until now

Suppose I said the following:

I have always been happy until now.

Do you think I am still happy?

In my variety of English, this would mean that things have changed, and now I am no longer happy; but my guess is that most people in Brunei and Singapore would feel that the state of happiness continues into the present time, so I am still happy.

This variant meaning of until now has the potential to create lots of misunderstandings. When we don't know a word, then there is not too much of a problem. But when we think we know what something means and it actually means something else, that is much more problematic.

Vowel Harmony

In my previous post, I discussed the pronunciation of the vowel in the second syllable of tasik ('lake'), specifically that it may be pronounced as [i] or [e]. In a similar fashion, the vowel at the end of terima kasih ('thank you') can often be heard as [e].

However it is not true that all vowels in the final syllable of words in Malay can vary in this way. For example, the second vowel in boleh ('can') is [e] and cannot be [i], and similarly the second vowel in oleh ('by') must be [e] and cannot be [i]. Why is this?

The rule is this: if the vowel in the first syllable is [e] or [o], then the second syllable cannot have a more close vowel. This is known as vowel harmony: the vowels in successive syllables of a word may influence each other. However, the vowel in the first syllable of both tasik and kasih is [a], so these words are not subject to this rule of vowel harmony.

For more information on vowel harmony and other aspects of Malay phonology, see my Pronunciation of Malay website, which provides an on-line version of my paper on Malay, written together with my UBD colleague, Adrian Clynes.

tasik/tasek

These two signs are at different places along the Tasik Lama to Markucing forest trail. Note the variable spelling of tasik ('lake'): on the left, it has an 'i', while on the right it has an 'e'.

This is rather similar to the variable spelling in the name Abin/Aben that I discussed earlier (here). And it similarly involves variability in the vowel in the final syllable, as the vowel /i/ in a closed final syllable can be pronounced as [e] in Malay.

cheese

I saw this cartoon on page 24 of The Brunei Times of 5 August 2012:

Clearly, the photographer doesn't know any phonetics. The reason we say cheese is because the vowel in it is /i:/, which is a close front unrounded vowel. When people say cheese, their lips are spread as if they are smiling.

In contrast, the first syllable of gouda has /u:/, which is a close back rounded vowel. If you take a photo while someone is saying that, their lips will be protruded, as if they are pouting. No wonder the man in the cartoon isn't having much success in getting a good photo!

The other advantage of saying cheese is that it starts and ends with non-labial consonants. (They are produced in the mouth rather than at the lips.) In contrast, parmigiano isn't so good because both /p/ and the /m/ are produced at the lips, so if you clicked at that moment, in the resulting photo it would look like the person was spitting.

Widows

In my previous post, I discussed the difference between anak yatim and orphan. My UBD colleague, Adrian Clynes, suggested a similar issue: my dictionary tells me that the Malay word balu is equivalent to the English widow, but in fact, that is not quite right, as balu can be used to refer to someone who is divorced, but in English widow never refers to a divorcee.

We can describe this difference in linguistic terms: balu has a broader meaning than widow. In other words, a cross-linguistic comparison suggests that balu is a superordinate term, while English has the two hyponyms, widow and divorcee.

Similar superordinate/hyponym comparisons between Malay and English show that Malay has the superordinate term tikus, while English has the hyponyms mouse and rat; and for the reverse pattern, English has the superordinate term rice while Malay has the hyponyms nasi, beras, and padi.

Orphans

My UBD colleague, Malai Ayla, asked me this question: what is the English for the Malay term anak yatim? My dictionary shows this:

However, this is not quite right, as anak yatim can mean a child who has lost one parent, while the English word 'orphan' refers to a child who has lost both parents (anak yatim piatu in Malay). This can lead to mistranslations, as in the caption to the following picture from page 8 of the Borneo Bulletin of 25 September 2007:

So, back to the original question: what is the English for anak yatim? I think the answer is that there is no simple translation, and you need a phrase such as 'a child who has lost one parent'.

Memory

I am currently in the UK, playing with my two grandchildren, Oliver aged 4 and Elsie aged 2. I only see them once a year, so each time I see them, they have developed so much. This time, it was stunning to see how well Oliver can remember things.

We were playing a memory game. The idea is that there are twelve cards, as below. One person looks away, and then the other person turns one of the cards over, to show a slightly altered picture. The first person then looks back to see if they can spot the difference. Here is the original:

You should focus on the picture above to see if you can remember it before looking at the modified picture.

Below is the changed one. Can you spot the difference without referring back to the original? Can you remember what was in the original picture?

The answer: the third card in the middle row has a green and yellow animal missing.

What I found interesting was that Oliver could spot the difference immediately even though he didn't seem to be concentrating very carefully. (In fact, he was jumping around all over the place.) In contrast, I had to focus very hard to try and remember the pattern.

This illustrates how much children are able to absorb with apparently little effort, while older people like me struggle to remember things.

Malay English Intonation

Yesterday I attended the viva examination for Noor Fadhilah Mat Nayan at the University of Reading. Her thesis is on the intonation of English as it is spoken in Malaysia, based on recordings of ten female speakers engaged in the "map task". Her findings are that models of intonation based on British English, specifically the model known as Discourse Intonation proposed by David Brazil, may not be suitable for the description of Malay English, partly because there is a distinct tone (which she calls a Cooperative Rise) which is common in Malaysia but does not occur in British English. This tone is quite distinct from the fall-rise of British English, and its role seems to be to present information in a less demanding fashion than with the ordinary rising tone.

She also found that nucleus placement can be quite variable, and shifts in the main intonational accent of a phrase do not have the same role as similar shifts in British English.

These findings are important in the continuing efforts to describe varieties of English around the world, and I very much hope she will publish them in top journals, to enable other researchersthem to access them easily.

It was a privilege to be able to contribute a little bit to this work. Reading a thesis can sometimes be hard work; but in this case, it was well written, the research design was sound, and the data analysis was careful and thorough.

My wife complains that I almost never stop working, even when I am on vacation (as I am at the moment). But if you enjoy working on something like this, then is it really work?

ambush marketing underpants display

The pile-up of nouns in newspaper headlines is notorious. But I find this sub-headline from today's on-line Guardian article about the behaviour of the Danish footballer, Nicklas Bendtner, particularly tough to decipher:

Irish bookmaker behind Danish striker's ambush marketing underpants display to pay his £80,000 fine

Apparently, ambush marketing is an established noun phrase; but you probably need to know that the Bendtner showed his underpants after scoring a goal during a recent match at the European Nations Cup in order to understand the headline.

For more on the story, see here.

Speed of Light

This post has nothing to do with Brunei. But it's something I thought was interesting, so never mind.

I just saw this paragraph in an article on the BBC Word Service written by Vint Cerf (here) celebrating the life and achievements of Alan Turing:

My colleagues and I have had to re-think the basic communication paradigms for large scale networking owing to the slow nature of light speed propagation (eg 20 minutes one way from Earth to Mars) and disruption caused by planetary motion.

Slow speed of light? Isn't the speed of light the fastest thing we know?

My goodness, we are living in exciting times when we are starting to worry about the slow speed of light!

Abin / Aben

On the forest trail between Bukit Karamunting and Tasek Lama, there are two wasai ('waterfalls') named after two residents of Kampung Subok, Abin and Jumat. But the spelling of the first of these is uncertain. Look at the two signs just a few metres apart. On one, it is spelled Abin, and on the other, it is Aben.

This variability in the spelling might reflect two things:

First, Brunei Malay only has three vowels, /i, a, u/. So it is uncertain how to spell Brunei names when the letters 'e' and 'o' are also adopted from Standard Malay spelling.

Second, and perhaps equally important, in Malay /i/ and /e/ cannot be contrastive in the final syllable of a word, just like /u/ and /o/ cannot be. This is why kasih ('love') is often pronounced with [e] in the final syllable, especially in the phrase terima kasih ('thank you'; lit. 'received with love'). It is also why we sometimes see the spelling kampung ('village') and at other times we find kampong, and it is why the Malay word amuk ('crazy') is borrowed into English as amok (as in 'run amok').

rabun

The Malay for long-sighted is rabun dekat (lit. 'blind close') and for short-sighted it is rabun jauh (lit. 'blind far').

I wonder how much confusion this causes, given that the Malay word dekat ('near') is associated with what in English we call 'long-sighted' (or what Americans call 'near-sighted'), and the Malay word jauh ('distant') is associated with the English 'short-sighted'.

I imagine that dominant Malay speakers would find the English terms quite confusing, and similarly people who learn the English words first would be bemused by their Malay equivalents, especially since rabun doesn't seem to occur much outside of these two phrases. (The basic word for 'blind' in Malay seems to be buta, not rabun.)

My Malay-English dictionary glosses rabun as 'poor', which isn't very helpful. In contrast, the excellent on-line Pusat Rujukan Persuratan Melayu offers 'blind' as a translation, which is a bit better. Perhaps 'poor-sighted' or 'half-blind' might be the best gloss for rabun.

teh

I was just reading a BBC article about the financial situation in Europe (here), and there were two instances of teh (instead of the) in the short article:

April output fell 1.9% from teh previous month

Teh request would follow a conference call

I guess they don't use a spell checker!

Mind you, a spell checker can be a real nightmare if you try and type foreign languages. I tried to enter teh tarik ('tea poured from a height') the other day, but my computer changed it to the tarik. And I keep on getting caught out by datang ('come') getting changed to dating.

sort of / kind of

I was just reading that sort of is three times more common in British English than American English, while kind of is five times more common in American English.

So what about Brunei English? In my data of 53 five-minute recordings of UBD undergraduates, sort of occurs just four times, while kind of occurs 44 times. This seems to reflect a clear American influence on Brunei English.

One thing remains a mystery, though. We might expect rhotic speakers (those who have an [r] at the ind of four and car) to be more likely to use kind of than non-rhotic speakers, if we assume that rhoticity is also partly influenced by the American accent. But, in fact, 27 out of the 44 instances of kind of are produced by non-rhotic speakers. I find this hard to explain.

Zagreb

In my previous post, I discussed the spelling pronunciation in Malay of Budapest with [f] instead of [p] at the start of the final syllable.

Of course, we have lots of similar cases of overgeneralisation with the pronunciation of names in English. For example, why on earth do so many people pronounce Beijing with [ʒ] in the middle? In Chinese it has [dʒ], which is a perfectly good sound in English. So why not use it?

The rationale seems to be this: Beijing is an exotic place, so its pronunciation should sound exotic. And that is why so many people put the rare English sound [ʒ] rather than the commonplace [dʒ] in the middle.

Another example, pointed out by my UBD colleague Alistair Wood, is Zagreb, which some people (especially football commentators) pronounce with stress on the final syllable. In Croatian, and indeed all Slavic languages, the stress is on the first syllable, so speakers can never have heard a native speaker producing it with final stress. Furthermore, stress on the first syllable is the most natural way of saying it in English. But some people seem to think that, because it is an exotic place, the pronunciation must be a little bit unusual; and so they give it final stress

Budafest

The pronunciation of names in different languages is always interesting. The morning, on the 8:00 RTB radio news, I heard the announcer state that Prince Sufri, the President of the Brunei Olympic Committee, has gone to Budapest, but he pronounced it with [f] rather than the expected [p] at the start of the final syllable.

This is quite easy to explain: Malay has no [f], except in borrowed words such as faham ('understand') and fikir ('think') from Arabic and filem ('film') and fail ('file') from English. But it is common for people in Brunei (and elsewhere in the Malay-speaking world) to pronounce faham with an initial [p], in effect nativising the pronunciation. To avoid this, some speakers are very careful to make sure they pronounce the [f] correctly. And then occasionally they extend it, and they end up using [f] where in fact it is not expected. We call this "overgeneralisation".

European Champions!

For a lifelong Chelsea supporter such as me, last night was a bit special. It's not just that we finally won the thing; it was the way we won it.

For goodness sakes: Bayern had twenty corners, and they scored from none of them; but Chelsea had one single corner in the whole game, and Drogba went and scored from it. And then Bayern missed a penalty, they had so many chances with an open goal, there was a disallowed goal for off-side, and they were even up in the final penalty shoot out! ... what can you say?

At the end of the game, I called my son in England and just lay on the floor laughing. My wife says she hasn't heard me laugh so much for years.

From a linguistic perspective: I always find football commentary fascinating, and I feel sorry for English learners from around the world who are trying to make any sense of it. Just think about some of the things the commentators say — not all from last night, but pretty typical for football commentary:

• they're really under the cosh now
• Drogba was on his bike there
• Ribery is looking to pick up the bits and pieces
• Robben was lucky to get a second bite there

I really pity all those students of English who look up cosh in a dictionary and still have no clue what on earth is going on. I just looked it up in the Macmillan Dictionary, and it means "a weapon shaped like a short thick stick". Well, that helps!

And what is anyone doing on a bike while playing football? But that is the wonder of language — none of it really makes any sense. It's just what we say. Especially in football commentaries.

artly

This is the label my UBD colleague Adrian Clynes noticed on the back of his jacket.

Artly doesn't seem like a good word in English. But why not? If you can add ‑ly to the end of the noun saint to make saintly, or to the end of friend to create friendly, or to the end of father to make fatherly, why can't you add ‑ly to the end of the noun art to creat artly?

The answer seems to be that the only nouns to which you can add ‑ly to create an adjective must be human. So brotherly is fine, as are womanly and ghostly, but not *carpetly, *bookly, *catly or *horsely.

This is, of course, different from adjectives becoming adverbs: it seems you can add ‑ly to pretty much any adjective to create an adverb, so you have happily, slowly, lazily, dangerously, sleepily, cautiously, superciliously, artfully, etc.

But, in contrast, the ‑ly suffix that converts a noun to an adjective seems to be much more restricted.

Are there any exceptions? I guess worldly and lovely, and probably a few more. Also, there seem to be plenty of human nouns which don't allow a ‑ly suffix: *auntly, *bossly, *scientistly, and many more.

Subject-Verb Agreement

One feature of New Varieties of English, such as those of Singapore and Brunei, is sporadic lack of subject-verb agreement. A factor that sometimes influences this is an intervening noun. For example, in Singapore I found these examples from student assignments, where generation and speech respectively result in the verb having a third-person singular ‑s suffix:

The children in this generation uses this language.

I realise that the features of my speech is rather distinct and different.

And in my corpus of interviews in Brunei, I have found the following examples, in which English and competition seem to have influenced the main verb:

most of the words of English comes from well originate from Greek language

but those who actually go for the competition is quite less

Does this occur in the English from elsewhere, such as the UK?

I just noticed the following in this week's WorldWideWords newsletter, written by Michael Quinion, who is something of an expert on English:

In the days when knowledge of Greek and Latin were widespread, ...

Note the the head of the subject is knowledge, so we would expect the verb to be was not were. But the intervening 'Latin and Greek' seems to have caused confusion.

I wonder how widespread this phenomenon is.

this areas

Here is a sign at the entrance to the Belimbing Recreational Park along Jalan Subok.

It is a bit surprising that people can spend lots of money producing such a well-made sign but not bother to get the English right.

The analysis of this English raises some questions. Does areas have a spurious ‑s suffix? Or is it a case of confusion between this and these?

My feeling is that the former analysis is better: the intended message is supposed to refer to 'this recreational area', but the sign-writer used the plural areas instead. However, I have also come across this used with plural nouns. It seems that there is no clear distinction between this and these in Brunei, possibly because many speakers do not differentiate between long and short vowels.