Scottish Accent

I have done lots of work on the intelligibility of English in Asia. Within this context, it is worth acknowledging that many accents of English in the UK are not intelligible to other people in the UK. Here is a clip of someone from Scotland, David Linden of the Scottish National Party, asking a question in the UK Parliament (YouTube Link). Paul Beresford, who originates from New Zealand, is completely unable to understand David Linden, even though the latter repeated the question.

Can you understand it?

The question from David Linden is this:

Mr Speaker, I know from speaking to a number of parliamentary colleagues that there are still certain aspects of the estate including the northern estate that are not great for people with disabilities; can I ask the Honourable Gentleman what work is being done to make sure that this place is made more accessible, particularly for some of our colleagues who have a disability.

We should remember that issues of intelligibility are not just found in the context of World Englishes.

Language and Literature

I spent last week in Hong Kong as a guest of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Department of English Language. It is interesting to compare the undergraduate programme they offer with that offered by UBD.

We both have an English Language and Literature programme, and in many ways they are quite similar, with students taking core courses in Language and Literature at the start and then being free to choose whichever stream they prefer. But there is one big difference: I asked a number of the CUHK students if they would prefer to be doing just language or literature, and many stated that they would, most expressing a strong preference for literature. In contrast, if you ask the same question of our English Studies undergraduates at UBD, many of them will tell you that they would prefer just to be studying language.

Why does this difference occur? It seems that in Hong Kong there is a passion for reading among quite a few young people; and when asked what they would like to do in the future, many of them said they would like to read more, write poetry, or maybe get engaged in creative writing. But I don't see so much widespread enthusiasm for reading and creative writing in Brunei.

While it is encouraging for me, as a linguist, to see so many students keen to take my courses on the study of language, the lack of enthusiasm for reading fiction by most of my students is unfortunate.

Wikipedia: HK English

Like everyone else, I use Wikipedia all the time to find out about things; and it has a huge amount of incredibly valuable information. However, whenever I look at a page on a topic that I know something about, I generally find the material disappointing (or worse).

The view of most of my fellow academics is, "The material is seriously flawed, so we must avoid it." But my attitude is, "The material is seriously flawed, so we should fix it."

This past week, while I was in Hong Kong, I have been trying to fix the Wikipedia page on Hong Kong English, particularly the section on Segments. Initially, this section was a jumble of stuff on vowels and consonants, sometimes repetitive, much of it simply wrong, and little of it substantiated by suitable references to established research. It was as if various people had overheard snatches of conversation, like the pronunciation of house keeping in my previous post, and they thought "Wow, that's interesting", so they went and put it into the Wikipedia page. And then you get a jumble of complete rubbish.

Anyway, I have now fixed it, mostly totally rewriting it, using a clear structure from consonants to vowels, and providing suitable references throughout. Though I say it myself, I think the revised version is better. Not perfect by any means, but better.

People complain that they change something, and then someone goes and undoes their change. But my experience is that, if everything is properly referenced, nobody will touch it. So far one person has corrected a mismatched quote, but that is all. Let's see how long the rest of it remains intact. I hope that people will continue to contribute to it, but only using properly researched material and not based on haphazard anecdotal data. (And I wish they would indicate who they are — I seem to be the only person who signs my changes using my real name.)

The rest of the article other than the section on Segments is still a real mess (apart from the section on Status, which I added). In particular, the section on Intonation is simply awful. First, it has nothing to do with intonation. Second, it consists of random anecdotal material, almost none of which is supported by references. Third, allophonic transcription is placed within phonemic slashes (e.g. /ˈkʰapʰɛt̚/), which is simply wrong. Allophonic material must be within phonetic square brackets '[]', not phonemic slashes '//'.

If I have the time and energy, I will try to fix it; I'll probably just rewrite it completely. We'll see.

Ash Keping

I have been in Hong Kong this last week. Hong Kong English is interesting; but I was not there long enough to gain many insights. I will share just one thing I overheard.

As I was leaving my room one morning, I heard one of the hotel staff knocking on a door and saying what I heard as 'ash keping', and I had to think carefully before I realised it was, of course, 'house keeping'.

I could summarise the phonetics of it: missing [h] at the start, a monophthong vowel instead of [aʊ] in 'house', [ʃ] instead of [s] at the end of 'house', and stress on the second syllable of 'keeping'. (I would need a proper recording to verify all these things; we need to be careful about anecdotal evidence. More about that in my next post.)

But what struck me was this: there's only a few things she could have been saying: 'Good morning', 'Can I clean your room?', etc. And 'house keeping' is one of that small list. However, even in that context, I failed to understand it. It seems that misunderstandings can sometimes be quite surprising.

Finally, I have sometimes suggested that word stress may not be important in maintaining intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), but it occurred to me that it was the shifted stress on 'keeping' that was key. However, is that right? Maybe it was the combination of all the things I have listed above, and maybe stress shift was minor. Alternatively, perhaps stress shift is only important for people like me from the UK or USA, and ELF speakers from most of the rest of the world would not have had such a problem.

Vacation

I love this cartoon:

At UBD, we have no teaching between mid-May and the start of August; and that is the time I can get most done.

I think I will show this cartoon to all students who are thinking of doing research, and I will ask them: do you look forward to the vacation as a time when you can get more research done? If not, you should not embark on research.

I also wonder how many students at UBD use the vacation as a time to prepare for their modules next semester. My guess is: not many. I almost never have undergraduates come and see me to ask what they should read over the vacation to prepare for next semester. In which case they should not be aspiring to continue with research.

Kedayan

The Wikipedia page on Kedayan (here) claims it is "the de facto national language of Brunei", which is rather startling, as most people in Brunei consider themselves to be speakers of Brunei Malay.

In addition, the Wikipedia page claims that there are 530,000 people living in Brunei, which seems a bit excessive. A more reliable estimate of the population (here) is about 433,000 at the end of May 2018.

I guess Wikipedia is not always accurate!

More than 5 hours

Here's a paragraph from page 1 of the Media Permata of 23 May, 2018:

Najib, yang juga Anggota Parlimen Pekan, mengesahkan perkara itu selepas hadir memberi keterangan lebih lima jam di ibu pejabat SPRM di sini, hari ini. Beliau berkata proces merekod keterangan hari ini mangambil masa antara 10 pagi hingga 2:15 petang.

which migh be tranlated as:

Najib, who is also the Member of Parliament for Pekan, confirmed this issue after being present to give evidence for more than five hours at the head office of SPRM here today. He said the process of recording the evidence today lasted from 10 in the morning till 2:15 in the afternoon.

Are all journalists innumerate? You don't need a higher degree in mathematics to see that 10:00 am to 2:15 pm is not more than 5 hours. So why do they print that?

Blending in English and Malay

I have always claimed that blends in English tend to combine the first half of one word with the second half of another: 'smog' = smoke + fog; 'motel' = motor + hotel; 'infotainment' = information + entertainment. In contrast, those in Malay tend to combine the first half of successive words: cerpen ('short story') = cerita + pendek; tadika ('kindergarten') = taman + didik + kanak.

However, I recently came across some English blends that combine the first half of two words:

• pixel = picture + element
• biopic = biography + picture
• sysop = system operator

So, maybe English is not so different from Malay after all.

The Wording of a Titah

I was just listening to a Titah (speech) by HM Sultan of Brunei to celebrate Brunei's 34th National Day. What is splendid about this titah is that the full speech is available on Youtube (here) and also in written form from the Prime Minister's Office (here). This means I can listen to it and then check anything I don't understand from the written version.

It is also interesting to see where they deviate. At location 2 min 2 sec into the recording, HM says:

Oleh itu dalam apa pun keadaan, kita mestilah berusaha ...

(Because of this, in whatever situation, we must make an effort ...)

but the official text has:

Oleh itu dalam apa jua keadaan, kita mestilah berusaha ...

I wonder what this difference between pun and jua signifies.

investasi

The Malay promoted in Brunei is based on that of Malaysia; but being close to Indonesia, it may be influenced by Bahasa Indonesia to a certain extent. It is therefore interesting to note differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia.

I was recently listening to the on-line edition of Berita Satu (an Indonesian Channel), and I was momentarily caught out by investasi ('investment'). This is partly lexical, as Bahasa Malaysia would use the indigenous word pelaburan; but it is also phonological, as the 'v' was actually pronounced as [f] (so I initially heard it as 'infestation').

Although words with word-final /v/ in English usually have [f] in Bahasa Malaysia (e.g. negatif, naif, ...), word-initial and word-medial 'v' from English is more often retained (e.g. visa). Compare aktif (in which word-final /v/ becomes [f]) with aktiviti (in which medial /v/ is retained). However, it seems that /v/ is always pronounced as [f] in Indonesian.

page 41 of 40

I was recently asked to review a paper for a journal, and the final page of the PDF document has the header 'Page 41 of 40', which is a bit bewildering!

Further investigation shows that the front page is numbered 0, so I guess that explains it. But still, I find 'Page 41 of 40' rather strange!

terafi

Originally, Malay had no /f/, so /f/ only occurs in borrowed words such as faham ('understand') and fikir ('think') from Arabic and filem ('film') and fesyen ('fashion') from English. However, there seems to be some over-generalisation in borrowed words, so I have regularly heard platform spoken with an initial /f/, even though my dictionary shows it as a Malay word with the same spelling as in English, so one would expect an initial /p/.

Yesterday, on the Nasional FM radio station, I heard [terafi], and it took me a while to work out that it was 'therapy'; and my PhD student, Nur Raihan Mohamad, says that she has seen it spelled as 'theraphy' on social media. I wonder if /f/ might become established as standard pronunciation for words such as this with a /p/ in English.

Schadenfreude

'Schadenfreude' is one of my favourite words of English. It means: pleasure gained from the misery of others. Like that feeling you get when you set an impossibly difficult exam and watch the faces of your students when they read it.

It comes from German, literally meaning 'harm-joy'. But it has been used in English for at least a hundred years now.

The equivalent in Chinese is 幸灾乐祸. But what about Malay? Does Malay not have a word for this? Do Malays really never experience this kind of joy?

Hot Food

I went out with my daughter for a meal, and I asked, "Is your food hot?", to which she replied, "Oh, I love spicy food."

Then I said, "No, I meant temperature hot, not spicy hot."

The word 'hot' in English has two distinct meanings: temperature hot, and spicy hot; and while we can easily specify the second one ("is your food spicy?"), we have no easy way to state the first. Saying, "Is your food temperature hot?" is not English, but I can't think of anything better.

I find it bizarre when languages have gaps like this, and there are concepts that we simply cannot express.

Autoantonyms

Autoantonyms are words with two directly opposite meanings. For example, 'sanction' is an autoantonym, because it can mean "to support" or "to condemn".

Another word in this category is 'left': it can mean "departed" ('The man left') or it can mean "stayed" ('There's only one man left'). In fact, this can give rise to potentially ambiguous utterances with two directly contradictory meanings. For example:

There's only one man who's left.

which could mean one man departed or one man stayed behind. This is because 's' could be the weak form of 'has' or of 'is'.

Interestingly, this confusion is unlikely to occur in somewhere like Brunei, in which the weak worm of 'has' almost never occurs. Sometimes avoiding weak forms can help in maintaining intelligibility and avoiding misunderstandings.

preceding / following

Something I find very difficult to understand is why Bruneians so often confuse 'preceding' and 'following'. For example:

• in the phrase 'one hot afternoon', a student said she uttered [f] in 'hot' because of the 'f' in the preceding word; but the 'f' is in the following word, not the preceding word;
• in the phrase 'my same mother', a student claimed that 'same mother' was followed by 'my'

I can't find any reason to explain this confusion.

majority, would

I am currently reading written assignments by my students, and I regularly come across features of their writing such as the following:

• 'majority' with no preceding article: 'Majority of the participants are Malays.' (In my language, I would include 'a' or 'the' before 'majority'.)
• 'would' to indicate generalised future: 'The description would be based on acoustic analysis.' (For me, 'would' indicates something hypothetical, so no acoustic analysis was actually done. I would have to use 'will' in this sentence.)

Given that these features of writing seem to be normal in Brunei English, should I leave them? Or should I correct them?

I tend to correct them, on the basis that my students need to develop standard usage for their future careers. But I acknowledge that this is inconsistent with a World Englishes perspective, in which we accept regional variation.

My own approach is that I tolerate, even celebrate, variation in pronunciation, but written English should conform to international standards. But I am not sure that this viewpoint is really tenable. I suspect that use of 'would' as a variant of 'will' is becoming the norm throughout the world, and it is only a few traditionalists like me who insist that 'would' indicates something hypothetical.

Word length in Malay and English

Words tend to be longer in Malay than in English. This is partly because English has lots of short words, like 'a', 'of', 'to', and 'by', while Malay has fewer. The only common two-letter words in Malay are ke ('to') and di ('at'). At the same time, Malay has more prefixes and suffixes than English, so Malay words can be quite long.

The claim that Malay has longer words than English can easily be checked by comparing two similar texts. Here, I compare the words in the North Wind and the Sun text with its Malay equivalent, Angin Utahar dan Matahari (see here). The average word length in the Malay text is 6.64 letters, while the average word length in the English text is 4.22 letters, and this difference is highly significant (t=7.48, df=189, p<0.0001). A chart showing the distribution of the word lengths is shown here:

From this, we can see that while two- and three-letter words are common in English, they are rare in Malay. In contrast, there are lots of Malay words with 6, 7 and 8 letters, but few in English.

tongsis

In English, blends are usually formed from the first half of one word and the second half of another. For example:

• smog : smoke + fog
• motel : motor + hotel
• edutainment : education + entertainment

In contrast, in Malay blends tend to be the first half of two words, or sometimes three. For example:

• cerpen ('short story') : cerita + pendek
• tadika ('kindergarten') : taman + didik + kanak

However, I just learned one that seems to follow the English pattern, not the usual Malay pattern, though maybe it only exists in Indonesia:

• tongsis ('selfie stick') : tongkat + narsis (lit. 'a narcisist stick')

I wonder if this use of the second part of 'narsis' is influenced by the fact that this word comes from English? Or maybe Indonesian word formation works differently from that of Malay.

mengetahui

In Malay, nearly all roots are bisyllabic. There are a few exceptions; but monosyllabic roots tend to add an extra syllable when there is a prefix, empasising the bisyllabic expectation for roots. For example:

• cap ('stamp') becomes mengecap ('to stamp'), not *mencap
• cat ('paint') becomes pengecat ('painter'), not *pencat
• sah ('valid') becomes mengesahkan ('to confirm'), not *menyahkan

Note that baik ('good') and laut ('sea') are bisyllabic, so there is no need for this extra syllable:

• baik ('good') becomes membaiki ('to improve'), not *mengebaiki
• laut ('sea') becomes pelaut ('sailor'), not *pengelaut

However, I have no explanation why tahu ('to know') becomes mengetahui ('to know') rather than the expected *menahui. Why is the extra syllable added? Perhaps there is a feeling that tahu is monosyllabic, as the /h/ is weak (or sometimes omitted).