the root guling, 'to roll up'). Indeed it did roll itself up most of the time while it was with us, probably as a defence mechanism, or maybe it was just shy.

Admiring the Sunset

Here a picture of the sunset from my apartment in Brunei.

There's a story from Chinese philosophy that goes like this:

There was once a monk who every day went out for a walk. And each day he would invite one of his disciples to accompany him. There was just one rule: no talking.

One day, he went out as usual with a selected disciple. As they stood on the top of a hill, there was a magnificent sunset. And the disciple blurted out, "That's magnificent!"

From that day on, the monk never again invited that disciple to join him.

One day, the disciple asked him, "Why are you so cruel? I only said two words!"

And the monk replied, "Yes, but when you were saying those words, you were no longer appreciating the sunset."

Why do we have this constant urge to say something? Why can't we just admire the sunset in silence? What is it about humans that makes us need to keep on talking all the time?

In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, an intergalactic visitor to Earth, called Ford Prefect, ponders this same question:

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day", or "You're very tall", or "Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?" At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical.

I am with Ford Prefect here. I have never understood the need for us humans to talk all the time. And if we talked a bit less, maybe we would think a bit more.

Anyway, here's another sunset from my apartment.

Associate Professor

There is a tension in Malay between indigenous vocabulary and words borrowed from English. So, for example, one finds both kegiatan and aktiviti, which both mean 'activity'.

Sometimes, this affects not just words but also phrases, so a calque from English can compete with an indigenous phrase.

The usual Malay for 'Associate Professor' is Profesor Madya. However, I saw Profesor Bersekutu on page 2 of the Media Permata of 17 January, 2013:

where bersekutu means 'federated' so is presumably the equivalent for 'associated'.

Or perhaps Profesor Bersekutu does not really occur in Malay, and this was just a mistake by a translator who was looking up every word separately in a dictionary..