harmful pesticides

This is the label on the top of a box of strawberries I recently bought at Mabohai Supersave in BSB:I have a couple of questions about this. First, does 'no harmful pesticides' mean "no pesticides were used because they are harmful"? Or does it mean "no harmful pesticides were used, though some harmless ones were used"?

My guess is they want us to believe the former, though the latter seems quite likely. In which case, I am a bit dubious. Pesticides are designed to kill pests ― that is their fundamental role. And it is hard for me to believe that something that kills pests is actually harmless. I bet DDT was once claimed to be harmless to humans, but later it was found to be absolutely lethal.

One other thing about this label: they seem to be putting an awful lot of effort into trying to persuade us that it is all natural. ('A natural harvest' ― I wonder what a non-natural harvest would be like?) And I am rather sceptical about such efforts at persuasion.

But maybe I should celebrate the fact that marketing food as 'natural' is seen as so important nowadays. Let's hope it reflects a change in the way things are grown, as customers are increasingly demanding naturalness.

Anyway, the strawberries were actually very tasty, so perhaps I shouldn't be too cynical about the labelling.

more cars

The Saturday edition of the Media Permata newspaper always carries a summary of the sermon delivered in the mosques the previous day. On page 1 of the Media Permata of 17 April 2010, there is a warning about pride, and people are told not to compare with others about being:

lebih pandai, lebih kaya, lebih mulia, mempunyai rumah yang lebih besar, kereta yang lebih banyak...

which translates as "cleverer, richer, or more respected, having a bigger house or more cars".

I found the last item interesting: "more cars"? In most countries, one might expect people to be concerned about whether their car is better than that of their neighbours. But more cars?

In Brunei, cars are cheaper than in many other places. In Singapore, you cannot buy a new car for less than about $80,000; but after living in Singapore for 15 years, I was stunned to come here and find you can drive away a brand new car for less than $20,000. (And that was what we did when we arrived here: we actually got a bit of change from $20,000.)

Furthermore, most Bruneians buy their new cars on credit, and in fact no down-payment is needed (though that is in the process of being changed). So no wonder local people love their cars, and also often have more than one!

But it's still something I don't understand: if you have a perfectly good car that gets you where you want to go, why would you want another one?

But then I've never understood why you need more than one pair of shoes: I've only got one pair of feet, so why do I need more than one pair of shoes? I guess there's lots of things about the modern world I don't understand.

Oliver's words

This is my grandson, Oliver. He is now two years and three months old.

Although he lives in England, my wife and I get to see him every week on Skype. Modern technology is splendid, as it allows us to watch our grandson growing up even though we are thousands of miles away.

Recently, my son has been recording Oliver's speech and putting the videos on Facebook. And then I can download them and investigate how he speaks. Over the last month or so, these are some of the words he has said, with my best efforts at transcribing his pronunciation:

Easter [i:tə]
egg [eɪʃ]
flower [faʊwə]
house [haʊ]
blanket [bæni]
cow [kaʊ]
cup [kʌ]

Most of these pronunciations are as expected. He simplifies consonant clusters, so the [fl] at the start of flower and the [bl] at the start of blanket get reduced to a single consonant, as does the [st] in the middle of Easter. Furthermore, he tends to drop final consonants, as in house and cup, though the sound at the end of egg is a bit surprising.

One of the advantages of video recordings is that I can see what he is looking at when he is speaking, so I can (usually) work out what the words are. When I was doing my Masters research many eons ago, I recorded my son's speech (he was two at the time); but as I only had an audio tape-recorder, I had to transcribe the data quickly, or I would forget what he had been talking about.

In future, when I teach courses on language acquisition at UBD, I will use these videos of Oliver in class, as I believe this will enliven the material immensely. I hope, also, that those of you who have small children around (maybe nephews and nieces if you don't have your own children) will make the effort to record them. If you miss the chance, they will never be learning to speak again. The recordings can provide fantastic material for research on language acquisition, but if you miss the chance it is gone forever.

a million words?

How many words are there in English? This is actually a meaningless question.

There is someone in the USA who claims that the millionth word of English has recently been coined, but this turns out to be something of a publicity stunt, largely to promote a book he has written on the subject. I won't add to the publicity by telling you his name; but a discussion of this hoax can be found on Language Log here.

I was reminded about the fact that it is not possible to determine how many words there are in English (or any other language) by a recent announcement of a talk at UBD. The abstract starts:

Based on previous reports of the presence of terminal alpha-linked galactosyl residues in the glycoconjugates of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, a systematic investigation into the biochemical structure of the glycoconjugates was initiated.

It all sounds fascinating stuff; but what does it mean? And should galactosyl, falciparum and glycoconjugates be counted as some of the "million words" of English or not?

In fact, if you start trying to include as words of English all the possible chemical compounds, some of which can be very long and rather obscure, you will easily exceed one million words.

And it is not just in the pure sciences that this issue arises. In my own field of acoustic phonetics, I could talk about formant transitions following the aspiration associated with fortis alveolar plosives. Should these technical terms be counted as some of the million words? For me, they are all perfectly good words of English; but I don't expect you to agree with me (unless, of course, you have studied lots of phonetics).

I hope this helps to illustrate why any discussion of the total number of words in a language is meaningless.

Sandwiches

It's a long time since I mentioned food. Well, since Feb 4 actually (here). And what would a Brunei blog be without some discussion of food? So here is a picture of the sandwich I have almost every day for my lunch.

I heard that some of my students expressed surprise when they found out that I often go round Bukit Shahbandar together with a few colleagues, as they had seen me eating lunch on my own and assumed that I must have no friends. Eating and chatting together is such an important activity in Brunei that it is simply incomprehensible to local people that I might choose to eat on my own. But I would like to reassure them: I actually do enjoy eating a simple lunch on my own. A sandwich and a couple of oranges are just what one needs in the middle of the day, and in fact I look forward to it. In contrast, the thought of eating greasy noodles or something like that for lunch is rather unpleasant to me.

I read in the newspapers that 55% of all government employees in Brunei are obese. Not just overweight, but obese. If this figure is accurate, it is truly alarming. Perhaps more people should be encouraged to eat sandwiches for lunch!

But that is never going to happen. Indeed, the collegiality of people chatting while eating together is a vitally important feature of Brunei society, so the authorities will have to find some other way of dealing with the obesity epidemic.

a gentle reminder

A couple of days ago, I sent a reminder about a forthcoming test to my first-year students, and one of my colleagues (jokingly) suggested that it should have been a 'gentle reminder' that I sent.

Indeed, in Brunei and Singapore we are often sent 'gentle reminders', and the use of the pre-modifying adjective 'gentle' is intended to soften the message, to make it more friendly and polite. So it may be true that my students would have expected a 'gentle reminder' rather than just a reminder.

The problem with this is that, in the UK, a 'gentle reminder' is regarded as threatening, suggesting that the sender is really rather annoyed about something. It is a bit like the phrases 'It would be appreciated if ...' and 'Kindly be informed that ...', both of which are common in Brunei and Singapore but both of which carry an officious, legalistic tone in the UK, something that is not at all friendly.

This illustrates that we should all be sensitive to local norms of language usage. Bruneians should be aware that a 'gentle reminder' seems to some people to carry a threatening tone; and expatriates living in Brunei should recognise that a 'gentle reminder' here is intended as polite and friendly.

Given that I am dealing with a Bruneian audience, perhaps I should indeed have sent a 'gentle reminder'.

Bukit Tangahan

Bukit Shahbandar is a popular site for hill walking about half an hour out of the centre of BSB.

Between Pondoks ('huts') 4 and 5 of Shahbandar, there is an extra loop that is not shown on the maps, and the hill half-way round this extra loop is called Bukit Tangahan (where bukit means 'hill').This sign nicely illustrates the vowels of Brunei Malay. In Standard Malay, it would be Tengahan ('half-way point'); but as Brunei Malay only has three vowels [i, a, u] rather than the six vowels of Standard Malay, in the first syllable of Tangahan we find 'a' rather than 'e'.

fruits

This is the sign above a shop in Kiulap, near the centre of BSB in Brunei.The standard English would be 'Fresh fruit and vegetables', which I think beautifully illustrates the quirky illogicality of English.

Think about it. Fruit and vegetables are rather similar: in both cases, there are many kinds, and often the individual items are round and you can select one or two or more. So why in standard English is fruit a singular noncount noun while vegetables is a plural noun? It just doesn't make any sense.

No wonder fruit is one of the words that is being reanalysed in many New Englishes around the world, and fruits is becoming increasingly acceptable in places such as Singapore and Brunei.

This is just the kind of regularising change that one would expect to occur in the evolution of the language, and as I have argued before (e.g. here and here), it seems that New Englishes are hastening the pace of change, even if many people in the USA and UK are not too happy about this.

Royal Titles

In a recent post (here), I mentioned two versions of HM the Sultan's name, the shorter of which took a television newsreader 5 seconds to read out.

My UBD colleague Adrian Clynes has pointed out that there is an even more complete version:

Kebawah Duli Yang Maha Mulia Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar 'Ali Saifuddien Sa'adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan dan Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Brunei Darussalam

This version includes details of the Sultan's father (after ibni, the royal equivalent of bin 'son of').

In fact, in the 7:00 radio news this morning, I heard this longer version read out in full twice, in a report on the current ASEAN summit in Vietnam. I guess it is important to use the full version of the name when reporting on official royal visits to foreign countries.

I wasn't able to time it (partly as I was driving my car at the time), but I bet it took a little bit longer than 5 seconds to say.

Pictures in the Papers

Here's a picture from page 3 of the 6 April edition of Media Permata, the national Malay language daily in Brunei. The headline says 'Painting exhibition gets encouraging support', and the article is about an art exhibition arganised by the Alliance Francais.The woman in a pink dress in the middle of the picture is my wife.

In fact, it is not the first time pictures of us have appeared in the Brunei newspapers. Here is a picture from page 3 of the Media Permata of 2 December last year. The headline says 'Lucky customers receive gifts', and the article is about customers winning gifts in a lucky draw held by HSBC.The old-looking chap in a white shirt is me.

Given that we don't attend a lot of official functions or go to many parties organised by the embassies and things like that, it seems extraordinary that we find our photos in the newspapers so often. But then there are only about 400 thousand people in Brunei, and it must be tough for journalists to find major news articles to fill the newspaper every day. So the fact that they tend to focus on what might seem like quite minor issues is perhaps not so surprising after all.

I guess we should just be grateful that there aren't more murders and robberies here for the papers to report!

repair kasut

Here's a sign by the side of Jalan Subok, near BSB. As you can no doubt guess, kasut means 'shoe'.Is there no word in Malay for repair? My dictionary tells me that membaiki is 'to repair', and the noun is pembaikan (both derived from the root baik 'good'). But maybe the English word sounds more fashionable or sophisticated or something.

This sign illustrates the widespread mixing between Malay and English that occurs in Brunei. Sometimes I hear speakers switching between the two languages several times in one sentence.

Reading Names Correctly

The correct use of titles is extremely important in Brunei, something I have mentioned before (e.g. here).

It seems that the more important someone is, the longer his name. (OK, that was a bit sexist; but it is still basically true that most top people in Brunei are male.) And of course none is more important than His Majesty the Sultan. The full reference to him is:

Kebawah Duli Yang Maha Mulia Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah Sultan dan Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Brunei Darussalam

Newsreaders are expected to read this out each time they mention him, which can be quite a lot of times during a news broadcast; though it seems that a slightly shorter version is acceptable. I managed to find an extract of the national RTB news of 17 April 2009 on YouTube (here) where the newsreader reads out the shorter version:

Kebawah Duli Yang Maha Mulia Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan dan Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Brunei Darussalam

This version omits some personal names (Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah) but keeps most of the titles.

It is impressive how fast, clearly and accurately television and radio broadcasters can say this. I have timed the YouTube extract at 5 seconds, but I suspect other newsreaders do it quite a bit faster and still get it all correct.

At last year's graduation ceremony for UBD students, HM the Sultan had consented to come and give out the certificates, and in the rehearsals there was panic because one of the Deans, being a foreigner, could not get His Majesty's name right, no matter how many times he tried. So it was decided that UBD should use the services of a professional newsreader instead. The result was stunning: this professional not only got all the official greetings and announcements correct, but also the names of all the graduating students were read clearly, accurately and quickly. In the end, the whole ceremony took half the expected time, there were no mistakes or stumbling over the names of the students, and everybody went home happy.

I know one university in Australia where it is the job of the resident phonetician to read out the names of students at graduation. But there is no way I could do better than the professional newsreader. It really was impressive.

Egocentricity in Language

Here is an extract from my Malay text book (Teach Yourself Malay, by Christopher Byrnes and Tam Lye Suan). And here is the translation that is offered in the book.There are two things of note here. First, the Malay 'saya dan isteri saya' becomes inverted in the English, so that I comes second in 'my wife and I'.

And second, I think the translation is not quite right. In English we do not say 'we can't go'. Instead, we say 'we can't come'. My interpretation of this is that we transfer the focus to the listener, so we use come rather than go because we are thinking in terms of the perspective of the listener.

These two differences between Malay and English suggest that English may be less egocentric than Malay: we place ourselves second, and we transfer the perspective to the listener.

Is this really true? One problem is many speakers do not naturally say 'my friend and I' ― it seems more natural for most people to say 'me and my friend', and it is only through the intervention of teachers that 'my friend and I' becomes the norm (and many speakers in fact resist this correction from their teachers).

And the use of come rather than go is quite an obscure aspect of English grammar, something that second language users of English rarely adopt. Indeed, I suspect that go will become the norm in situations like that in the dialogue for International English. Maybe it already is the norm.

So perhaps English is not less egocentric after all.

bintang / star

I have previously (e.g. here) discussed calques, words or phrases where each part is translated word-for-word from one language into another. For example take part in English becomes mengambil bahagian in Malay.

Of course, calques also occur in English, so for example brainwash comes from the Chinese 洗脑, and lose face comes from the Chinese 丢脸. Wikipedia (here) offers a substantial list of calques into English from a range of languages, though as so often with Wikipedia articles, many of the entries are unreferenced and so there is some doubt about how reliable the material is.

However, I suspect that calques from English into Malay are particularly common. When I don't understand a phrase in the Malay newspaper, I try translating it back into English, and I find that often works. Now, I agree that this is not a very reliable method of determining if something is a calque or not, as it is quite possible that the phrase was created independently in Malay, or indeed that the calquing is in the other direction, from Malay to English, but I suspect that most of the examples I find are indeed calques from English into Malay.

There is one other phenomenon that is similar but not quite the same: when a metaphorical extension of a word is transferred from one language to another. For example, take the English word star. We can say it is a polyseme, as it has two distinct but related meanings: the object in the sky; and a successful entertainer, especially in films or music. And we find that the Malay word bintang is the same. The basic meaning is one of those sparkling objects in the sky, but we also find phrases like bintang pop ('pop star') and bintang filem ('film star'); and I'm pretty sure that this metaphorical extension of bintang comes from English.

Is this calquing? Well, maybe. But note that it does not involve one fixed phrase, as the extended meaning of bintang can be found in a range of phrases. My UBD colleague Ayla suggested that bintang seni ('star of the arts') might be possible, though I haven't encountered that one.

I wonder if there is a term to describe this kind of cross-language influence involving the metaphorical extension of a word.

shutters

This is an extract from the public notice at UBD that I mentioned before when discussing the use of audience to refer to an individual (here).Note the use of shutters to refer (presumably) to photographers. This is similar to the Singapore use of shutterbug to refer to a camera enthusiast, which Adam Brown (Making Sense of Singapore English, p. 114) observes is an American English word that does not occur in British English.

Of course, just like all languages, new varieties of English such as those of Brunei and Singapore regularly create new words and innovative ways of using existing words. Often, this involves borrowing from indigenous languages to reflect local food and customs, so in Brunei English we find titah for a speech by HM the Sultan and nasi katok for the basic dish of rice and fried chicken; and in Singapore we have kiasu, which is a borrowing from Hokkien meaning 'afraid to lose out'.

The difference with shutter and shutterbug is that they are not borrowings, and people who use them are often not aware that speakers from places such as Britain may not understand them.

In the context of the sign, it is probably clear to everyone what shutters means. But Bruneians should be aware of the limitations of using this word in other contexts.

Bukit Udal

I just spent a great weekend at Bukit Udal, in the Tutong District of Brunei, in a trip organised by the Brunei Nature Society. The campsite is shown here.The idea is you are supposed to sleep in the wooden building in the middle of the water; but there were too many of us, so most of us actually slept in the tents that you can see on the left.

One of the great things for me (quite apart from the splendid trek through the forest on Sunday morning) was that our Dusun guide, Benson, was more than willing to speak Malay to me, and in fact he delighted in telling lots of stories about the history of the region while playing his traditional lute. Now, I can't say I understood them all, but it was fun to hear him tell them.

One basic problem with speaking Malay here is what to use as the second person singular pronoun, 'you'. My textbooks tell me it is anda, but that is way too formal. Earlier this month when we went to Bario in Malaysia, our guide suggested that kamu was best. In Bukit Udal, however, Benson insisted that kamu is a plural pronoun, and he said that kita is appropriate for singular 'you'. Indeed, that seems to be the norm in Brunei.

The trouble is that kita means 'we' in Standard Malay. It really gets quite confusing to start a conversation when you can't work out what word to use for such a basic concept as 'you'.

damn(-ed) thing

In my previous blog (here), I discussed the fengshui of the Ugly Building in the middle of Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei. Here is another view of the damn thing.Now, you might object that I should have said 'damned thing', not 'damn thing'. After all, thing is a noun, and we expect its modifier to be an adjective; and the -ed suffix converts the verb damn into the adjective damned. (Just like the verb tire is converted into the adjective tired, the verb spoil is converted into the adjective spoiled, and so on.)

However, there is an issue here. It is actually rather common for the final /d/ in a word to be omitted if it is both preceded and followed by a consonant, and this includes instances where the word-final /d/ represents the -ed suffix. Alan Cruttenden (Gimson's Pronunciation of English, 2008, p. 304) lists the following phrases where the -ed suffix (pronounced as /t/ or /d/) in the first word is often omitted in standard British English pronunciation: mashed potatoes, finished now, pushed them, tinned meat, dined well, refused both, gazed past and many, many more.

Furthermore, there are many phrases where the omission of the final consonant (either /t/ or /d/) has become so common that the -ed that originally existed in the spelling is now no longer shown: ice cream, wax paper, pop corn and skim milk all originally had -ed on the first word but now generally do not, and Language Log (here) suggests that ice(d) tea, cream(ed) corn and whip(ped) cream may all be following suit and losing their -ed suffixes.

So I think that describing it as a 'damn thing' is just fine. I just wish someone would knock it down and plant some trees (or something) in its place.

fengshui

The word fengshui comes from the Chinese 风水 meaning literally 'wind' + 'water'. Now, that is its etymology in Chinese, but we should not confuse etymology with the meaning of a word. (After all, a greenhouse in English is not actually green; it is made of glass, which is colourless.)

According to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary (here), fengshui refers to the Chinese practice "in which a structure or site is chosen or configured so as to harmonize with the spiritual forces that inhabit it".

One might consider how to render fengshui in English. Some dictionaries suggest 'geomancy'. The trouble with this is that not many people know that word; and I am pretty sure that far more people know fengshui itself, as a borrowed word. So my suggestion is just to use it as a borrowed word.

Whether you believe in that stuff about harmonizing with spiritual forces or not, some buildings have awful fengshui. Have a look at this building, which residents of Brunei will recognise as being right in the middle of Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB), the capital of Brunei. It is hideous. This building has been sitting there in its half-built, forlorn, dilapidated state for over ten years, and nobody seems to know what to do about it.

Currently, there are all kinds of fancy plans for developing BSB into a thriving, modern city. But it seems to me that all these plans will come to nothing till someone sorts out the Ugly Building that is draining all the energy out of the place.

The damn thing really is ugly.

Lexical Repetition

The degree to which languages tolerate lexical repetition varies. English discourages it, and when I am writing I sometimes find myself alternating between perhaps and maybe to ensure I do not use one of them too often. But this is just stylistic, and it does not add to the clarity of what I write.

I get the impression that Malay tolerates lexical repetition much more. I saw this phrase on page 1 of the Media Permata of 25 May 2010 in an article about the control of TB:

mengikuti arahan seperti yang diarahkan

which is literally "follow the directions as directed". Note that, in the Malay, there are two words that are derived from the root arah.

In English, I suspect this would probably be "follow the instructions as directed" or something like that.

Note that there is nothing particularly wrong about lexical repetition. In fact, it is one of the ways that cohesion is maintained in a text. In contrast, English tends to use pronouns as one main way to achieve cohesion, which is one reason why there are so many more pronouns in an English text than an equivalent Malay one. However, when people in Brunei and elsewhere are writing in English, they should be aware that repetition of lexical items is discouraged, even when the words are different derivatives of the same root.

audience

Sometimes public notices can offer a rich source of material on local language patterns, though there is always the problem of determining if something represents a feature of local usage or if it is merely an error.

Here is an extract from a sign at UBD, promoting some function. Note the use of audience to refer (presumably) to a single person. In standard English, it would be more normal to offer the prize to 'a member of the audience'. (If the $10 card is really to be shared among the whole audience, that will mean each person will not be getting very much!)At first sight, this seems to reflect a shift in the use of count/noncount nouns that is common in a range of New Englishes around the world. For example, it is very common to find references to furnitures, luggages, informations and researches, even though all these nouns are regarded as noncount in standard English, so it is not possible to pluralise them.

However, audience is actually different, as it is always a count noun. In fact, in standard English it is possible to compare a good audience tonight with a less responsive audience on a previous evening. It is just that audience is a collective noun, referring to all the people, not just to individuals.

In many ways, therefore, audience is a bit like alphabet, which is also a count noun that (in standard usage) refers to a complete system of writing. One can say, for example, that Malay is represented by two different alphabets: the Roman alphabet and the Arabic-based Jawi script. However, in Brunei and Singapore one often sees alphabet used as a synonym for letter, so people might say that the word cat "has three alphabets", even though this does not make sense in standard usage.

It is not clear if the use of audience and alphabet to refer to individual entities rather than the collective whole will eventually become the norm in this part of the world.

berketerampilan

I have previously discussed the problems in finding words in a Malay dictionary (eg here). The difficulty is caused by words being shown under their root, and it is not always straightforward to identify the root. In English, there is no such problem, as words like befriend and entrust are listed under 'b' and 'e' respectively. But in Malay, you would first have to work out what the root is, so you would need to look under 'f' and 't' respectively, as the words would be listed under friend and trust.

I still sometimes get caught out. Yesterday, I saw the word berketerampilan in the newspaper, and not knowing what it meant, I tried to look it up. Now, looking under 'b' is not going to work, as clearly there is a 'ber' prefix; and 'k' won't work either, as there is a 'ke' + 'an' circumfix. Then there also seems to be a 'ter' prefix, so I started looking under 'ampil' and then under 'rampil'. In fact, the root is terampil ('skilled'), and the word means 'skillful' — in fact there is no 'ter' prefix in there.

One thing that contributed to the difficulty in this instance is that the vast majority of Malay roots are bisyllabic, which is why I first guessed that 'ampil' might be the root. In fact, in this case the actual root terampil is trisyllabic.

But maybe I shouldn't complain too much. If I can master the nightmare of looking up words in a Chinese dictionary, the challenges of a Malay dictionary are really not that daunting.

Titles

I have previously discussed differentiated language in Brunei to show rank (e.g. wedding, berkenan). As might be expected, this extends to titles.

This is the label on my mailbox at UBD. Note the proliferation of titles at the start. I personally asked to have my name preceded by no titles; but I was overuled. My own preference is to avoid titles entirely. I judge my colleagues on their teaching, their scholarship, and their interaction with students and colleagues, and the existence of fancy titles has little bearing on any of those. Furthermore, some of my UBD colleagues have a PhD while others do not, and there are also a range of different professional ranks among people who are working closely together. Use of titles seems to me to create barriers between colleagues who are jointly striving to achieve the same objectives: to teach well and to conduct and publish good research.

However, I have to accept that rank, and its manifestation in terms of titles, is an integral part of Brunei society. And it is not appropriate to try and import my own liberal, western ideas of equality in a society where they may not be suited. Furthermore, I need to remember that some of the peace and stability of Brunei society that I benefit so much from originates from the respect for tradition that is found here.

I guess I should just learn to accept the titles that tend to be used together with my name when I am in Brunei.

aktibiti/aktiviti

I previously commented on the use of the borrowed word aktibiti in Malay (aktibiti), and a correspondent from Malaysia suggested that the borrowed word has a more positive connotation than the Malay equivalent kegiatan.

Some evidence to support that is from an email I received today, encouraging participation by UBD staff in healthy lifestyle exercises (which are clearly regarded as a good thing). An extract is:

Beberapa aktiviti telah dikenalpasti dan sesiapa yang berminat untuk menjadi sukarelawan dalam megetuai aktibiti bolehlah menghadapkan nama mereka melalui email kepada saya.

which might be translated as:

Several activities have been identified and anyone who is interested in becoming a volunteer in leading an activity can forward their name to me through email.

Something else that is interesting in this extract is the alternation between aktibiti and aktiviti, presumably reflecting instability in the pronunciation of the word, as is expected in a newly-borrowed item. In fact, it is normal for borrowed words to adopt the phonology of the native language gradually.

For example, take the English words carriage, message, massage, collage, all of which were borrowed from French. The first two have been completely anglicised, ending with [ɪdʒ] and with the stress on the first syllable. In contrast, collage, being a more recent borrowing, still generally has its French pronunciation [kɒˈlɑːʒ] (at least, in British English), while massage is halfway to being anglicised: the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives [ˈmæsɑːʒ] as the preferred choice for British English (though it also suggests an alternative with [dʒ] at the end).

While a word is in the process of being nativised, instability is expected, though it is unusual to find variants in the same sentence. The special thing with Malay is that the writing system allows us to reflect on this process more easily than in English.

Flags

You will have seen my flags on the right. I find them mesmerising. And I get a little thrill every time I see a new one pop up, from somewhere like Uruguay, Lithuania, or Qatar.

When I started writing this blog a little over a year ago, I was contemptuous of bloggers who expend an inordinate amount of energy worrying about how many people visit their site. If you've got something to write, do it, and don't worry about who's going to read it. After all, weren't there lots of Victorian diarists who faithfully filled out their entries every day in the expectation that nobody would ever read what they had written? And isn't a blog just an electronic equivalent of a diary?

It turned out it wasn't quite so simple. After the initial enthusiasm waned, it was hard to find sufficient inspiration to keep on coming up with new ideas. And in fact I found that I did need feedback, an indication that someone somewhere out there is reading what I am writing, and I'm not just whistling in the wind.

In the modern world, travel has become so much easier, and people move around in search of jobs and also for fun. This means we no longer live in small communities where we all know each other; and quite often we can live in a place where we know almost nobody. That is partly why networking sites such as Facebook are so successful: they provide a means for people to create a powerful virtual community, to reassure themselves that they are not alone in the world.

Now, I have never quite got the hang of Facebook: all that poking each other and sending virtual gifts seems so banal. And I simply don't want to know if someone I once met briefly a couple of years ago is just now going out for a pizza. But maybe my focus on flags is no different really from the accumulation of friends in Facebook: we are all trying to create an assurance that we are part of a wider community.

Also, I think the flags are really pretty.

35 Years with a Lisp

I recently read this story on an Internet discussion group I participate in. It was told by Laura Sicola, a phonetician and pronunciation teacher at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA; and I thought I would share it with you.

I worked with a 35-year-old Korean businessman in a pronunciation class I was teaching. He had one of the strongest inter-dental lisps I have ever heard.

In providing feedback one day when we were working on dental fricatives (which, not surprisingly, he could do just fine), I mentioned the lisp, and clearly he didn't know what I was talking about. I explained simply, and he denied it, saying it was just his "poor English pronunciation." I suggested it was probably true even in his Korean and that he should ask his wife, which he did. The next day I asked what she had said and he replied:

"I said to her, do you hear something strange in my speech when I say 'Seoul' and other words with the /s/ sound? And she said, of course! So I asked her, when did you first find out? And she said, I noticed it the first time I met you. It makes you sound a bit like a child. So I said, why didn't you tell me? And she said, I thought you knew!"

He really wanted to know how to fix it, so we worked on it for an hour or so, and with diagrams and other strategies he was able to hear and produce /θ/ and /s/ very accurately. At the end, he summarized: "So, this word... (pointing to 'Seoul') should be pronounced [sol]. But I say [θol]. Is that right?" When I nodded, he closed his eyes, sighed, shook his head in disbelief and said, "I can't believe it... 35 years...!"

Maybe we phoneticians really can achieve something useful once in a while.

Wedding Invitation

A couple of weeks ago, my UBD colleague Bill Duane got married to Hajah Norain Binti Marshal, a Bruneian; and they had a traditional Bruneian wedding.

Weddings are extremely important social occasions in Brunei, and the language on the invitation offers a fascinating insight into Bruneian society.

In a previous blog (berkenan), I discussed the special language needed to refer to the activities of important people such as members of the royal family. The language of a wedding invitation similarly shows differentiation for referring to members of the ruling class and others. Here is part of the invitation:

Loosely translated, this says, "We would first like to offer many thanks for the attendance of everyone at this ceremony." However, this fails to capture the intricacies of the message.

First, you have keberangkatan ('honoured attendance') to refer to the Pengirans (important aristocrats) while kehadiran ('attendance') is for the ordinary ladies and gentlemen. Next, the first person plural pronoun is also differentiated: abis peramba ('humbly we') is used when offering thanks to the Pengirans, while the common pronoun kami ('we') is for offering thanks to the others.

(My thanks to Adrian Clynes for his help in analysing the language on this invitation.)

Language in a Remote Village

This is a photo of the Kelabit village of Pa' Longan in the Bario region, taken from the top of a hill overlooking the village:

The only way to get to the village is by foot. It takes three hours along the forest path. (Well, it took us four hours, but locals do it in three.) And the only means of transporting goods are by carrying them on your back or using a buffalo sled.

Here's a buffalo pulling a sled and thereby transporting goods between Pa' Longan and Bario.

When you meet people in Pa' Longan, you are expected to introduce yourself, say where you are from, how many children you have, how old they are, and so forth. And you end up developing a little spiel that you use over and over again.

Now, maybe this could get a bit tedious after a while, but for a language learner like me, it's brilliant. I wish I could have done it in the Kelabit language; but being able to do it in Malay seemed to work just fine.

When we were walking through the village in the evening, we met a sprightly old chap chopping wood, and I gave him my little spiel. The next morning, we met him again, and he clearly did not remember us, so I introduced my wife and myself once more. Either his memory was not too good, or we foreigners all look alike!

One way or another, it was splendid practice for me. Maybe language schools should employ an old chap like that, and all students should each morning be required to introduce themselves fully before they are allowed to proceed into the building.

Language on Clothes

This woman is a Kelabit, living in the village of Pa' Ukat in the Bario region, and she is pounding rice in the traditional method. (Actually, they have machinery in the village to do this, but maybe she prefers the traditional method; or perhaps it is too expensive to use the machinery.)

She speaks no English, and I am pretty sure she does not know what Planet Hollywood is; but that doesn't stop her wearing Planet Hollywood clothing. It seems that English is getting everywhere.

On the other hand, maybe it is no different from Westeners wearing t-shirts with Chinese characters on them, even though they often have no idea about the meaning of the characters. We seem to love to adorn our clothing with writing, and sometimes not knowing what it means seems to add to the charm!

The Kelabit Language

The Bario region in Sarawak (Malaysia) is inhabited by the Kelabit people. Here is a picture of a Kelabit longhouse in Pa' Ukat near Bario:

Actually, most Kelabit live in separated houses now. The trouble with longhouses is that if one of the units catches fire, then they all tend to go up, so the authorities encourage people to develop separate houses instead.

Before I went to Bario, I believed that the mountains running through the centre of Borneo formed a more-or-less impenetrable barrier that created a natural border between Sarawak (Malaysia) and Kalimantan (Indonesia). But while there, I found out that the Kelabit language is closely related to the languages spoken by the Lundayeh people who live in Long Bawan over the border in Kalimantan and also the Murut who live closer to the coast in Lawas and Limbang in Sarawak as well as in Temburong, which is part of Brunei.

The languages spoken by the Kelabit, Lundayeh and Murut people can all be regarded as dialects of the same language. My informant told me that the three just differ in their melodies, which presumably refers to their intonation.

In fact, there is substantial coming and going of the people over the border between Sarawak and Kalimantan; and to get from Bario to Ba' Kelalan, which is also in Sarawak, you actually have to walk through part of Kalimantan. There are no roads — it's a two-day trek along forest paths, but that doesn't stop local people making the journey.

Bario

I just spent five wonderful days in Bario, in the north-east corner of Sarawak (Malaysia), quite close to the border with Kalimantan (Indonesia). Here is the view from the balcony of the lodge where we were staying:

One of the things that made the trip especially enjoyable for me, quite apart from the splendid trekking through the jungle, was the opportunity to converse in Malay. People there seemed quite happy to speak Malay to me, and in just a few days my spoken ability improved hugely. I got the impression that, if I were to stay somewhere like that in Malaysia for just a few weeks, I could get to be quite competent in the language. In contrast, even if I stayed in Brunei for fifty years, I doubt I would get anywhere.

One evening, I watched our guide, a Kelabit (from the Bario region), talking to the host of our lodge, a Berawan (from an area closer to Miri). As neither could speak the home language of the other, they conversed in Standard Malay, which seems to be the inter-ethnic lingua franca in most of Malaysia. And I was surprised to find that I could understand much of what they were saying.

I don't think I have ever heard Standard Malay being used conversationally in Brunei, where the inter-ethnic lingua franca is either Brunei Malay or English; and when people converse in Brunei Malay, I have no clue what they are talking about.

It was wonderful to encounter people actually using the language I have spent so much time and effort trying to learn.

USA vs. the Rest

In my previous post, I discussed the possible influences of New Englishes on the future evolution of English. And I sent a summary of these ideas to a web-based linguistic discussion group I participate in.

Rather predictably, there were a few howls of protests from some folk in the USA. One even objected to linguistic professors who get involved in 'democratization chic' always 'rooting ... for the underdog' and suggesting 'every isolated incident of diffusion must be part of a trend'.

Sometimes it really does seem that the USA is totally isolated from the rest of the world. Indeed, students and visitors to the USA had better realise that they need to deal with the English that is used there, as Americans have little time or patience for new-fangled ideas about 'New Englishes' or anything else that might be going on in the rest of the world.

Just yesterday, there was a discussion on the change of Toyoda (the family name) to Toyota (the name of the car) on Language Log, and the writer made the unwise statement that 'in English Toyota and Toyoda tend to be pronounced much the same'. Now, this is only true in (some varieties of) American English, something that was quickly pointed out in the Comments section. But soon after, another contributor noted:

US English-speaking population: 300 million+
UK English-speaking population 60 million

What about the millions of speakers of English in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Philippines, Nigeria .... ?

It really sometimes seems that people in the USA are not aware of what is going on in the rest of the world. There are millions and millions of speakers of English who do not live in the USA or the UK, but many folk in the USA seem to feel that these people are irrelevant.

shoes and slippers

I recently saw this sign on the outside of a building in Brunei:
Now, a purist might object that this is ungrammatical and argue that it should say: 'No shoes or slippers' rather than 'No shoes and slippers', for the rule in Standard English is that or rather than and is used after a negative. Furthermore, some might argue that there is a useful distinction between 'No A and B' (which indicates that either A or B is OK, but not both together) and 'No A or B' (which indicates that neither A nor B is OK). According to this interpretation, the sign suggests that you can wear shoes or slippers into the building so long as you don't wear them both!

Yeah, yeah. The problem with this is that everyone understands the sign perfectly well, and moreover the rule I just gave, that or not and should be used after a negative, is pretty obscure. And this rule does not seem to apply in most varieties of New English emerging around the world.

I predict that, in the future when New Englishes are likely to have an increasingly important role in the development of the language, 'No shoes and slippers' will become perfectly acceptable, and only a few out-of-touch purists will try to cling to the traditional form.

Languages evolve all the time, and this is just the kind of simplifying change one would expect to occur in the evolution of English. The only new thing here is that this change seems to be originating in the New Englishes of places such as Brunei rather than the UK or USA.

Reading

Here is the headline from the front page of the Media Permata of 22 February:
This can be translated as '25% of the Population of Brunei Like to Read'.

This is supposed to be good ― the headline writer clearly thinks that 25% of the population enjoying books is excellent, something to celebrate. But my question is this: what about the other 75%? Don't they enjoy reading? And if not, why not?

Let's put this in context. Brunei traditionally has an oral culture, where great value is placed on family gatherings and chit-chatting over shared food. As such, some of my colleagues have told me that, when they were young and enjoyed being alone and reading a book, they were criticised for being antisocial. So maybe getting 25% to enjoy reading really is a mark of success.

Even so, it does seem a little strange that 25% is regarded as something to be pleased about, especially in today's knowledge-based economy where so much of the focus is on getting as many people as possible to achieve a high level of education.

Moths and Butterflies

Here is a picture of a hawkmoth (family Sphingidae) that is common in the vicinity of the UBD Belalong Research Centre in Temburong. (I am grateful for Donald Quicke, from Imperial College London, for sending me this picture.)

While we were in Temburong, Donald was supervising his student there, and he told me that there is no scientific distinction between butterflies and moths, just like the lack of distinction between frogs and toads that I discussed earlier (see Frogs and Toads).

Now, in popular usage, we tend to think of them as different, of course. Butterflies are diurnal and they tend to be brightly coloured. In contrast, moths are mostly nocturnal, and because they use scent to find their mates, their antennae tend to be larger. However, there is no scientific basis for this distinction, and they are both classified as Lepidoptera.

This is one more instance where popular language usage deviates from scientific taxonomy.

(men)dakwa

Here's part of another sign I saw in Temburong:
When I first saw it, I thought there was a mis-translation, as mendakwa usually means 'accuse'; and here it is being used for 'prosecute'. (In this case, the passive verb is used: di dakwa; but it is derived from the active mendakwa.)

But then I looked it up in a dictionary and found that mendakwa can have two meanings: 'accuse' or 'prosecute'. So we might say that Malay has the superordinate (more general term) while English has the hyponyms (more specific words). In this case, because the English version uses a more specific term, the translation is not quite equivalent.

aktibiti

One of the curses of being a linguist is that, when everyone else is admiring the view, I stand there analysing the language of signs. And my wife accuses me of only listening to the way people speak, not what they are saying. Ah, well, never mind.

Here is part of a sign at the foot of the canopy walk in Temburong. It means 'it is forbidden to engage in other activities'. Note the use of the word aktibiti, which is, of course, from the English word activity.
Note first that Malay has no [v], so [b] is used instead. But what really surprised me about this sign is the occurrence of the word aktibiti. Why not use the Malay word kegiatan? There seems to be no reason at all to borrow an English word when there is a perfectly good Malay word that means exactly the same thing.

It seems, sometimes, that the Malay language is being overwhelmed by English.

Frogs and Toads

In my previous blog, I discussed the Wallace's flying frog that we saw in Temburong. Here is another picture of a Wallace's flying frog, this time in its natural habitat. (I am grateful to Ulmar Grafe for sending me this picture.)
Something I learned while on this recent trip is that there is no scientific basis for a distinction between frogs and toads. In common usage, we call something a toad if it has a rough skin that may be covered in warts, and it is a frog if it has a smoother skin. But there is no taxonomic basis for this distinction.

This seems a bit like distinctions we make in other areas of language use. For example, politician and statesman have the same denotation (they refer to the same person) but a different connotation (statesman is more positive). Similarly, eat and dine have the same denotation (they refer to the same activity) but a different connotation (dine sounds rather posher). And maybe this is similar to the distinction between frog and toad ― they refer to the same creature, but toad has a more negative connotation.

Or perhaps it is just a case where scientific taxonomy and everyday linguistic usage diverge. In popular usage, frog and toad seem to refer to quite different animals, even though scientific evidence does not confirm this distinction.

Wallace's Flying Frog

I just spent two wonderful days at the UBD Research Centre at Kuala Belalong in Temburong, on a Brunei Nature Society trip organised by my UBD colleague, Ulmar Grafe. One of the things we saw there was a Wallace's flying frog (Rhacophorus nigropalmatus):

These frogs have webbed feet that allow them to glide quite effectively through the air, and this is why they are described as 'flying frogs'. They are unique to the region, which illustrates why Brunei is such a splendid place for studying biology.

I asked Ulmar why flying frogs are only found in this region, and not, for example, in the Amazon forests. He said that the reason is not certain, but it might be because the forest canopy is higher here, which gives an advantage to frogs that can travel efficiently from tree to tree.

While we were admiring this creature, my wife asked if we could see it flying, and another participant on the trip, Edith (who is from France) thought she had asked to see it frying. I'm not sure if this is because, being Chinese, my wife doesn't differentiate [fl] and [fr] too clearly at the start of a word, or if French people immediately think of food when they see a frog. Maybe it was a combination of these two factors.

Berkenan

In my previous post, I discussed issues concerning translation, particularly how to deal with brother. One of the reasons for this issue is that English tends not to show status, so we generally don't make a distinction between older and younger siblings.

In fact, there are multiple issues concerning status and showing the proper degree of respect when we translate from Malay to English. In Malay, there are different words used when discussing the actions of royal people, specifically the Sultan and his family. For example, when the Sultan eats, one uses the word santap rather than the ordinary word makan; and if he gets sick, one uses the word gereng rather than sakit. Maintaining this degree of respect when translating into English is not straightforward.

In fact, respect towards people of royal status affects grammar as well as individual words. For example, if the Sultan visits a school or opens a new building, in Malay one needs to include the word berkenan before the verb. This is almost like the -s verbal suffix in English, which is used show that the subject of the verb is 3rd person singular. But instead of indicating whether the subject is singular or plural, Malay uses the word berkenan to indicate the royal status of the subject.

How can we render this into English? When Queen Elizabeth performs some kind of official function, we do not use a special word in front of the verb, because indicating this degree of respect is not part of the grammar of English. So how can the proper respect expected in Malay society be incorporated into English?

The solution adopted by journalists in English-medium newspapers in Brunei is to use the word consent. So they might say "The Sultan consented to visit a school yesterday". This seems a bit odd to people not familiar with local customs; but when you realise that consent is the translation of the Malay berkenan, then it begins to make more sense.

Brothers

In an earlier post (rice), I discussed the issues involved when we try to translate between one language which has a general term (a superordinate) and another language which only has the more specific terms (hyponyms). In reality, dealing with rice is not too problematic, as the meaning usually becomes clear from context.

However, in some other cases, there is more of a problem. Take the English term brother. Neither Malay nor Chinese have this superordinate term, as they both distinguish between older and younger brothers (Malay: abang/adik; Chinese: 哥哥/弟弟).

So what do you do if you want to translate an English sentence such as "His brother was waiting outside" into Malay or Chinese? You simply have to make a decision between an older or younger brother, and if you don't know, you have to guess.

What about the other direction? Suppose we want to translate a Malay sentence with abangnya or a Chinese one with 他的哥哥 into English. Of course, we can render it as his older brother. The problem with this is that it is a bit unnatural in English, as it would be more usual just to say his brother. In this case, we have to see how important the status of the brother is in the context. If it is important to know that the brother is older, then his older brother would be fine. Otherwise, just his brother would be better, even though it involves some loss of meaning.

Elsie

My colleague, Adrian Clynes, has for a long time been making observations about personal names in Brunei. For example, my current class of second year students includes female students called Aqilah, Azimah, Hazirah, Mazidah, Rafidah, Syafiqah and Zafirah. Do you see the pattern? There is a strong tendency for girls' names to be three syllables, with /a/-/i/-/a/ as the three vowels.

Why do people select a name following this pattern (though of course they are nearly always unaware that they are following any pattern)? It seems that, in selecting names, we go for familiar patterns, even if we do not realise it.

Yesterday, my second grandchild was born, and she has been called Elsie. Now my wife's name is Ellen (a name she selected herself — her real name is 艶 玲 Yan Ling). My son's name is Alexander and my daughter's Elizabeth. Then my grandson is Oliver and my granddaughter is now Elsie. Do you see the pattern? Every single one begins with a vowel followed by /l/, and for the females, the initial vowel is always 'e'.

It seems that following a familiar pattern in selecting a name is not just found in Brunei. And, just the same, my son was certainly not aware that he was following any pattern when he and his wife chose the names for their children.

Lunch

Here is a picture of my lunch today:


Why do so many bloggers in Brunei show pictures of their food? How can anybody anywhere in the world possibly have any interest whatsoever in what I ate for lunch?

OK, OK, so people in England talk endlessly about the weather, and this can seem pretty bizarre to people from elsewhere. In linguistics, we call this phatic communication: most conversations take place to oil the wheels of social interaction rather than to exchange information. And it has long been known that only a small percentage of things we say actually provide new information, such as or 'Beethoven died in 1827' or 'Salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine' or 'The meeting is next Monday'. Instead, most of what we say every day consists of things such as greetings, apologies, expressions of appreciation and other ways to ensure that our progress through life is comfortable and sociable. And discussions of the weather fit exactly into that kind of framework, as they offer an opportunity for extended phatic communication.

Now, the weather in tropical places such as Brunei does not change much from day to day, so it would rather quickly get pretty tedious as a topic of conversation. And that is maybe why people discuss food instead. Indeed, in Singapore, the standard greeting in the middle of the day is 'Have you eaten your lunch?'.

Even so, showing photos of one's lunch on a blog seems pretty strange to me. Do people in England take photos of the weather and put them on their blogs? Maybe they do, I don't know. I have to admit I don't follow too many personal blogs of people in England, so I'm rather out of touch.

Anyway, just in case you were concerned, the curry puffs and tomatoes were delicious!

Txting

Yesterday, I was giving a short presentation on 'Teaching Electronic Communication' at a conference at ITB, and the question arose (as it so often does) whether the writing of young people today is being corrupted by SMS-style abbreviations. Indeed, this seems to be a concern around the world, though I am not sure there is actually any solid evidence that the writing of young people is getting worse.

I would like to consider one aspect of this, something that might be affecting the influence of short forms in SMS messages: the use of predictive texting (where you press each key just once and let your mobile phone sort out what the word is). I suggest that this will help with spelling, as you need to know how to spell correctly for it to work; and it may also reduce the use of abbreviated words, as it becomes faster to type the whole word than the shortened form.

However, in Brunei, predictive texting may be used less widely than in some other countries, because of the widespread preference for English/Malay code-mixing. I am pretty sure that few implementations of predictive texting can handle mixed text, and this may be why most texters in Brunei still use the traditional way of typing out messages, even though that involves so many additional keyclicks. (I admit I don't have any data on this, and it would be fascinating to find out.)

One other possibility is this: if predictive texting does become popular in Brunei, it might have a substantial influence on the occurrence of code-mixing in text messages.

Rice

I currently teach a module on translation at UBD. Translating from one language to another can provide interesting insights into the nature of language, the ways that it represents certain concepts, and the ways it reflects differences between societies.

In English, we have the word rice. In both Malay and Chinese, however, there are three different words:

• if it is still growing in the fields, it is padi in Malay and 稻 in Chinese
• if it is for sale in the shops, it is beras in Malay and 米 in Chinese
• if it is ready to be eaten, it is nasi in Malay and 饭 in Chinese

First, within the framework of semantics, we can say that English only has the superordinate (more general term), while Malay and Chinese only have the hyponyms (more specific terms).

Next, we can consider why this difference occurs. That is easy: rice has always had a central role in Malay and Chinese society, so it is natural that finer distinctions should be drawn in the way it is discussed. In contrast, rice has in the past had a less important role in English-based societies.

Finally, we can discuss what to do about it when we are doing translation. If we are going from Malay or Chinese into English, using the word rice is not generally a problem, as usually the context is sufficient to indicate which sort of rice is involved. But we should remember that there may be some degree of loss of meaning if we use a superordinate term when the original had a hyponym. In the opposite direction, translating out of English, care must be taken to ensure that the appropriate word is chosen in the target language, either Malay or Chinese.

Anak Damit Awda

In my previous blog, I discussed the Malay warning on a packet of cigarettes in Brunei. In fact, there is more that can be considered about the language in this warning, in addition to the use of membahayakan.

First, the equivalent for 'baby' in this warning is anak damit (literally: 'small child'; damit is the Brunei Malay word for 'small'). The Standard Malay word for 'baby' is bayi, but this cannot be used here as it means 'pig' in Brunei Malay. And that is why anak damit is used instead.

Second, the second person pronoun is awda. The Standard Malay second person pronoun is anda, but that sounds quite formal and alien in Brunei. Instead, the pronoun awda has been created as a combination of awang ('Mr') and dayang ('Miss'). This new pronoun is used in all official language, though I'm not sure how widely it occurs among the general public.

Tobacco Warning

When dealing with two languages, it is interesting sometimes to compare the translated versions of texts, to see whether the two versions have the same meaning. Here is the English version of the health warning on a packet of cigarettes in Brunei:
And here is the Malay version of the warning on the same packet of cigarettes:


It seems that the Malay version is less intense: it says that cigarette smoke endangers (membahayakan) your baby, while the English version says it harms your baby.

Is this deliberate? Has a decision been made to tone down the message in Malay? Or is the difference just accidental? I guess we'll never know.

(My thanks to Adrian Clynes for giving me this example.)

BAA

Brunei has recently introduced new vehicle registrations with three initial letters, rather than the two that were previously used. So lots of people are proudly driving around in their brand new cars with the 'BAA' registration.

In Singapore, when registrations with the letters 'SEA', 'SEB', 'SEC', etc were being used, they had to skip 'X' for obvious reasons. And it is fun to speculate which ones Brunei will decide to skip.

I imagine 'BAB' and 'BAC' will not be a problem. But 'BAD'? Will that one be used? And what about 'BAE' which sounds uncomfortably close to the Brunei Malay word for 'pig' ― will they decide to skip that? I predict that 'BAI' may be skipped for the same reason.

I imagine that the one all Bruneians will love best will be 'BAH'!

Taboo Words

In my previous blog, I discussed the pronunciation of Thailand, specifically how it might be influenced by the meaning of [tai] in Malay.

In fact, language usage can often be influenced by taboo words. For example, the traditional English word for 'rabbit' was coney (which rhymed with money), but it dropped out of use because [kʌni] sounded a bit rude; and in America, people generally refer to a male hen as a rooster instead of cock because of the alternative meaning of the latter. (I'm not quite sure why people in Britain seem to be less squeamish about the use of cock for the farm animal, but never mind.)

In Singapore, people generally say cannot rather than can't, and I suspect this is because many speakers make no distinction between long and short vowels, and it is a bit unfortunate if the vowel in can't is heard as [ʌ]. Also in Singapore, people seem to talk about a bedsheet rather than a sheet, and it is possible that this is because, once again as a result of no distinction between long and short vowels, the vowel in sheet might be heard as [ɪ].

The difference with Thailand is that it is cross-linguistic, with a word in Malay potentially influencing the use of English. I suspect that this is quite common, but my knowledge of taboo words in Malay is rather limited. (Well, my access to Malay is mainly through newspapers and TV news-reports, and the occurrence of taboo words in genres such as those is a bit limited!) Perhaps the best way to investigate this would be for speakers of Malay to think of taboo words in Malay and then consider if there are any similar-sounding words in English that they might avoid or alter in some way.

Thailand

Almost every word which starts with the letters 'th' is pronounced with a dental fricative, either [θ] or [ð], in most varieties of British and American English. Exceptions are the names Thai, Thailand, Thames, Thomas and Theresa, and the herb thyme, all of which are pronounced with [t] at the start.

In this part of the world, Thai and Thailand are sometimes pronounced with [θ] at the start. I always assumed this was hypercorrection: speakers have learned that standard pronunciation has a dental fricative whenever 'th' occurs, and so they sometimes apply this rule where it does not in fact apply.

However, one of my UBD colleagues offered an alternative explanation: in Malay, tahi means 'faeces'; and in ordinary speech, the [h] may be omitted so the word is pronounced as [tai]. It is therefore possible that people are using [θ] at the start of Thai and Thailand to avoid sounding rude.

closing

In my previous entry, I discussed the pronunciation of 'next station' in the Singapore MRT announcements. One other feature of the pronunciation of the recordings on the North-East line that struck me is for the word closing (as in 'Doors closing.'), particularly the vowel in the first syllable.

The vowel in the first syllable of closing might be pronounced in three ways:

• [əʊ] : the old-fashioned, traditional RP British way
• [oʊ] : with some diphthongal movement, but not very much; a bit like how Americans would pronounce it
• [o:] : a long monophthong, which sounds very Singaporean

The announcer uses the first of these, which to me sounds rather ridiculous. It sounds like she is trying to pretend to be the Queen of England!

Unlike the careful enunciation of 'next station', which I argued enhances intelligibility, I see no value in using [əʊ] for closing. It seems to me that either [oʊ] or [o:] would be far more appropriate in the context of Singapore.

One other thing that surprised me is that the hyper-correct pronunciation of closing occurs in the utterance 'Doors closing' (in which there is no article and no auxiliary verb ― it would be rather more standard to say 'The doors are closing'). The use of a very careful pronunciation of closing in this abbreviated utterance with non-standard grammar sounds rather strange to me.

next station

I am currently in Singapore for a few days. I am travelling by MRT quite a bit, and I find the pronunciation of the announcements on the trains interesting.

Between each station, the recorded voice announces the next station. In doing so, she uses the phrase 'next station'. In the middle of this phrase, we find the consonant sequence /kstst/, which is a cluster of five consonants. In ordinary speech, virtually everyone, not just in Singapore and Brunei but in Britain and America as well, would omit the /t/ at the end of 'next', as it is normal for all speakers to omit a final /t/ or /d/ under some circumstances. (Specifically, a final /t/ or /d/ is often omitted when it is both preceded and followed by another consonant, so the /t/ is generally dropped in phrases like 'best man' and 'last Monday'.)

But the speaker for the announcements on the North-East MRT line pronounces the final /t/ in 'next' very carefully, even though this sounds rather unnatural.

However, one could argue that this style of pronunciation enhances the intelligibility of the announcement. So perhaps she has actually got it right. In places like Singapore where there are lots of foreigners trying to understand the English that is spoken, maybe sometimes it is right to speak extra carefully if this can improve intelligibility, even if it ends up sounding a bit unnatural.