Spam

It is not straightforward to leave comments on my blog. I know that, as a few people have told me that they have given up in frustration. I probably should fix it; but I won't. The reason is that I would get too many spam messages, and then I would have to work out a way to filter them out.

A recent post in Language log (here) mentioned the fact that they had just reached 1 million spam messages, and some of these messages can be quite sophisticated, at first sight seeming to come from people who appreciate the blog, such as:

Finally, an issue that I am passionate about. I have looked for information of this caliber for the last several hours. Your site is greatly appreciated.

and:

I had to tell you this is a really great website, wonderful theme and it makes a change to see such a great page.

Fortunately, I haven't had too many of those, though someone did leave about ten links to a translation service throughout the comments section of my blog, which was really irritating as it took me a while to delete all of them. I hope you can see why I don't make it easier to leave comments.

The worst I get is a regular email message from someone. (The sender changes, but the link is the same, which is why it is hard for me to block.) It goes something like this (with the link removed, for obvious reasons):

Hi David,

We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog! .... [It] would be an interesting story for your readers to check out and discuss on your blog.

Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read.

Thanks

Note that there is no indication that the sender has actually read my blog. I have received this message, or something similar, about six or seven times now. Maybe I should hide my email address.

Zero-risk Culture

I just read an article in the online Guardian (here), discussing how the army in Britain is planning to cut 20,000 jobs. At the same time as eliminating jobs, one of the goals is to improve the equipment used by the army.

Quoting General Sir Peter Hall:

the sort of zero-risk culture that is understandably sought in other walks of society ought to be achievable in the battlefield

Er ... zero-risk culture in the battlefield? Surely that is absurd! Maybe they are hoping that the only kind of battlefield they encounter will be one simulated on a computer, or something like that.

This kind of idiotic marketing double-speak seems to be everywhere these days.

Hyphens

In a previous post (here), I discussed word spacing in the local Malay newspaper, and I suggested that the occasional absence of spacing on some lines might arise because there is no sohpisticated software to implement automatic hyphenation in Malay.

This seems to be confirmed by the fact that unexpected hyphens sometimes occur in the middle of a line. For example, see this extract from an article on page 2 of the Media Permata of 24 January 2012, discussing a recent accident on the coastal highway in Brunei:A translation of this paragraph is:

This incident, which is estimated to be the biggest that has occurred for the past few years, occurred at approximately 7:00 in the evening. But the police are still investigating the cause of the incident.

Note that pernah ('has') and the second token of kejadian ('incident') are both suitably hyphenated, to ensure that the spacing on the line is good, and kira-kira ('approximately') is also hyphenated, as is usual for reduplicated words. But what is interesting is the spurious hyphenation in kebelakangan ('previous', 'past'). My assumption is that the journalist or editor inserted a hyphen to get the spacing right and then forgot to remove it when the text was changed so it was no longer necessary to break up the word. I believe that this would generally not occur in English newspapers, as hyphenation would be done automatically.

One other thing to notice about this paragraph is the repetition in Malay of berlaku ('occur'), which I have retained in the translation. Such repetition of lexical items is usually avoided in English, but it does not seem to be a problem in Malay. If I were to try and offer a better translation, I might replace one of the tokens of 'occurred' with another word, maybe 'happened'.

Food Symbolism

My wife, being Chinese, has some ideas about food that are a bit strange to me. She believes that the shape and colour of food indicates what it is good for. So, for example, beetroot (being red) is good for the blood; and walnut halves are good for the brain.

What I don't understand is why she keeps on encouraging me to eat more bananas.

Happy Chinese New Year. Or 'congratulations and get rich' (gong xi fa cai), as they say in Chinese.

FOMO

The American Dialect Society is currently voting on its selection for Word of the Year. You can see the list of candidates here.

There are lots of fun suggestions, such as: humblebrag ('expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter'); brony ('adult male fan of the “My Little Pony” cartoon franchise'); and assholocracy ('government by obnoxious multi-millionaires').

But my favourite is FOMO ('fear of missing out'). Of course, in this part of the world, we don't need this new word, as we already have kiasu. So my suggestion is actually this: let's forget FOMO and promote the use of kiasu instead. It's far more stylish and evocative.

Suria Berita

For someone like me who is trying to learn Malay, especially when I have so few oppourtunities to actually speak the language in Brunei, one of the greatest resources is Youtube.

I have found the postings of extracts from the news by the Singapore Malay-language channel Suria particularly valuable because they include subtitles. Mostly, the subtitling is pretty good, but occasionally there are errors, which can be quite confusing. For example, in this clip from a news item from September 2009 (see here) about a chap called Res who was given tickets to the F1 race in Singapore, the third word seems to be Is.But that can't be right, as Is is not a word in Malay. In fact, it should be ia ('it'); and the sentence means 'But it must have been a highly valued gift for Res, a loyal fan of F1'.

I guess people who are more fluent in Malay would not even notice the mistake.

Mixing in Public Speeches

Yesterday I attended the welcoming speech by the Vice Chancellor of UBD to the new intake of students. The first few minutes were entirely in Malay (as is appropriate when Malay is the official language of Brunei). He then switched to English for a few minutes (as is appropriate for a university that is mostly English-medium). But as he continued, he started increasingly switching back and forth, often within a sentence. This was clearly done to convey the informality and friendliness that he felt was suitable for a welcoming address. I wish I had taken notes; but I remember he started one clause with kalau ('if') but then finished it in English, and there were many, many such instances.

It is really interesting to see how such frequent switching between Malay and English is seen as the way to show informality, even on the occasion of a welcoming address to incoming students. My guess is that virtually all informal discourse in Brunei is characterised by this kind of switching and mixing.

Singular 'they'

I sometimes see students write sentences like this:

Every student must remember to bring his book.

I believe that it is inappropriate to use his if some of the students are female, so I recommend avoidance of usage like that.

So what should you do? Some people suggest his or her. While that is certainly non-sexist, it is rather ugly.

How about the following?

Every student must remember to bring their book.

Traditionally, this would be regarded as wrong, as their should refer to a plural noun, and student is singular. But the use of their and they to refer to a gender-neutral singular noun is becoming increasingly acceptable.

In the on-line Guardian (here), I saw the following, quoting a medical specialist:

But if any woman is worried, then they should contact their surgeon or GP.

Here, they is used even though we know that the referrent must be female and so she would seem to be perfectly OK.

It seems that they really is becoming more acceptable for referring to indeterminate singular nouns; and I believe it is no longer appropriate for English teachers to mark it as wrong.

Word Spacing

There's a curious phenomenon in the local Malay language newspaper of sometimes allowing words to be printed with almost no space between them. For example, this is from page 4 of Media Permata of 29 December 2011:I find this very difficult to parse, because of the lack of spacing between the words. If we break it up, it is:

membawa pembangunan pesat sosioekonomi
('bring fast socio-economic development')

And here is another example from the same page:which is actually:

Ekspo itu juga mengadakan pertandingan
('The expo also has a competition')

I am not sure if this lack of spacing between words only occurs with Malay, or if it also occurs in English language newspapers but I don't notice it because I find it easier to parse English. My guess is that it is more common with Malay.

The issue clearly arises because of the long word at the end a line. However, elsewhere in the newspaper, there is plenty of hyphenation to split up long words and maintain normal spacing. So it is not clear why hyphenation is not used in these two examples.

My guess is that the software has difficulty doing it automatically for Malay, so it has to be done manually; and the typesetters don't have time to get it completely right for every single article every day. In contrast, automatic hyphenation is easily implemented for English, so it is not a problem in English newspapers.

Language Confusion

In my previous post, I discussed confusion over the meaning of 'fasting', specifically whether it involves abstaining from drinking water or not. A friend in America, Judy Gilbert, wrote to me saying I was lucky I only had to abstain from water from 1 pm, as in her experience she was not allowed to have any water after 12 am.

Now, that raises another confusion: what do we mean by 12 am? Is it midnight or midday? I don't think anyone knows. Which is why many people prefer to say 12 midnight or 12 midday. (You may also notice that flights never arrive or leave at 12 midnight, because then nobody knows which day it is. If I say 12:00 midnight (00:00) on Wednesday, does it leave Wednesday early morning or Wednesday late at night? I believe that flights always arrive or leave at 23:55 or at 00:05, but never at 00:00.)

Anyway, it is interesting to note how confusing language can be, even in the absence of cross-cultural issues such as that involving 'fasting'. For example, if I suggest we meet up next Friday, when should you come? The Friday later this week, or the following one, next week? Nobody seems to know.

And here's another one: in the UK, if I invite you to tea, do you expect to have a meal or just a few cakes with a cup of tea? Nobody knows. And at least once my wife and I have had the embarrassing situation of inviting somebody for tea and then, after quite a while when they didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave, suddenly realising that they were expecting a complete meal.

English really is confusing. But maybe all languages are.

fasting

Recently, I had to undergo a procedure in the hospital, and I was told that I should fast on the day of the procedure, from 1 pm onwards.

Now, what do you understand by that? My understanding was that I should not eat food, but I could drink as much as I liked. But when I arrived at the hospital, the nurse saw me drinking water, and I was then told that the procedure had to be postponed because fasting involves abstaining from water as well as food.

I just checked my New Webster's Dictionary, and this is what it says about fasting:I also checked my Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, and this is the entry:Both dictionaries confirm that fasting is about abstaining from food, but there is no mention of water.

The confusion arises because, in Brunei, during the month of Ramadan, all Muslims engage in puasa, which inolves abstaining from food and water from dawn till dusk; and in English this is described as fasting. In other words, there has been a shift in meaning of this word as it is used in Brunei English.

I now know that you cannot undergo an anesthetic if you have been drinking water, and if the nurse hadn't seen me drinking water, they would have gone ahead. In my case, there was no permanent damage, as the procedure was rescheduled. But I can imagine cases when this misunderstanding could be fatal.

Learning the IPA

There is a cartoon called Penny and Aggie where the two main characters have just started university, and it tracks their experiences in attending a course in introductory linguistics. Here is an extract from one of them, in which the professor explains that there are 107 symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (See here for the full strip.)There are a couple of things I did not understand in this cartoon until I saw them discussed in Language Log (here).

• The green IPA symbols appearing behind the student are a direct allusion to the 'green rain' from The Matrix.
• The student is probably panicking because she has just discovered that she cannot enter the IPA on her tablet.

Now, I have seen The Matrix, but I did not pick up the allusion; and I just assumed that she was panicking because she had to learn so many new symbols. It seems there are rather a lot of things in the modern world which I need help in understanding!

I just hope my students at UBD don't panic so much when I introduce the IPA to them.

Traffic Lights

This is the headline and picture from an article on page 9 of Media Permata of 9 December 2011:The headline says: 'Mata-Mata junction traffic lights start operation'.

I wonder in how many other countries you might find the installation of a set of traffic lights reported as a news item in the national newspaper.

I guess that is because in most countries there are strikes, riots, floods, and other more urgent things to report. Maybe that is why I like living in Brunei.

Let's hope the new traffic lights help improve the flow of traffic along Jalan Gadong.

Pronunciation of Malay

I have been developing a webpage (here) on the Pronunciation of Malay, built around a paper I wrote together with my UBD colleague, Adrian Clynes, and published in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (Vol 41, No 2).

Developing a website that is complementary to a paper published in a journal raises some interesting issues. In the website, you can do so many things that are not possible in a printed article, including:

• linking the recordings directly to the text, so that readers can easily listen to the data
• linking each in-text citation to its entry in the List of References, to enable readers to follow up a reference with a click of the mouse
• facilitating cross-referencing, so you don't just find 'see below', but can easily follow through a link

and many more (not all of which I have implemented).

Currently, publishing in international journals is the gold standard by which academics such as me are judged. But I am certain that this is going to change, unless the journals adapt fast (which, of course, they are trying to do). And when that happens, I suspect that printed copies of journals will become quaint relics of a bygone era.

One issue that will remain is how we referee on-line research papers, to ensure that the material that is published is properly vetted. Already, there is too much rubbish available on the Web, and there is a need to sift out the solid research from the dross.

We will see how this is achieved.

Pronouns in Malay

I have been watching a Malay film called Putar Alam. Some of the characters, particularly the sophisticated, modern women, seem to use English pronouns throughout. For example, in this scene, the woman says: 'You tak boleh buat I macam ni!' ('You cannot treat me like this'), with you and I inserted into a sentence that is otherwise entirely Malay:I find it interesting that I is used as the first person pronoun in both subject and object position. I would have predicted that me would be used as an object pronoun, but that doesn't seem to happen.

Here is another scene, where a different female character says 'Duduk dengan I' ('Sit with me'):Again, I rather than me is used, even though the pronoun is clearly the object.

thinness/thinnest

In my previous posting, I discussed the contrast between wholly (with a double /l/) and holy (with a single /l/), and I suggested that in English this contrast might only occur in medial position with /l/.

A correspondent, Peter Tinkler, has suggested that thinness and thinnest may exhibit a similar contrast, with thinness having a double /n/ (because the suffix is ‑ness) while thinnest has a single /n/ (as the suffix is ‑est). Given that the final /t/ in thinnest may sometimes be omitted because of consonant cluster reduction, these two words may indeed potentially be distinguished solely by means of the length of the medial /n/.

This is pretty convincing to me; so it seems that not only /l/ can be geminate in English.

Other examples of doubled medial consonants in English are bookcase and part‑time, with a geminate medial /k/ and /t/ respectively. But note that both bookcase and part‑time are compounds, while thinness and thinnest involve suffixes; and I think the latter examples work better.

wholly/holy

In a recent Phonetics Blog, John Wells transcribed wholly as /həʊlli/, and the double ('geminate') /l/ surprised me. But checking in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary confirms that he indeed uses a geminate /l/ in the middle of this word, and futhermore it contrasts with holy which is shown in the dictionary as /həʊli/ with a single /l/.

I suspect this contrast between single and geminate medial consonants in English mostly occurs with /l/, possibly because the geminate /l/ is likely to be a dark /l/ (phonetically shown as [ɫ]). For example, the following words involving a medial /t/ are all perfect rhymes, suggesting that there is no contrast between single and geminate /t/:

• city, pity (single morpheme, spelled with one 't')
• ditty, kitty (single morpheme, spelled with two 't's)
• gritty, witty (two morphemes, spelled with two 't's)

One comment under John Wells's blog suggests that bookcase ~ book-ace may offer a contrast between a geminate and single /k/, but at the very least this is less common than the wholly ~ holy contrast.

It is interesting that Malay also has this potential contrast for a medial /l/. In Malay, /l/ is normally clear, including in intervocalic positions such as salah ('wrong') and malah ('but'); however, in Allah it is a dark /l/, reflecting the importance of the word in religious contexts and the fact that it is an Arabic word. Now, malah ~ Allah is not quite a minimal pair, but it is quite close.

euphemism

I am just grading an exam paper. One question includes the following:

In the following sentence, the word died occurs. Often, we use a euphemism to refer to something unpleasant such as death. Rewrite this sentence with a euphemism in place of died.

   My grandfather died last month.

A couple of students offered the following as their answer:

   My grandfather a euphemism last night.

Now, how many marks should I give to that?

gigiran

My UBD colleague, Salbrina Sharbawi, tells me that the Brunei Malay word gigiran means 'to blurt out random words when startled'. (The Standard Malay equivalent might be melatah; but it is maybe not quite the same, as Adrian Clynes tells me that melatah usually refers to blurting out crudities.)

For gigiran, Salbrina says that the words she blurts out usually involve chickens, such as ayam melatup 'exploding chicken'.

Now, why doesn't English have a word like gigiran? It seems such a splendid word. Mind you, I can't imagine myself saying something like 'exploding chicken' when I am startled, so maybe we don't actually need a word like gigiran in English.

Misparsed Words

In my previous post, I discussed the pronunciation of biopic, specifically whether the stress is on the first or second syllable.

Failure to recognise that it is actually bio(graphical) + pic(ture) can be regarded as an instance of misparsing. My UBD colleague, James McLellan, suggested the following additional examples:

• underfed : pronounced as [ʌndɜ:ft], in the mistaken assumption that the final ed is a suffix
• manslaughter : misparsed as man's laughter

What about words in Malay? There is a naïve belief by some people that there is a one-to-one link between spelling and pronunciation. But what about cukai ('tax') and mulai ('to begin')? The first of these is two syllables, because it is a single morpheme, while mulai is three syllables, because it is mula + i. But there is no way to tell this from the spelling unless you parse the words correctly. And the first time I heard mengenai ('about') spoken, I was stunned to realise that it is four syllables, because I had failed to realise that it is meng + kena + i.

And, while we are discussing the parsing of words, note that I wrote naïve with two dots over the 'i' to ensure you can read it correctly as two syllables [naɪi:v] rather than monosyllabic [naɪv]. Those two little dots over the 'i' are really quite helpful.