to save his life

Reading English football news in a Malay newspaper can be quite challenging. Take this extract from page 22 of the Media Permata of 12 October 2013, about Joey Barton commenting on Sir Alex Ferguson.

Saya tidak berada di sini untuk tidak menghormati Fergie - seorang pengurus hebat, ikon, kemuncak pengurus-pengurus Britain - tetapi dia tidak dapat meletakkan kejurulatihan untuk menyelamatkan jiwanya.

This might be translated back into English as:

I am not here to disrepect Fergie - a wonderful manager, an icon, the best of British managers - but he couldn't leave the training to save his life.

What? "he couldn't leave the training to save his life"! What does that mean?

The trouble here is that English has a saying "he couldn't X to save his life", where X is any action. So: "he couldn't write a book to save his life", or "he couldn't kick a ball to save his life" ... But the translator has kept the 'to save his life' part, and then must have assumed that 'lead the training to save his life' didn't make sense, so has changed 'lead' into 'leave'. But it just doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I looked it up on the web, and I found the original here:

The more complete quote can be found here:

so

A rather common word in spoken Malay nowadays is the conjunction so, borrowed from the English word. I haven't seen it in any dictionary yet; but it seems to be very common, especially with younger speakers.

This clip from the Singapore newschannel Berita Suria (here) suggests that the person being interviewed says jadi dalam situasi begini ('so in a situation like this'); but he doesn't actually say jadi; he says so.

It is interesting that the people doing the subtitles are happy to accept situasi as a word of Malay, even though it comes from the English 'situation'; but they feel a need to change 'so' into jadi. I wonder how long it will take before 'so' is accepted as a word of Malay.

cedok

The phonology of Malay has a rule of vowel harmony: if the vowel in the first syllable of a bisyllabic word is /e/, then the second syllable can have /e/ or /o/ but not /i/ or /u/. (The vowels must agree in height - see here.) However, even official media channels sometimes get the spelling wrong.

Here is a screen shot of a news report from the Singapore TV station, Suria, of 19 December 2012, about money that is paid out by the organisation Pertapis:

The second word is dicedok ('ladled out'). But note that it is spelled deceduk instead of the expected dicedok.

stress on

We usually claim that stress is a transitive verb, so there is no need for a preposition such as on between stress and its object. And, on page 69 of my book on Brunei English published by Springer (here), I claim that the following extracts from local newspapers reflect Brunei English usage:

The driving schools are also advised to stress on the importance of patience ...

The minister stressed on the importance of paying attention to the field of science and technology ...

However, today I saw the verb stress followed by the preposition on in an article about the visit of the Australian PM to Indonesia in the BBC World website (here):

This makes me wonder if the usage is becoming the norm. It is just the sort of change we would expect to take place in English, as it regularises the grammar by making the verb stress behave like the noun. Furthermore, one can focus on something, so why not stress on? Maybe Brunei English is leading the way with the evolution of English!

fall

I have previously discussed calques, where a phrase is translated word-for-word from one language into another. Calques seem to be rather common in Malay, including mengambil tempat ('take place') that I mentioned in my previous post.

Another kind of calque is where two separate meanings of a word in English are found for the same word in Malay. In English, 'fall' can refer to something dropping down or to the season between summer and winter, and we find the same for the Malay word luruh. For example, duan-daun yang luruh means 'leaves that have fallen', but musim luruh means 'autmum', otherwise known as 'fall' in American English.

Incidentally, the American usage of 'fall' to refer to this season is not an innovation. As with so many features of American English, it is actually retaining a traditional word, and 'autumn' is the new word, borrowed from French in the 13th century and eventually displacing the Germanic term 'fall' in England but not the USA.

mengambil tempat

Sometimes I can only understand something written in Malay by first translating it word-for-word into English. For example, in an article on page 5 of the Media Permata of 17 September 2013, one of the pragraphs begins with:

Banyak perubahan telah mengambil tempat ...

which can be glossed in English as :

Many changes have taken place ...

I could not understand the use of mengambil tempat until I put it into English; it seems to be a direct calque from the English 'take place'.

I have checked in the Pusat Rujukan Persuratan Melayu webiste (here), and there are plenty of instances of mengambil tempat, such as:

Dia mengambil tempat berdekatan dengan pintu agar dialah orang pertama yang dapat bercakap dengan Menteri.

for which the translation is given as:

He positioned himself next to the door so that he would be the first to speak to the Minister.

But they all seem to carry the literal meaning of 'take place' meaning "adopt a position", and not the figurative extension of the phrase to mean "happen".

So, is the use of menagmbil tempat found in the Media Permata a new extension of the phrase? Or is it just a lazy reporter translating word-for-word without considering the context? I don't know the answer to this.

inklusif

This is an extract from an article on page 1 of Media Permata of 7 September 2013 about a titah by HM the Sultan of Brunei, who has been attending the G20 summit in St. Petersburg:

... menyokong cadangan untuk memberikan keutamaan kepada penyertaan semua pihak atau inclusiveness.

Baginda juga bertitah bahawa pencapaian pertumbahan yang inklusif telah menjadi teras kapada matlamat ASEAN ...

which might be translated as:

... support the proposal to give priority to the participation of all parties or inclusiveness.

His Majesty also said that achieving growth that is inclusive has become a key goal of ASEAN ...

It is interesting to see how inclusiveness is first glossed in Malay as penyertaan semua pihak ('the participation of all parties') together with the original word in its English spelling, but then immediately afterwards inklusif is used with a Malay spelling ('k' instead of 'c', and 'f' instead of 'v').

This seems to offer a glimpse into the process of English words being borrowed into Malay.

The Dangers of Being Left-handed

I just saw an article on the BBC website (here), discussing some research showing that left-handed people tend to die nine years earlier than right-handed people. This seems an extraordinary finding. Can it really be true that tools such as knives and scissors are mostly designed for right-handed people, and they are dangerous for left-handed people to use, with the result that left-handers injure themselves more often and die off earlier? Surely not!

In fact, as pointed out in the BBC article, the research is completely flawed. But it is interesting to consider why, and also to see if you can spot the flaws.

In the original report, the researchers traced the families of 2000 people who had recently died and asked whether they had been left-handed or right-handed. And they discovered that the average age of the left-handers when they died was nine years less than the right-handers. It seems straightforward, doesn't it? Can you see the flaw? I admit that I couldn't, and I had to read the explanation.

In fact, until quite recently, it was the practice to encourage left-handers to conform to the norm, so there was substantial pressure in the home and at school for them to change. This means that many of the older people who were reported by their family to be right-handed would actually have been left-handed if there had not been that social pressure. In contrast, the same pressures would not have existed for the younger people to conform, so the proportion of left-handed and right-handed younger people who died would have been more natural.

What is stunning is that this research was published in top medical journals and nobody spotted the flaw. It seems that we are sometimes not very good at quite elementary logical and statistical analysis.

dived / dove

What is the past tense of dive? For most people, it is dived, but for a significant minority of people, particularly in the USA, it is dove.

Now, you probably think that dove is an archaic form that has been preserved by a few more conservative speakers. But actually, it is not. Historically, dive was always a regular verb, so this occurrence of dove is in fact an innovation.

This is rather surprising, as we expect verbs to become more regular, not less. For example, brew, chew, shove and suck were all once irregular, but now they all take the usual -ed past tense suffix. So why has dive gone in the opposite direction and become irregular for some speakers?

My guess is that it is by analogy with drive. I suspect that drive became used rather more often in the twentieth century as more and more people owned cars, especially in the USA; and the irregular nature of drive/drove has influenced dive as well. (The only other verb with this -ive/-ove pattern that I think of is strive/strove, but this is such a rare verb that I suspect its influence is less substantial.)

In Brunei, I have never heard dove as the past tense of dive, but maybe it will appear one day. I read today that Brunei has 1 car for every 2.65 people, which makes it the eighth highest rate of car ownership in the world. According to Wikipedia, the highest rate of car ownership is for San Marino, which has more cars than people. (This Wikipedia page lists Brunei at number 36, but maybe those figures are out of date.)

One way or another, people in Brunei have a lot of cars, so presumably the verb drive/drove is used rather regularly in Brunei English, and it is possible that this will provide a stimulus for the adoption of dove as the past tense of dive in Brunei.

longitude

How do you pronounce longitude?

I have always pronounced it [lɒŋgɪtju:d]; and I have just checked Wells' Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, which confirms that 85% of people in Britain prefer this pronunciation, while 15% opt for [lɒndʒɪtju:d]. It is gratifying to confirm that I am in the majority.

However, I have just watched a short BBC documentary (here) about the development of technology to measure longitude, and the presenter consistently pronounced it as [lɒŋɪtju:d] – i.e. with no [g] at the end of the first syllable. This alternative does not even feature in Wells' dictionary. So did the presenter get it wrong? Or maybe the pronunciation is changing.

Actually, the pronunciation of words with long as the stem is interesting. While most words that end with [ŋ] have no [g] when suffixes are attached (e.g. sing/singer, ring/ringer, cling/clinger, etc), long is an exception, as longer does have [g]. Another exception like this is stronger which also has [g].

However, maybe the announcer is actually following a rule: long/longer involves an inflectional -er comparative suffix; and maybe this suffix behaves differently from the derivational suffix that converts the verb sing to the noun singer. And maybe longitude actually has a derivational suffix on the end, so it should behave like sing/singer rather than long/longer.

Nevertheless, longitude with no [g] in the middle sounds odd to me.

Use of Mobiles

Don't you hate it when people use their mobile phones when driving? And it seems just as prevalent in Brunei, maybe more, than the rest of the world.

But I bet you do it yourself! In fact, people seem to expect others to answer their phone immediately, whether they are driving or not. So, on the one hand we all agree that using a mobile while driving is not a good idea. But at the same time we all do it!

I just read a news report that the driver of a train in Spain was on the phone when it crashed, killing 79 people (see here). So even train drivers do it!

For the record: I never, ever use my mobile phone when I am driving. So don't be annoyed if I do not respond immediately to your call sometimes.

'o' instead of 'u'

Someone recently asked me why the letter 'o' is pronounced as /ʌ/ in so many words of English: come, company, some, done, money, monkey, dove, love, above. Why are these words not spelled with 'u'?

The answer is this: in cursive handwriting, the sequences 'um', 'un' and 'uv' are rather difficult to decipher, because there are so many short vertical lines occurring one after another. As a result, scribes preferred to use 'o' rather than 'u' before 'm', 'n' and 'v'. Note that there is no such problem before letters such as 's' or 'p', which is why words like must and cup have the expected 'u'.

The only words that don't fit into this pattern involve 'o' before 'th': other, nothing, mother, brother, smother, etc. I don't know why 'o' rather than 'u' occurs in these words.

One other observation: in Brunei, there is a tendency for spelling pronunciation to occur, and about half of UBD undergraduates have /ɒ/ rather than /ʌ/ in the first syllable of company. I don't know how many other words have this kind of spelling pronunciation.

In fact, this shift is also found in some words in Britain: about 30% of people in Britain now have /ɒ/ rather than the traditional /ʌ/ in one, and this trend is strongest among the younger generation, suggesting it will one day become the norm. Furthermore, Coventry once had /ʌ/ in its first syllable but it usually now has /ɒ/, and covert used to be /kʌvət/ but 46% of people in Britain now have /əʊ/ in the first syllable of this word.

It seems that spelling pronunciation is widespread, and places like Brunei may be leading the way in this respect!

(All percentages for British English above are from: Wells, J. C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Harlow: Longman. The data about UBD undergraduates is from page 41 of: Deterding, D, & Salbrina, S. (2013). Brunei English: A New Variety in a Multilingual Society. Dordrecht: Springer. The observation that scribes avoided 'u' before 'm', 'n' and 'v' is from page 118 of: Algeo, J. (2010). The Origins and Development of the English Language (6th ed.). USA: Wadsworth Cengage.)

Book on Brunei English

My book (together with Salbrina Sharbawi) on Brunei English has now been published by Springer, which is nice. One problem is: how can people in Brunei buy it?

Of course, you can get it from Amazon (here). One really strange thing about the Amazon information: you can buy a new copy of the book for US$103.90; or you can buy a used copy of the book for US$103.90. Bizarre!

It seems a pity if a book about Brunei is not actually for sale in Brunei, so I have tried to persuade Booker's in Gadong to stock it. The boss there was a bit hesitant, as it is likely to cost nearly $200 and he doesn't think too many people will buy it. But he agreed to get one or two copies. I just hope he doesn't get stuck with them and be unable to sell them. Maybe a few of my students will see that, even at $200, it will be relevant for so many of their courses at UBD that it is worth buying. We will see.

Bruneian English : Wikipedia

Yesterday, I created a new Wikipedia page on Brunei English (here). I notice there have already been several edits to it, mostly by SamX (who I assume is a member of staff at Wikipedia). The majority of the edits are helpful, putting in relevant links to other Wikipedia pages for example. But the title of the page has now been changed from Brunei English to Bruneian English. Hmm ... I'm not sure about that one.

Never mind. I just hope the page provides a valuable resource. I have also tried to create a reasonably wide-ranging list of references which, I hope, can offer a sort of bibliography on Brunei English. I will try to add to that, so that it offers a useful resource for researchers and students.

I believe the page as it stands is well constructed. Of course, anybody can add to it or change it how they like. I just hope that people will reference things properly when they add to it; but maybe I am being naive here, as undoubtedly all kinds of things will be added. Let's just hope that what people add is constructive.

Wordiness

A question that sometimes arises in Malay-English translation is this: Is Malay wordier than English? One way to look into this is to compare comparable texts and see how long they are.

If we look at the Malay version of the daily news summary for 23 June from The Brunei Times (here), it is 3 minutes 3 seconds long, while the English equivalent (here) is just 1 minute 40 seconds long. So, why is there such a large difference?

The first difference is that the Malay newsreader starts with the full Islamic greeting, which takes about 6 seconds, while the English newsreader just says hello.

The second difference is that the Malay newsreader gives the full title for Prince Sufri: Duli Yang Teramat Mulia Paduka Seri Pengiran Bendahara Seri Maharajara Permaisuara Pengiran Muda Haji Sufri Bolkiah. This takes about 7 seconds to say. In contrast, the English newsreader just says: His Royal Highness Prince Sufri Bolkiah. This takes less than 2 seconds.

But what about ordinary text? I'll need to analyse that further. But one immediate observation: the Malay version has berkenan berangkat (lit. 'consented to attend') while the English equivalent is the single word graced.

Pronunciation of Chinese

Newsreaders in Brunei have to get the Malay names right, and they can be impressively proficient in reading the full name of the Sultan and other important people without stumbling. However, there seems little effort to find out how Chinese names or words should be pronounced. It can't be that difficult to find out how to pronounce names and words written in Pinyin, and I don't understand why they don't do it.

Take, for example, the Brunei Times Berita video for 20 June (here). The newsreader reads the news pretty proficiently, but when she gets to the Chinese word Xiyouji Qingzhi, she pronounces it as [sijoutʃi tʃiŋtʃu] instead of [sijoudʒi tʃiŋdʒə], which would be much closer to the correct pronunciation without introducing any unfamiliar sounds. It's a pity that broadcasters in Brunei don't do more to help their newscasters to say something that is a bit more accurate.

In comparison, the English newsreader for the same clip (here) gets the words completely right (presumably because she is Chinese, so she probably speaks Mandarin). So why didn't the Malay newsreader ask her Chinese fellow newsreader for advice?

Brunei Times Berita

An excellent resource for me in my efforts to learn Malay is the daily 2-minute news summary in Malay provided by the Brunei Times. It is splendid because it allows me to replay the clips repeatedly and thereby try and work out the bits I cannot decipher first time through.

I was listening to the video for 11 June (here). Two things surprised me about it:

First, 16 seconds from the start, the newsreader pronounces berita ('news') as [bitɐ], with just two syllables and barely a hint of [r]. While it is expected that a common word like this will exhibit some reduction, the omission of the [r] is surprising given that the Malay spoken in Brunei is usually fully rhotic.

Second, this is not a live recording but an edited video; so it surprises me that they did not re-record the parts where the newsreader stumbles over words, particularly at location 1:18 from the start. Of course, we all stumble when speaking, and newsreaders are no exception; but for an edited video, one would have thought this could be corrected.

Plasticarian

I just learnt about the word plasticarian from WorldWideWords. It refers to someone who tries to live without using plastic. Of course, it is a blend of plastic and the -arian ending. What is a bit unusual about it is that -arian usually indicates something positive: a vegetarian loves vegetables, and a humanitarian loves humans, but a plasticarian hates plastics.

Regardless of how the word is formed, we need a few more plasticarians in Brunei. Plastic bags and bottles are all over the place, not just in Kampung Ayer and in the Brunei River, but even in the forests. And while it is true that it almost impossible nowadays to live without plastic, it would be helpful if a few more people reduced the amount they used, or at least did not discard their rubbish so carelessly.

Brunglish

A few years ago, I did a survey among my fourth-year students at UBD, and about half of them selected Brulish as the name for the colloquial variety of English in Brunei, while the other half said there was no common name for it. This contrasts with the situation in Singapore, where everyone would agree that Singlish is the common name for the colloquial variety. They may not like this term, and some of them may not approve of the use of Singlish, but everyone would agree that the name exists.

This illustrates the different status of English in Singapore and Brunei. In Singapore, a colloquial variety is established, and there is a common name for it; but in Brunei, it is not clear that a distinct colloquial variety of Brunei English exists. This is partly because English is the universal inter-ethnic lingua franca in Singapore, while Brunei Malay more often takes on that role in Brunei.

However, last week some teachers told me that their pupils use the term Brunglish. I don't know if this term is widespread or not; but if it does become established, it might indicate that a wider role for a colloquial variety of English is emerging in Brunei.

Strop

When my grandchildren were here earlier this month, it gave me the chance to hear new words that are being used in UK. When my granddaughter has a tantrum, her parents say she is having a strop.

The noun strop is derived from the adjective stroppy by a process we call back-formation. The more usual process of word-creation is derivation: you add a suffix on the end of a word to create a new word. So -y can be added to the noun wind to make the adjective windy, or cloud to make cloudy, or to sleep to make sleepy. But by the reverse process, you can take off what seems to be a suffix, which is why you can take the -y off the end of stroppy to create strop.

The process of back-formation has been around for some time, so donate was created by removing the -tion from donation, and edit was created from editor. I don't know if back-formation is becoming more common nowadays.

The other thing I don't know is how widespread the use of strop is. It might be just a coinage that is used by my son and his family.