30 March 2010
Another thing that caught my interest was the use of this French word “noir” ( literal means black) in some movie reviews. Interestingly, in the number of instances that the noir appears, it was observed that noir is always primed to collocate with the word film giving FILM NOIR!
I found this really strange because to call a film “film noir” because my intuition tells me that the implied meaning of the noir here seems to suggest that the film must be “dark, sinister and evil.” Anyway, that was my first guess based on intuition. I am not a movie addict so this is the reason why this word stikes as something novel for me. It is just like the previous post where I talked about Hitchcockian.
From the concordance sampler, I had numerous instances where the word noir is collocated with film (N-1).
Next, I proceeded to check the definition of the meaning of noir to check if my speculation of the definition of the word is right.
MW says:
Main Entry: film noir
Pronunciation: \-ˈnwär\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural film noirs \-ˈnwär(z)\ or films noir or films noirs\-ˈnwär\
Etymology: French, literally, black film
Date: 1958
: a type of crime film featuring cynical malevolent characters in a sleazy setting and an ominous atmosphere that is conveyed by shadowy photography and foreboding background music; also : a film of this type
Hmm, from here, it appears that my guess is partially correct.
However, this definition does not quite align with the another site that I visited. I managed to chance upon this site by coincidence because I was searching for a dictionary of cinematic terms. And miraculously, I managed to find out. According to this dictionary, it says that film noir is defined as :
a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression era.
The definition given by this dictionary is alot more detailed than the one given by Merriam Webster as there were details that was not present in the MW dictionary. Perhaps this is an obvious indication that the term film noir is very unique only to cinematic discourse and is not a pharse that we would usually hear and write unless our job is to write a movie –review. Just like linguistic terms, medical terms where jargons of these sorts are found only in dictionaries specially catered to a particular genre and topic. Anyway, this was certainly a very interesting phrase that I have come across and I’m glad to have picked up or learnt a new phrase today.
dimanche 4 avril 2010
I forgot to add my last 2 blog posts on my blog!!!
30th March 2010
I was reading this movie review on one of the movies called the Shutter and I came across this very interesting word “Hitchcockian”. It really stuck me as something interesting because one I never knew such a word existed and secondly, the moment I saw this word, I immediately thought of Alfred Hitchcock, a highly acclaimed movie director and producer. Anyway, this review wrote “Twin screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes play with some interesting ideas regarding twin characters, as well as some squeal-inducing moments of Hitchcockian force.
So I decided to check the dictionary to see if this word exists. Interestingly, this word does not appear in any of the respectable and widely acclaimed dictionaries like the Merrian Webster or the OED. Yet when I googled the word Hitchcockian, I actually get several sample sentences with the word Hitchcockian.
1. Four Modern "Hitchcockian" Horror Films You Must See - Associated ...
9 Mar 2010 ... Alfred Hitchcock was the master of psychological suspense. But there seem
1. Broadway's Hitchcockian Comedy The 39 Steps Extends One Week ...
Hitchcockian Thrillers.
a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet
Also, from the concordance sampler, I managed to get 2 data.
-formulaic approach to repliating the Hitchcockian thriller falls flat with a movie that is
- back to his scintillating best with a Hitchcockian comedy thriller. [p] Julia mckenzie and
From the data obtained, I realized that Hitchcockian acts as an adjective and it modifies a noun. What comes after Hitchcockian always have to be a NP that is related to a genre under the domain of movies. Perhaps, this is a cinematic term, I thought to myself. To confirm this, I randomly typed definition of Hitchcockian and interestingly Wikipedia gave a very detailed definition of what Hitchcockian is defined as.
Wikipedia- Hitchcockian is a general term used to describe film styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock's films.
Elements considered Hitchcockian include:
• The cool platinum blonde (often a central figure of Hitchcock's films).
• The presence of a domineering mother in her child's life (e.g. Psycho).
• An innocent man accused (again used in many of Hitchcock's films).
• Restricting the action to a single setting to increase tension (e.g. Lifeboat, Rear Window, Rope).
• Characters who switch sides or who cannot be trusted.
• Tension building through suspense to the point where the audience enjoys seeing the character in a life-threatening situation, such as the windmill scene from Foreign Correspondent.
• Average people thrust into strange or dangerous situations, such as in North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• Bumbling or incompetent authority figures, particularly police officers.
• Use of darkness to symbolise impending doom (dark clothing, shadows, smoke, etc)
• Strong visual use of famous landmarks (Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Forth Rail Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Albert Hall, British Museum, Piccadilly Circus, etc.)
• Mistaken identity, such as in North by Northwest and The Wrong Man.
• The use of a staircase as a motif for impending danger or suspense.
• Use of a macguffin or plot device that remains unexplained, such as the microfilm in North by Northwest.
From here it can be concluded that Hitchcockian is a unique term in cinematic discourse only. Outside the genre of movies, we can rarely see this word being used. Perhaps, it would be even better that such words, though its usage is very limited and constrained only to a certain genre can be codified in the more prestigious and reference dictionaries for future references.
Wikipedia- Hitchcockian is a general term used to describe film styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock's films. Elements considered Hitchcockian include:
• The cool platinum blonde (often a central figure of Hitchcock's films).
• The presence of a domineering mother in her child's life (e.g. Psycho).
• An innocent man accused (again used in many of Hitchcock's films).
• Restricting the action to a single setting to increase tension (e.g. Lifeboat, Rear Window, Rope).
• Characters who switch sides or who cannot be trusted.
• Tension building through suspense to the point where the audience enjoys seeing the character in a life-threatening situation, such as the windmill scene from Foreign Correspondent.
• Average people thrust into strange or dangerous situations, such as in North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• Bumbling or incompetent authority figures, particularly police officers.
• Use of darkness to symbolise impending doom (dark clothing, shadows, smoke, etc)
• Strong visual use of famous landmarks (Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Forth Rail Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Albert Hall, British Museum, Piccadilly Circus, etc.)
• Mistaken identity, such as in North by Northwest and The Wrong Man.
• The use of a staircase as a motif for impending danger or suspense.
• Use of a macguffin or plot device that remains unexplained, such as the microfilm in North by Northwest.
30th March 2010
I was reading this movie review on one of the movies called the Shutter and I came across this very interesting word “Hitchcockian”. It really stuck me as something interesting because one I never knew such a word existed and secondly, the moment I saw this word, I immediately thought of Alfred Hitchcock, a highly acclaimed movie director and producer. Anyway, this review wrote “Twin screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes play with some interesting ideas regarding twin characters, as well as some squeal-inducing moments of Hitchcockian force.
So I decided to check the dictionary to see if this word exists. Interestingly, this word does not appear in any of the respectable and widely acclaimed dictionaries like the Merrian Webster or the OED. Yet when I googled the word Hitchcockian, I actually get several sample sentences with the word Hitchcockian.
1. Four Modern "Hitchcockian" Horror Films You Must See - Associated ...
9 Mar 2010 ... Alfred Hitchcock was the master of psychological suspense. But there seem
1. Broadway's Hitchcockian Comedy The 39 Steps Extends One Week ...
Hitchcockian Thrillers.
a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet
Also, from the concordance sampler, I managed to get 2 data.
-formulaic approach to repliating the Hitchcockian thriller falls flat with a movie that is
- back to his scintillating best with a Hitchcockian comedy thriller. [p] Julia mckenzie and
From the data obtained, I realized that Hitchcockian acts as an adjective and it modifies a noun. What comes after Hitchcockian always have to be a NP that is related to a genre under the domain of movies. Perhaps, this is a cinematic term, I thought to myself. To confirm this, I randomly typed definition of Hitchcockian and interestingly Wikipedia gave a very detailed definition of what Hitchcockian is defined as.
Wikipedia- Hitchcockian is a general term used to describe film styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock's films.
Elements considered Hitchcockian include:
• The cool platinum blonde (often a central figure of Hitchcock's films).
• The presence of a domineering mother in her child's life (e.g. Psycho).
• An innocent man accused (again used in many of Hitchcock's films).
• Restricting the action to a single setting to increase tension (e.g. Lifeboat, Rear Window, Rope).
• Characters who switch sides or who cannot be trusted.
• Tension building through suspense to the point where the audience enjoys seeing the character in a life-threatening situation, such as the windmill scene from Foreign Correspondent.
• Average people thrust into strange or dangerous situations, such as in North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• Bumbling or incompetent authority figures, particularly police officers.
• Use of darkness to symbolise impending doom (dark clothing, shadows, smoke, etc)
• Strong visual use of famous landmarks (Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Forth Rail Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Albert Hall, British Museum, Piccadilly Circus, etc.)
• Mistaken identity, such as in North by Northwest and The Wrong Man.
• The use of a staircase as a motif for impending danger or suspense.
• Use of a macguffin or plot device that remains unexplained, such as the microfilm in North by Northwest.
From here it can be concluded that Hitchcockian is a unique term in cinematic discourse only. Outside the genre of movies, we can rarely see this word being used. Perhaps, it would be even better that such words, though its usage is very limited and constrained only to a certain genre can be codified in the more prestigious and reference dictionaries for future references.
Wikipedia- Hitchcockian is a general term used to describe film styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock's films. Elements considered Hitchcockian include:
• The cool platinum blonde (often a central figure of Hitchcock's films).
• The presence of a domineering mother in her child's life (e.g. Psycho).
• An innocent man accused (again used in many of Hitchcock's films).
• Restricting the action to a single setting to increase tension (e.g. Lifeboat, Rear Window, Rope).
• Characters who switch sides or who cannot be trusted.
• Tension building through suspense to the point where the audience enjoys seeing the character in a life-threatening situation, such as the windmill scene from Foreign Correspondent.
• Average people thrust into strange or dangerous situations, such as in North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• Bumbling or incompetent authority figures, particularly police officers.
• Use of darkness to symbolise impending doom (dark clothing, shadows, smoke, etc)
• Strong visual use of famous landmarks (Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Forth Rail Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Albert Hall, British Museum, Piccadilly Circus, etc.)
• Mistaken identity, such as in North by Northwest and The Wrong Man.
• The use of a staircase as a motif for impending danger or suspense.
• Use of a macguffin or plot device that remains unexplained, such as the microfilm in North by Northwest.
mardi 30 mars 2010
You are too la-di-dah for words!
I used to enjoy reading Enid Blyton’s books when I was very young and one of my favourite series was Malory Towers. Her book recounts the various events that took place in Malory Towers with particular focus on a particular class of girls. Darrell Rivers is the protagonist of this Malory Towers series and all that happens in Malory Towers is viewed from her perspective. I ‘m not going to talk more about what the story is about because this is not relevant. So anyway,
in one scenario, Darrell (head-girl of her form) told her sister off for being ill-mannered and her sister Felicity replied “ You’re too la-di-dahLa-di-dah (Oxford advanced learner’s Dictionary)
(adj) Informal ,especially BrE-used to describe a way of speaking or behaving that is typical of upper-class people but that is not natural or sincere.
Exclamation: used when somebody is irritating you, because they seem to think they are more important then they really are.
Knowing that this word is used only specifically in the British context, it makes me wonder whether this word is obsolete in today’s British context since this word is rarely heard nor used in conversations be it on British TV serials, BBC movies and conversations amongst the British themselves.
What are your thoughts?
I used to enjoy reading Enid Blyton’s books when I was very young and one of my favourite series was Malory Towers. Her book recounts the various events that took place in Malory Towers with particular focus on a particular class of girls. Darrell Rivers is the protagonist of this Malory Towers series and all that happens in Malory Towers is viewed from her perspective. I ‘m not going to talk more about what the story is about because this is not relevant. So anyway,
in one scenario, Darrell (head-girl of her form) told her sister off for being ill-mannered and her sister Felicity replied “ You’re too la-di-dahLa-di-dah (Oxford advanced learner’s Dictionary)
(adj) Informal ,especially BrE-used to describe a way of speaking or behaving that is typical of upper-class people but that is not natural or sincere.
Exclamation: used when somebody is irritating you, because they seem to think they are more important then they really are.
Knowing that this word is used only specifically in the British context, it makes me wonder whether this word is obsolete in today’s British context since this word is rarely heard nor used in conversations be it on British TV serials, BBC movies and conversations amongst the British themselves.
What are your thoughts?
SPORTS AND HOBBITS!
Here is a website which I recommend you all to visit: it’s http:// www.engrish.com. if you want to have a good laugh. You can find numerous pictures of signs in weird, funny English which is good enough to tickle you. At times, these sentences are so ridiculously ill-formed that you can hardly decode the message. At times, the message may seem clear but the choice of lexical items used don’t seem to be appropriate. One example that caught my attention was a sign taken from a library saying sports and hobbits!
I burst into a fit of laughter upon seeing this because hobbits conjures up images of short men/women living merrily in tiny cottages during the medieval period. Also, JRR Tolkien and his famous Lord Of The Rings immediately comes to mind when Hobbits is mentioned.
Of course, it is outrageous that a library should have a sign like that especially when it is obvious that the error was merely an orthographic one. The take –away from this is that, even a simple word, when spelled wrongly CAN ALTER THE intended meaning and at times, generate meaningless or bizarre sentences.
Another example of an orthographic error was spotted on a banner outside a food stall. On the banner was a picture of our favourite hash brown, but guess what was written on the sign? HARSH BROWN! Oops, I have lost my appetite to eat HARSH BROWN because I only eat Hash Brown.
Another example:
I think this was a sign taken from china because it was in Chinese. The purpose of the sign was to warn parents to prevent their child from going too near the lake to avoid falling into the water. However, on the sign , it was written as : Take the child, fall into water carefully!. Again, we observe that this is a result of a direct translation from Chinese! Dai hao hai zi, xiao xin luo shui!
After having come across all these signs coming from Japan and China, I realized that in non-Anglo countries, their standard of English is pretty low. But we cannot blame them since English isn’t their native language. Yet, English being the only language in the world to achieve this status as a World Language and a lingua franca where people of different cultural and social background communicate, one cannot avoid using English during the course of their life. That explains why in most countries, we always find natives of the country conversing in English with a foreigner, unless a common ground has been established (such as being capable to speak the native’s language). In tourism, we observe that in most tourism websites, there will always be an English version , if the native language of the country is not English. Likewise, even in cities like Tokyo, Paris, Berlin etc English can be seen on signboards in public places like airports, train stations etc. Therefore, it is crucial that signs must written in proper English where sentences are grammatical and meaningful. The examples we have seen above are very bad ones and should be taken down immediately. Honestly, I feel that these countries could do a better job by hiring skilled translators to do the translations. It is indeed a torture and a pain to read meaningless signs which leads one to nowhere.
Here is a website which I recommend you all to visit: it’s http:// www.engrish.com. if you want to have a good laugh. You can find numerous pictures of signs in weird, funny English which is good enough to tickle you. At times, these sentences are so ridiculously ill-formed that you can hardly decode the message. At times, the message may seem clear but the choice of lexical items used don’t seem to be appropriate. One example that caught my attention was a sign taken from a library saying sports and hobbits!
I burst into a fit of laughter upon seeing this because hobbits conjures up images of short men/women living merrily in tiny cottages during the medieval period. Also, JRR Tolkien and his famous Lord Of The Rings immediately comes to mind when Hobbits is mentioned.
Of course, it is outrageous that a library should have a sign like that especially when it is obvious that the error was merely an orthographic one. The take –away from this is that, even a simple word, when spelled wrongly CAN ALTER THE intended meaning and at times, generate meaningless or bizarre sentences.
Another example of an orthographic error was spotted on a banner outside a food stall. On the banner was a picture of our favourite hash brown, but guess what was written on the sign? HARSH BROWN! Oops, I have lost my appetite to eat HARSH BROWN because I only eat Hash Brown.
Another example:
I think this was a sign taken from china because it was in Chinese. The purpose of the sign was to warn parents to prevent their child from going too near the lake to avoid falling into the water. However, on the sign , it was written as : Take the child, fall into water carefully!. Again, we observe that this is a result of a direct translation from Chinese! Dai hao hai zi, xiao xin luo shui!
After having come across all these signs coming from Japan and China, I realized that in non-Anglo countries, their standard of English is pretty low. But we cannot blame them since English isn’t their native language. Yet, English being the only language in the world to achieve this status as a World Language and a lingua franca where people of different cultural and social background communicate, one cannot avoid using English during the course of their life. That explains why in most countries, we always find natives of the country conversing in English with a foreigner, unless a common ground has been established (such as being capable to speak the native’s language). In tourism, we observe that in most tourism websites, there will always be an English version , if the native language of the country is not English. Likewise, even in cities like Tokyo, Paris, Berlin etc English can be seen on signboards in public places like airports, train stations etc. Therefore, it is crucial that signs must written in proper English where sentences are grammatical and meaningful. The examples we have seen above are very bad ones and should be taken down immediately. Honestly, I feel that these countries could do a better job by hiring skilled translators to do the translations. It is indeed a torture and a pain to read meaningless signs which leads one to nowhere.
You have a glowing, crystal clear complexion!
Every time I read magazines like Her World, 17,teenage, I always come across heaps of advertisements promoting different brands of facial products to readers. No matter what brand is it, they always claim that after using their products, your skin will glow. You will find yourself achieving this glowing ,crystal clear complexion. What really struck me was the choice of adjectives used to describe complexion. When I think of “crystal clear” the very first image that pops in my mind is water or any object that is transparent where light waves can penetrate. When I think of the word glowing, I immediately think of an object that has a shiny, smooth surface that reflects lights thus giving this glow. However, I noticed that this expression is so ubiquitously employed in most adverts promoting beauty and cosmetic products. The literal meaning of glow and clear is as such:
MW: glow (v) 1 a : to shine with or as if with an intense heat b (1) : to have a rich warm typically ruddy color (2) : flush, blush
clear:
1 a : bright, luminous b : cloudless; specifically : less than one-tenth covered c : free from mist, haze, or dust d : untroubled, serene
2 : clean, pure: as a : free from blemishes b : easily seen through
Encarta dictionary: clear-the idea of being transparent. easily see through.
However, what is interesting is that, in almost all the dictionaries that I consulted, the word clear seems to take on another a different meaning in the domaine of beauty and cosmetics. Whether it is a learner's dictionary or reference dictionary, the words clear, in the domaine of beauty was given the definition as free from blemish and red spots. Unlike the conventional meaning of clear which means transparent and luminous, we see how words like glow and clear conveys the idea of a clear complexion, free of pimples and a smooth complexion that reflects light thus giving a glow on the face.
To conclude, we see that the both learner's and reference dictionary gave a very detailed list of the various definitions that the word clear can take. This is interesting since one would not expect learner's dictionary to actually be as detailed as a refernece dictionary assuming that the learners' goal is to first master the literal meaning of the word and its usage in the literal sense. However, we could argue from another point of view that by giving a very detailed definition of the word 'clear' , it benefits the learners in the sense that they will learn to be more aware of the various usage and meanings a word can take. Such information can be very beneficial in the course of their learning process. Hence, should all learner dictionaries strive to be like reference dictionaries? In fact, I am supportive of this simply beacuse learners of any foreign language needs so much more information than a native as to how a word is used and what meanings it has in different domains. Currently, I speak and write 7 languages of which I am fluent in 4 (German , French, English and Chinese). I rarely revise the 3 other languages that I have picked up 6 months ago (Russian, Czech and Polish). Occassionally when I have the time, I do refer back to my course book to revise the grammatical structure and some vocabulary items. I have a learner's dictionary of Russian, Polish and Czech and one of the things that really annoy me is that limite amount of information that the dictionary gives. Supposedly I were to read a text in Russian and I come across a word that I am unfamiliar with, I check the dictionary. But the next moment I come across the same word (used in a different context) I get slightly puzzled simply beacuse the meaning stated by the dictionary does not seem to fit well into the context. Perhaps, this could be an idiomatic expression! But whatever it is, it always bothers me to have a learner's dictionary. I always find them a nuisance because they never seem to help much.
Thus, I am in favour for a learner's dictionary to be equally as detailed as a refernece dictionary for individual who truly aspires to master as many foreign languages as possible. What are your thoughts? Should there be a difference between a learner and a refernce dictionary?
Every time I read magazines like Her World, 17,teenage, I always come across heaps of advertisements promoting different brands of facial products to readers. No matter what brand is it, they always claim that after using their products, your skin will glow. You will find yourself achieving this glowing ,crystal clear complexion. What really struck me was the choice of adjectives used to describe complexion. When I think of “crystal clear” the very first image that pops in my mind is water or any object that is transparent where light waves can penetrate. When I think of the word glowing, I immediately think of an object that has a shiny, smooth surface that reflects lights thus giving this glow. However, I noticed that this expression is so ubiquitously employed in most adverts promoting beauty and cosmetic products. The literal meaning of glow and clear is as such:
MW: glow (v) 1 a : to shine with or as if with an intense heat
clear:
1 a : bright, luminous b : cloudless; specifically : less than one-tenth covered c : free from mist, haze, or dust d : untroubled, serene
2 : clean, pure: as a : free from blemishes
Encarta dictionary: clear-the idea of being transparent. easily see through.
However, what is interesting is that, in almost all the dictionaries that I consulted, the word clear seems to take on another a different meaning in the domaine of beauty and cosmetics. Whether it is a learner's dictionary or reference dictionary, the words clear, in the domaine of beauty was given the definition as free from blemish and red spots. Unlike the conventional meaning of clear which means transparent and luminous, we see how words like glow and clear conveys the idea of a clear complexion, free of pimples and a smooth complexion that reflects light thus giving a glow on the face.
To conclude, we see that the both learner's and reference dictionary gave a very detailed list of the various definitions that the word clear can take. This is interesting since one would not expect learner's dictionary to actually be as detailed as a refernece dictionary assuming that the learners' goal is to first master the literal meaning of the word and its usage in the literal sense. However, we could argue from another point of view that by giving a very detailed definition of the word 'clear' , it benefits the learners in the sense that they will learn to be more aware of the various usage and meanings a word can take. Such information can be very beneficial in the course of their learning process. Hence, should all learner dictionaries strive to be like reference dictionaries? In fact, I am supportive of this simply beacuse learners of any foreign language needs so much more information than a native as to how a word is used and what meanings it has in different domains. Currently, I speak and write 7 languages of which I am fluent in 4 (German , French, English and Chinese). I rarely revise the 3 other languages that I have picked up 6 months ago (Russian, Czech and Polish). Occassionally when I have the time, I do refer back to my course book to revise the grammatical structure and some vocabulary items. I have a learner's dictionary of Russian, Polish and Czech and one of the things that really annoy me is that limite amount of information that the dictionary gives. Supposedly I were to read a text in Russian and I come across a word that I am unfamiliar with, I check the dictionary. But the next moment I come across the same word (used in a different context) I get slightly puzzled simply beacuse the meaning stated by the dictionary does not seem to fit well into the context. Perhaps, this could be an idiomatic expression! But whatever it is, it always bothers me to have a learner's dictionary. I always find them a nuisance because they never seem to help much.
Thus, I am in favour for a learner's dictionary to be equally as detailed as a refernece dictionary for individual who truly aspires to master as many foreign languages as possible. What are your thoughts? Should there be a difference between a learner and a refernce dictionary?
Our Japanese red bean is air-flown from Hokkaido , Japan, and vacuum-packed to keep its authentic flavour.
This example was extracted from a brochure of MOF restaurant promoting various food items ranging from drinks to desserts. I don’t know why this strikes me as inappropriate. Perhaps it’s because I have never, from my experience , heard anyone saying “ this product is air-flown from Hokkaido”. Usually, I would hear people saying this product is imported from country X. Hence, to answer my doubt, I deceided to do consult various dictionaries to search for the definition of air-flown.
I did a quick check with my electronic dictionary –Oxford advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
Air-flown did not appear despite having typed the key word “air” or “fly”. But under the word “fly” , I got this reading:
6. (VN) to transport goods or passengers in an aircraft.
The MW dictionary says: intransitive verb
1 a : to move in or pass through the air with wings b : to move through the air or before the wind or through outer space c : to float, wave, or soar in the air
2 a : to take flight : flee b : to fade and disappear : vanish
3 a : to move, pass, or spread quickly b : to be moved with sudden extreme emotion c : to seem to pass quickly
4 : to become expended or dissipated rapidly
5 : to operate or travel in an airplane or spacecraft
6 : to work successfully : win popular acceptance
transitive verb
1 a : to cause to fly, float, or hang in the air b : to operate (as a balloon, aircraft, rocket, or spacecraft) in flight c : to journey over or through by flying
2 a : to flee or escape from b : avoid, shun
3 : to transport by aircraft or spacecraft
— fly at : to assail suddenly and violently
— fly blind : to fly an airplane solely by instruments
— fly high : to be elated
— fly in the face of or fly in the teeth of : to stand or act forthrightly or brazenly in defiance or contradiction of
The Encarta dictionary says:
fly [ flī ]
verb (past flew [ floo ], past participle flown [ flōn ], present participle fly·ing, 3rd person present singular flies)
Definition:
1. intransitive verb move through air: to travel through the air using wings or an engine
2. intransitive verb travel in aircraft: to travel in an aircraft
3. transitive verb take somebody or something by air: to take or send things or passengers in an aircraft
So,based on the definition given by the dictionary, the phrase "beans air-flown from hokkaido" is semantically fine but why does it sound so strange to use air-flown and why does it sound so much natural to say import? I dunno. Maybe I am just being weird.
I went to google the word air-flown and apparently, there were instances where we have examples like :
Fresh food flown to Britain
Air-freighted green beans
air-freighted organic products
broad beans flown in from abroad
Perhaps there is nothing worng with air-flown at all = ) .
This example was extracted from a brochure of MOF restaurant promoting various food items ranging from drinks to desserts. I don’t know why this strikes me as inappropriate. Perhaps it’s because I have never, from my experience , heard anyone saying “ this product is air-flown from Hokkaido”. Usually, I would hear people saying this product is imported from country X. Hence, to answer my doubt, I deceided to do consult various dictionaries to search for the definition of air-flown.
I did a quick check with my electronic dictionary –Oxford advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
Air-flown did not appear despite having typed the key word “air” or “fly”. But under the word “fly” , I got this reading:
6. (VN) to transport goods or passengers in an aircraft.
The MW dictionary says: intransitive verb
1 a : to move in or pass through the air with wings b : to move through the air or before the wind or through outer space c : to float, wave, or soar in the air
2 a : to take flight : flee b : to fade and disappear : vanish
3 a : to move, pass, or spread quickly
4 : to become expended or dissipated rapidly
5 : to operate or travel in an airplane or spacecraft
6 : to work successfully : win popular acceptance
transitive verb
1 a : to cause to fly, float, or hang in the air
2 a : to flee or escape from b : avoid, shun
3 : to transport by aircraft or spacecraft
— fly at : to assail suddenly and violently
— fly blind : to fly an airplane solely by instruments
— fly high : to be elated
— fly in the face of or fly in the teeth of : to stand or act forthrightly or brazenly in defiance or contradiction of
The Encarta dictionary says:
fly [ flī ]
verb (past flew [ floo ], past participle flown [ flōn ], present participle fly·ing, 3rd person present singular flies)
Definition:
1. intransitive verb move through air: to travel through the air using wings or an engine
2. intransitive verb travel in aircraft: to travel in an aircraft
3. transitive verb take somebody or something by air: to take or send things or passengers in an aircraft
So,based on the definition given by the dictionary, the phrase "beans air-flown from hokkaido" is semantically fine but why does it sound so strange to use air-flown and why does it sound so much natural to say import? I dunno. Maybe I am just being weird.
I went to google the word air-flown and apparently, there were instances where we have examples like :
Fresh food flown to Britain
Air-freighted green beans
air-freighted organic products
broad beans flown in from abroad
Perhaps there is nothing worng with air-flown at all = ) .
The first time I came to Singapore was when I was 12 and when my mother enrolled me in Raffles Girl’s Primary, I was in Primary 6. At that time, this word “primary” struck me as something foreign. When people ask me which level I was studying in primary school, I was always quick to reply: I am in Year 7 . And the next moment, I started getting puzzled looks from people simply because they do not understand what Year 7 meant.
I noticed that in different countries, education system are labelled differently. For instance in Singapore, in our education section , students are labelled as primary 1, 2, 3, 4,5,6, followed by secondary 1, 2, 3,4 and eventually, J1 or J2. In most Western countries, the education system is labelled as such: US Grade 1 to 12.In Australia, our education system is labelled very similar to that of the US. Instead of the word grade, we use the word "Year" . In Britain, the word "form" is often used to label the academic level of individual student. Eg: Students in the sixth form (which is equivqlent to Singapore's J2 batch of students. ). While "form" is mostly used in the UK , it is also used in US, especially by the private schools.
As the MW defines form as " a grade in a British school or in some American private schools.
From here, it is interesting to see how different words are used differently to label a thing. Take another example of the words biscuit and cookie. The British uses the word biscuits while the americans use the word cookie to refer to a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon. Both cookie and biscuit refer to the same things but this object is labelled differently between these 2 societies. More examples to illustrate the differences in labelling the same object :
(American-British)
1.) Windshield vs Windscreen
2.)Pants versus trousers
3.) candy versus sweet
4.) Highway versus main road
5.) Motor versus engine
Although the Americans and British speak a common language English and despite the fact that the earliest settlers in America were the Brits and that one would expect the sort of words used in the Aamerica to be very similar to the British context,the slight differences in the choice of lexical items to describe and label an object is evident. Perhaps during the early days in the American society, the word "candy" is favoured over "sweet" thus becoming appropriated into the context and over time, when the word is codified in a dictionary and the word being acquired by future generations,one often hears the americans saying candy instead of sweet.
Likewise in the Singaporean context, the use of the word porridge differs from our supreme authority (Bitish). In the British context, porridge is defined as a dish made by boiling oats (rolled, crushed, or steel cut) or other grains or legumes in water, milk, or both. On the contrary, our so-called porridge does not fit the definition given above. In layman's terms, what we label as porridge is basically a dish where rice is boiled in water, ingredients (vegetables , meats, peanuts etc.) are added to it and served as a dish in a bowl...
With this in mind, it is not surprising that I should get strange looks from people when I said Year 7. Singaporeans are not primed to label the education level of an individaul in terms of "Year" or "Grade". They are primed to use the word "primary , secondary".
I noticed that in different countries, education system are labelled differently. For instance in Singapore, in our education section , students are labelled as primary 1, 2, 3, 4,5,6, followed by secondary 1, 2, 3,4 and eventually, J1 or J2. In most Western countries, the education system is labelled as such: US Grade 1 to 12.In Australia, our education system is labelled very similar to that of the US. Instead of the word grade, we use the word "Year" . In Britain, the word "form" is often used to label the academic level of individual student. Eg: Students in the sixth form (which is equivqlent to Singapore's J2 batch of students. ). While "form" is mostly used in the UK , it is also used in US, especially by the private schools.
As the MW defines form as " a grade in a British school or in some American private schools.
From here, it is interesting to see how different words are used differently to label a thing. Take another example of the words biscuit and cookie. The British uses the word biscuits while the americans use the word cookie to refer to a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon. Both cookie and biscuit refer to the same things but this object is labelled differently between these 2 societies. More examples to illustrate the differences in labelling the same object :
(American-British)
1.) Windshield vs Windscreen
2.)Pants versus trousers
3.) candy versus sweet
4.) Highway versus main road
5.) Motor versus engine
Although the Americans and British speak a common language English and despite the fact that the earliest settlers in America were the Brits and that one would expect the sort of words used in the Aamerica to be very similar to the British context,the slight differences in the choice of lexical items to describe and label an object is evident. Perhaps during the early days in the American society, the word "candy" is favoured over "sweet" thus becoming appropriated into the context and over time, when the word is codified in a dictionary and the word being acquired by future generations,one often hears the americans saying candy instead of sweet.
Likewise in the Singaporean context, the use of the word porridge differs from our supreme authority (Bitish). In the British context, porridge is defined as a dish made by boiling oats (rolled, crushed, or steel cut) or other grains or legumes in water, milk, or both. On the contrary, our so-called porridge does not fit the definition given above. In layman's terms, what we label as porridge is basically a dish where rice is boiled in water, ingredients (vegetables , meats, peanuts etc.) are added to it and served as a dish in a bowl...
With this in mind, it is not surprising that I should get strange looks from people when I said Year 7. Singaporeans are not primed to label the education level of an individaul in terms of "Year" or "Grade". They are primed to use the word "primary , secondary".
lundi 29 mars 2010
Trim my Foot!
This was actually taken from a sign board in Japan placed outside a beauty salon I suppose. The languages that appeared on the signboard were in English and Chinese. (I will try to post the picture). So the thing which caught my attention was the use of the word trim. Intuition tells me that trim is not primed to collocate with foot. Yet, I can understand why the word trim is used in this case. If you look at the chinese version: "xiu jiao" you realise that trim is the direct translation of "xiu" from chinese into English . I am not very proficient in my Chinese hence I do not know whether "xiu jiao" is even a correct way of saying it but let's just assume that it is correctly used. Obviously, the translator who is in charge of doing the translation have been unaware of the fact that when words collocate with another, there exists a sort of a natural "relatioinship" between them. Eg. When native speakers describe an orange, it would be unusual to say” The spherical orange” or “the sigmoid-shaped orange”. There is an unnatural relationship between sigmoid-shaped and orange when describing the shape of an orange. Instead ,most native speakers would say “the round orange”.
The problem with translations is that, unless you are a trained and professional translator, you are very likely to commit many errors in the process of translation simply because every language functions differently and which word collocates to which varies differently. Translators must be aware of this and must have sufficient knowledge of the way words are primed to collocate to generate meaningful sentences both in their native language and the language to be translated . Take for example the English word: Chocolate ice-cream. Suppose if we were to do a direct word-for-word translation: we would get something like: chocolat glace, which in this case is not only meaningless but violates the syntactic rules of the French language as well. The correct way of translating this is “glace au chocolat” . Notice that in French, the translation for ice-cream comes first. Next, the NP glace is primed to colloate withthe preposition a. The preposition a is then primed to collocate with the definite article “le” and lastly chocolat. Of course , this is only a very simple example. What about longer and more complex sentences? Sometimes, translations are not so straightforward as it seems as the above. What is being expressed in one language may be expressed differently in another. Let’s look at another translation from English to French.
Take the sentence: Frank’s father , a die-hard conservative, had first refused his offer. I wish to just focus on die-hard. In French, there isn’t an equivalent to this at all. The best that we can say is “ un conservateur pur et dur” (a pure and hard conservative).
So what makes one laugh upon reading the sign is the way the word trim is primed to collocate with foot. When we think of the word trim, our mental lexicon immediately activates words that are linked to trim such as hair, eyebrows, hedge.
Here is the definition of trim taken from the Collins cobuild advanced learners’s dictionary:
Trim (verb)
1.) To make something neater, smaller, better by cutting parts from it.
2.) To trim something off something –to cut away unnecessary parts from something
3.) To trim something with something-to decorate something especially around its edges
Trim (noun)
1.) An act of cutting a small amount off something especially hair
So going by this definition, we can easily understand why trim appears strange in this context. Unless you have a foot that has hair grown all over it or long untidy black nails that has not been trimmed for ages, you might want to consider going for a foot trimming! Otherwise, any normal individual with normal feet would not need to go for a foot trimming. I suspect the problem lies in the translation. As we can see from the other blogposts, translations done by poor translators seem to produce very unnatural, awkward and at times crude sentences.
This was actually taken from a sign board in Japan placed outside a beauty salon I suppose. The languages that appeared on the signboard were in English and Chinese. (I will try to post the picture). So the thing which caught my attention was the use of the word trim. Intuition tells me that trim is not primed to collocate with foot. Yet, I can understand why the word trim is used in this case. If you look at the chinese version: "xiu jiao" you realise that trim is the direct translation of "xiu" from chinese into English . I am not very proficient in my Chinese hence I do not know whether "xiu jiao" is even a correct way of saying it but let's just assume that it is correctly used. Obviously, the translator who is in charge of doing the translation have been unaware of the fact that when words collocate with another, there exists a sort of a natural "relatioinship" between them. Eg. When native speakers describe an orange, it would be unusual to say” The spherical orange” or “the sigmoid-shaped orange”. There is an unnatural relationship between sigmoid-shaped and orange when describing the shape of an orange. Instead ,most native speakers would say “the round orange”.
The problem with translations is that, unless you are a trained and professional translator, you are very likely to commit many errors in the process of translation simply because every language functions differently and which word collocates to which varies differently. Translators must be aware of this and must have sufficient knowledge of the way words are primed to collocate to generate meaningful sentences both in their native language and the language to be translated . Take for example the English word: Chocolate ice-cream. Suppose if we were to do a direct word-for-word translation: we would get something like: chocolat glace, which in this case is not only meaningless but violates the syntactic rules of the French language as well. The correct way of translating this is “glace au chocolat” . Notice that in French, the translation for ice-cream comes first. Next, the NP glace is primed to colloate withthe preposition a. The preposition a is then primed to collocate with the definite article “le” and lastly chocolat. Of course , this is only a very simple example. What about longer and more complex sentences? Sometimes, translations are not so straightforward as it seems as the above. What is being expressed in one language may be expressed differently in another. Let’s look at another translation from English to French.
Take the sentence: Frank’s father , a die-hard conservative, had first refused his offer. I wish to just focus on die-hard. In French, there isn’t an equivalent to this at all. The best that we can say is “ un conservateur pur et dur” (a pure and hard conservative).
So what makes one laugh upon reading the sign is the way the word trim is primed to collocate with foot. When we think of the word trim, our mental lexicon immediately activates words that are linked to trim such as hair, eyebrows, hedge.
Here is the definition of trim taken from the Collins cobuild advanced learners’s dictionary:
Trim (verb)
1.) To make something neater, smaller, better by cutting parts from it.
2.) To trim something off something –to cut away unnecessary parts from something
3.) To trim something with something-to decorate something especially around its edges
Trim (noun)
1.) An act of cutting a small amount off something especially hair
So going by this definition, we can easily understand why trim appears strange in this context. Unless you have a foot that has hair grown all over it or long untidy black nails that has not been trimmed for ages, you might want to consider going for a foot trimming! Otherwise, any normal individual with normal feet would not need to go for a foot trimming. I suspect the problem lies in the translation. As we can see from the other blogposts, translations done by poor translators seem to produce very unnatural, awkward and at times crude sentences.
samedi 20 mars 2010
Vous pouvez allez a Casino pour faire des achats! ( You can go to the casino to do your shopping.)
After having settled down in Paris, the first thing I needed to do was grocery shopping because dining out in Paris is very costly. Amidst the grandeur of Paris, one thing that really annoyed me was the paucity of supermarkets in this touristic city. So I approached a stranger along the streets if there was a supermarket nearby where I could get the daily necessities. His reply was” Vous pouvez allez a Casino pour faire des achats! The literal translation in English is : You can go to the casino to buy groceries.
I was a bit puzzled then because when Monsieur said casino, my first thought was: Casinos are places where you gamble , not a place for shopping ! So I took the metro (train) ,alighted at this station called Montparnasse, took a 5 minute walk to casino. It was only upon reaching the place that I realized that CASINO was a name of a supermarket where you do all your grocery shopping there. There are many branches of casino in the whole of France. It is second largest supermarche (supermarket) in France after Carrefour. Surprise is over! The very thought of naming a supermarket CASINO made me laugh. Any English speaker would find this amusing. Do you think there’s an underlying motivation for such a name? In French, just like in English , casino simply means a place where you gamble.
I wonder why this supermarket should be called CASINO?
There were so many hilarious encounters that I had while in France. This other one happened one Sunday evening. Axel , my hostel mate asked me : Tu veux un Desperado? (Do you want a desperado? ) Now, that got me laughing! My British friends were shrieking with laughter too especially when Axel repeated the question in English. D o you want to have a Desperado?
Definition of this lexical word desperado from cambridge dictionary
desperado noun
/ˌdes.pəˈrɑː.dəʊ/ /-doʊ/ n [C] (plural desperados or desperadoes)
someone who is willing to do things that involve risk or danger, and often criminal things
MW defines desperado as :
Main Entry: des•per•a•do
Pronunciation: \ˌdes-pə-ˈrä-(ˌ)dō, -ˈrā-\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural des•per•a•does or des•per•a•dos
Etymology: probably alteration of obsolete desperate desperado, from desperate, adjective
Date: 1647
: a bold or violent criminal; especially : a bandit of the western United States in the 19th century
Arrivée de la Desperados Red
The desperados come in many colours and flavours. From the definitions ,there seem to be an underlying motivation in naming this drink a desperado. First of all, this is an alcoholic drink which is suppose to get you drunk when you’re celebrating with your friends or when you’re in a pub. The name is very appriopriate here as there seems to be a connection between what alcoholic drinks can do to you and the literal definition of the word desperado. A drunk person will feel high, as if they are in cloud nine, lose their sense of conciousness and resort to doing dangerous things like drug taking, smoking weed, getting themselves involved in promiscuous sexual acts with anyone they see, speed driving along the streets. By consuming this alcoholic drink, you become a real desperado- as implies by the name of the drink.
Conclusion: Sometimes the meaning of certain lexical items are adopted as a strategy to market a product by advertisers. A study of lexical items should not be limited to whether or not it is strange in a particular context, or whether or not it poses a problem to our understanding. We should take a broader perspective when analysing lexical items and see how it relates to us in our everyday lives as well. In this discussion, what I wish to highlight is that lexical meanings of a lexical item can be exploited as a strategic tool for advertising to make their products more appealing. As it can be seen in this context, there exists a connection between the alcoholic drink and the meaning of the lexical term desperado. The underlying meaning of the product becomes explicit through the labelling of this product.
After having settled down in Paris, the first thing I needed to do was grocery shopping because dining out in Paris is very costly. Amidst the grandeur of Paris, one thing that really annoyed me was the paucity of supermarkets in this touristic city. So I approached a stranger along the streets if there was a supermarket nearby where I could get the daily necessities. His reply was” Vous pouvez allez a Casino pour faire des achats! The literal translation in English is : You can go to the casino to buy groceries.
I was a bit puzzled then because when Monsieur said casino, my first thought was: Casinos are places where you gamble , not a place for shopping ! So I took the metro (train) ,alighted at this station called Montparnasse, took a 5 minute walk to casino. It was only upon reaching the place that I realized that CASINO was a name of a supermarket where you do all your grocery shopping there. There are many branches of casino in the whole of France. It is second largest supermarche (supermarket) in France after Carrefour. Surprise is over! The very thought of naming a supermarket CASINO made me laugh. Any English speaker would find this amusing. Do you think there’s an underlying motivation for such a name? In French, just like in English , casino simply means a place where you gamble.
I wonder why this supermarket should be called CASINO?
There were so many hilarious encounters that I had while in France. This other one happened one Sunday evening. Axel , my hostel mate asked me : Tu veux un Desperado? (Do you want a desperado? ) Now, that got me laughing! My British friends were shrieking with laughter too especially when Axel repeated the question in English. D o you want to have a Desperado?
Definition of this lexical word desperado from cambridge dictionary
desperado noun
/ˌdes.pəˈrɑː.dəʊ/ /-doʊ/ n [C] (plural desperados or desperadoes)
someone who is willing to do things that involve risk or danger, and often criminal things
MW defines desperado as :
Main Entry: des•per•a•do
Pronunciation: \ˌdes-pə-ˈrä-(ˌ)dō, -ˈrā-\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural des•per•a•does or des•per•a•dos
Etymology: probably alteration of obsolete desperate desperado, from desperate, adjective
Date: 1647
: a bold or violent criminal; especially : a bandit of the western United States in the 19th century
Arrivée de la Desperados Red
The desperados come in many colours and flavours. From the definitions ,there seem to be an underlying motivation in naming this drink a desperado. First of all, this is an alcoholic drink which is suppose to get you drunk when you’re celebrating with your friends or when you’re in a pub. The name is very appriopriate here as there seems to be a connection between what alcoholic drinks can do to you and the literal definition of the word desperado. A drunk person will feel high, as if they are in cloud nine, lose their sense of conciousness and resort to doing dangerous things like drug taking, smoking weed, getting themselves involved in promiscuous sexual acts with anyone they see, speed driving along the streets. By consuming this alcoholic drink, you become a real desperado- as implies by the name of the drink.
Conclusion: Sometimes the meaning of certain lexical items are adopted as a strategy to market a product by advertisers. A study of lexical items should not be limited to whether or not it is strange in a particular context, or whether or not it poses a problem to our understanding. We should take a broader perspective when analysing lexical items and see how it relates to us in our everyday lives as well. In this discussion, what I wish to highlight is that lexical meanings of a lexical item can be exploited as a strategic tool for advertising to make their products more appealing. As it can be seen in this context, there exists a connection between the alcoholic drink and the meaning of the lexical term desperado. The underlying meaning of the product becomes explicit through the labelling of this product.
ALL WAITING SEATS ARE RESERVED FOR CUTTING CUSTOMERS ONLY . SORRY FOR INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.
What is problematic with this sentence?
1.) Syntactical structure.
2.) Meaning of the sentence
Syntactical structure: Ok, I know this is not a syntax module but still I have this urge to want to point this out. Look at the second clause. The DP inconvenience lacks a specifier D. Which lexical items or should I say grammatical items could take the position of this specifier D?
Response: Any ,the ,this. So we could say: Sorry for this /the /any inconvenience caused.
Meaning of the sentence:
I am very disturbed by this. Wait, before going any further, I must inform you all that this notice was taken from QB house. Just for your information if you loiter around malls very often. This QB house is like the many hair salons that you across this island. You patronize this salon to get a haircut because it is cheap (10 bucks) and efficient. When I say efficient, I mean to say that your new hairdo is ready in 10 minutes! Whether it looks good or not is a different issue. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, so don’t expect yourself to get an extremely fashionable hairdo if you’re paying 10 dollars. Otherwise, the service is reasonable. Ok, away from the digression.
What is so bothersome about this sentence is the use of word cutting .
Checking the definition of cutting: we get:
Our Cambridge dictionary tells us that cutting can be used as an adjective, verb, noun. I will just extract the definition for cutting as an adj.
cutting adjective
/ˈkʌt.ɪŋ/ /ˈkʌt ̬-/ adj
unkind and intending to upset someone
a cutting remark/comment
He can be very cutting when he chooses to be!
.The reason why I have selected the definition of cutting as an adjective is because looking at the sentence, intuition tells us that the word cutting seems to modify the DP customers. Also, based on the context, a hair salon, we infer from the text there is this connection between the word cutting and customers to mean “customers wanting to have their hair cut” , albeit the awkward structure of the sentence.
The MW dictionnaire defines cutting as such
Main Entry: 2cutting
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
1 : given to or designed for cutting; especially : SHARP, EDGED
2 : marked by sharp piercing cold
3 : inclined or likely to wound the feelings of others especially because of a ruthless incisiveness
4 : INTENSE, PIERCING
— cut•ting•ly \-tiŋ-lē\ adverb
More data on cutting:
The concordance sampler shows no instance of cutting primed to a living being.
So sentences like:
1.) The cutting boys are waiting to have their hair cut.
2.) The cutting customers are unhappy with the service.
A better suggestion to this would have been : All waiting seats are reserved for customers only. The cutting is redundant in this instance. Attention to all shop owners : Please be mindful of your English when you post up a sign.
What is problematic with this sentence?
1.) Syntactical structure.
2.) Meaning of the sentence
Syntactical structure: Ok, I know this is not a syntax module but still I have this urge to want to point this out. Look at the second clause. The DP inconvenience lacks a specifier D. Which lexical items or should I say grammatical items could take the position of this specifier D?
Response: Any ,the ,this. So we could say: Sorry for this /the /any inconvenience caused.
Meaning of the sentence:
I am very disturbed by this. Wait, before going any further, I must inform you all that this notice was taken from QB house. Just for your information if you loiter around malls very often. This QB house is like the many hair salons that you across this island. You patronize this salon to get a haircut because it is cheap (10 bucks) and efficient. When I say efficient, I mean to say that your new hairdo is ready in 10 minutes! Whether it looks good or not is a different issue. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, so don’t expect yourself to get an extremely fashionable hairdo if you’re paying 10 dollars. Otherwise, the service is reasonable. Ok, away from the digression.
What is so bothersome about this sentence is the use of word cutting .
Checking the definition of cutting: we get:
Our Cambridge dictionary tells us that cutting can be used as an adjective, verb, noun. I will just extract the definition for cutting as an adj.
cutting adjective
/ˈkʌt.ɪŋ/ /ˈkʌt ̬-/ adj
unkind and intending to upset someone
a cutting remark/comment
He can be very cutting when he chooses to be!
.The reason why I have selected the definition of cutting as an adjective is because looking at the sentence, intuition tells us that the word cutting seems to modify the DP customers. Also, based on the context, a hair salon, we infer from the text there is this connection between the word cutting and customers to mean “customers wanting to have their hair cut” , albeit the awkward structure of the sentence.
The MW dictionnaire defines cutting as such
Main Entry: 2cutting
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century
1 : given to or designed for cutting; especially : SHARP, EDGED
2 : marked by sharp piercing cold
3 : inclined or likely to wound the feelings of others especially because of a ruthless incisiveness
4 : INTENSE, PIERCING
— cut•ting•ly \-tiŋ-lē\ adverb
More data on cutting:
The concordance sampler shows no instance of cutting primed to a living being.
So sentences like:
1.) The cutting boys are waiting to have their hair cut.
2.) The cutting customers are unhappy with the service.
A better suggestion to this would have been : All waiting seats are reserved for customers only. The cutting is redundant in this instance. Attention to all shop owners : Please be mindful of your English when you post up a sign.
vendredi 19 mars 2010
Do you practice good hygiene?
Good hygiene practices and the use of Dettol have proven to reduce illness in children by up to 75%. Instinctively, as a native speaker of English , I know that something is not right. It has never occurred to me once that reduce could collocate with illness. Based on the results obtained from the Cobuild Concordance sampler, what was observed was that there were many of words like “fatal, disability, chronic, terminal, mental, serious” collocating with the word illness. These words fall under the syntactic category of adjectives. There were no instances of a verb collocating with illness based on the cobuild concordance sampler.
The what about the word reduce? Based on the list of sentence fragments provided, we can make a general hypothesis that reduce is often used in sentences where the meaning takes on a negative sense. Hence, the word appears often finds itself collocating with NP with a negative meaning or something undesirable.This is evident in the concordance sampler.
1.) To reduce environmental pollutions
2.) Reduce incidence of alcohol-related crime
3.) Reduce stress
4.) Reduce frequency of racial attacks,
5.) Reduce burgulary in London
6.) Reduce the risk of transmission
Yet , I wish to highlight that this is not representative of all sentences in the English language. Of course, another hypothesis could be that the NP has to be a quantifier if reduce were to collocate with the NP. Therefore, we can generate sentences like
1.) Reduce the number of papers in his workroom
2.) Reduce my burden
3.) Reduce his pocket money
4.) reduce bleeding, period pain and PMT.
5.) reduce the number of hospital beds
6.) Reduce the intake of total dietary fat
Based on the first hypothesis, reduce can collocate with illness . Based on the second hypothesis, reduce can still collocate with illnesses, because we can think of the word illness as a noun possessing having quantity. If so, then reduce illness should be perfectly fine but why does my intuition tell me it is wrong? Ah, but I think I know where the problem lies. The word is in its singular form illness. But supposedly if I were to say illnesses, does not improve things? Not really! Reduce illnesses still pose a problem! Someone please enlighten me to this!
Perhaps my analysis is not very detailed? Perhaps I have to spend more time pondering over this? Perhaps my hypothesis is wrong? Frankly , I feel that prevent should take the place of the word reduce. So the ad should say, GOOD HYGIENE AND THE USE OF DETTOL HELP TO PREVENT ILLNESSES.
Going back to the concordance sampler, we see that the word prevent collocates with illnesses.
Moreover, we observe that there is a great number of instances of the word prevent collocating with words like ‘ infection, bleeding, constipations, cancers, blindness, dehydration” which all fall under the category of illnesses. As for the word reduce , we get collocations like “ reduce inflammations, risks, puffiness, stress, discharge, fertility, discharge”.
So based on this extra set of data, I am going to generate a 3rd hypothesis to explain why is it that reduce does not seem to collocate with illness. Looking at the above data, notice that the lexical items which are grouped under the category of illnesses are collocated with prevent. Whereas, inflammations, puffiness, discharge (vaginal ?) , fertility do not seem to fall under such a category.
Hence this explains why reduce illness does not seem to hold. The constrain here is the domain or category of words which are classified beneath it. What are your thoughts then? Do I seem to make much sense or not?
Good hygiene practices and the use of Dettol have proven to reduce illness in children by up to 75%. Instinctively, as a native speaker of English , I know that something is not right. It has never occurred to me once that reduce could collocate with illness. Based on the results obtained from the Cobuild Concordance sampler, what was observed was that there were many of words like “fatal, disability, chronic, terminal, mental, serious” collocating with the word illness. These words fall under the syntactic category of adjectives. There were no instances of a verb collocating with illness based on the cobuild concordance sampler.
The what about the word reduce? Based on the list of sentence fragments provided, we can make a general hypothesis that reduce is often used in sentences where the meaning takes on a negative sense. Hence, the word appears often finds itself collocating with NP with a negative meaning or something undesirable.This is evident in the concordance sampler.
1.) To reduce environmental pollutions
2.) Reduce incidence of alcohol-related crime
3.) Reduce stress
4.) Reduce frequency of racial attacks,
5.) Reduce burgulary in London
6.) Reduce the risk of transmission
Yet , I wish to highlight that this is not representative of all sentences in the English language. Of course, another hypothesis could be that the NP has to be a quantifier if reduce were to collocate with the NP. Therefore, we can generate sentences like
1.) Reduce the number of papers in his workroom
2.) Reduce my burden
3.) Reduce his pocket money
4.) reduce bleeding, period pain and PMT.
5.) reduce the number of hospital beds
6.) Reduce the intake of total dietary fat
Based on the first hypothesis, reduce can collocate with illness . Based on the second hypothesis, reduce can still collocate with illnesses, because we can think of the word illness as a noun possessing having quantity. If so, then reduce illness should be perfectly fine but why does my intuition tell me it is wrong? Ah, but I think I know where the problem lies. The word is in its singular form illness. But supposedly if I were to say illnesses, does not improve things? Not really! Reduce illnesses still pose a problem! Someone please enlighten me to this!
Perhaps my analysis is not very detailed? Perhaps I have to spend more time pondering over this? Perhaps my hypothesis is wrong? Frankly , I feel that prevent should take the place of the word reduce. So the ad should say, GOOD HYGIENE AND THE USE OF DETTOL HELP TO PREVENT ILLNESSES.
Going back to the concordance sampler, we see that the word prevent collocates with illnesses.
Moreover, we observe that there is a great number of instances of the word prevent collocating with words like ‘ infection, bleeding, constipations, cancers, blindness, dehydration” which all fall under the category of illnesses. As for the word reduce , we get collocations like “ reduce inflammations, risks, puffiness, stress, discharge, fertility, discharge”.
So based on this extra set of data, I am going to generate a 3rd hypothesis to explain why is it that reduce does not seem to collocate with illness. Looking at the above data, notice that the lexical items which are grouped under the category of illnesses are collocated with prevent. Whereas, inflammations, puffiness, discharge (vaginal ?) , fertility do not seem to fall under such a category.
Hence this explains why reduce illness does not seem to hold. The constrain here is the domain or category of words which are classified beneath it. What are your thoughts then? Do I seem to make much sense or not?
Has it ever dawned upon you that through the course of your education , the word top school papers or top school has been mentioned and repeated countless times by students, parents and teachers?
The reason why I wanted to bring this out was because I was brought up in Australia and I studied in a government school (Rossmoyne Primary school) where I received 7 years of education there. It was only until I turned 12 that my parents felt that it would be better to emigrate to Singapore. I was automatically enrolled in Raffles Girls School primary (top school) as everyone calls it during those days where I spent the next 10 months preparing for the psle exams, something which appeared very foreign to me at that time.
The main point of my discussion is this interesting fact in which in Singapore, where schools are stereotyped in the positive or negative sense through the use of these terms such as top-school and neighbourhood school. Well at least in the humble city where I stayed (Perth), I dare say that such a stereotype is not reflected through the labelling given to schools.Even in other cities in Australia, schools are not labelled based on students' academic performances. Likewise in Britiain l schools are either government-aided or private. Government schools simply means that the government gives a certain money to fund the programmes and the maintenance of the schools. Of course, this is not to deny that there are no stereotypes given to government and private schools. It is generally acknowledged that students who study in private schools come from a relatively wealthy family compared to those who study in a government -aided school.Likewise if you think about boarding schools in Britian, one can imagine the immense amount of school fees one would have to pay just to stay and study there. My parents did consider sending me to a boarding school in Britain but later decided to change their mind because school fees were so expensive. Anyway, I soon learnt about this distinction between a top-school and a neighbourhood school in Singapore where their literal meanings have been extended to denote other aspects such as physical, behavioral, intellectual etc.
In most Western contexts, a neighbourhood school is a school that is not very far from where you stay. So for my case, I would say that I study in a government-aided neighbourhood school since going to school is only a stone's throw away from my house.
Macmillan dictionary gives the definiton of neighbourhood as
1. people living near each other: people who live near each other or in a specific neighborhood
2.vicinity: the general vicinity or surrounding area of a place
In general, the idea of neighbourhood encompasses the idea of proximity. Proximate to something.
However in the Singaporean context, the meaning of the word neighbourhood has been extended beyond the dictionary's definition. When we talk about neighbourhood school's in Singapore, it appears as if the focus is not so much on the proximity of the school's location to a town or a district. Instead we define and label neighbourhood schools as something undesirable, as a school where students are intellecutally challenged , where academic perfomances are alot more inferior to our top-schools. Our definition of a neighbourhood school also leads us to stereotype students such as their behavior (uncouth, unrefined, rowdy), their inability to excel in the future..etc.
On the flip side of the coin, the ideological notion of a top school is a school which has an excellent reputation of producing students who excel in their studies. Status of these schools are more superior.
All in all, it appears as if the word neighbourhood school, appropriated in our context acts as a pejorative term to label negatively students and the reputation of the school itself. This, for me was something very novel when I first arrived in Singapore and it took me quite a while to get used to this term. = )
The reason why I wanted to bring this out was because I was brought up in Australia and I studied in a government school (Rossmoyne Primary school) where I received 7 years of education there. It was only until I turned 12 that my parents felt that it would be better to emigrate to Singapore. I was automatically enrolled in Raffles Girls School primary (top school) as everyone calls it during those days where I spent the next 10 months preparing for the psle exams, something which appeared very foreign to me at that time.
The main point of my discussion is this interesting fact in which in Singapore, where schools are stereotyped in the positive or negative sense through the use of these terms such as top-school and neighbourhood school. Well at least in the humble city where I stayed (Perth), I dare say that such a stereotype is not reflected through the labelling given to schools.Even in other cities in Australia, schools are not labelled based on students' academic performances. Likewise in Britiain l schools are either government-aided or private. Government schools simply means that the government gives a certain money to fund the programmes and the maintenance of the schools. Of course, this is not to deny that there are no stereotypes given to government and private schools. It is generally acknowledged that students who study in private schools come from a relatively wealthy family compared to those who study in a government -aided school.Likewise if you think about boarding schools in Britian, one can imagine the immense amount of school fees one would have to pay just to stay and study there. My parents did consider sending me to a boarding school in Britain but later decided to change their mind because school fees were so expensive. Anyway, I soon learnt about this distinction between a top-school and a neighbourhood school in Singapore where their literal meanings have been extended to denote other aspects such as physical, behavioral, intellectual etc.
In most Western contexts, a neighbourhood school is a school that is not very far from where you stay. So for my case, I would say that I study in a government-aided neighbourhood school since going to school is only a stone's throw away from my house.
Macmillan dictionary gives the definiton of neighbourhood as
1. people living near each other: people who live near each other or in a specific neighborhood
2.vicinity: the general vicinity or surrounding area of a place
In general, the idea of neighbourhood encompasses the idea of proximity. Proximate to something.
However in the Singaporean context, the meaning of the word neighbourhood has been extended beyond the dictionary's definition. When we talk about neighbourhood school's in Singapore, it appears as if the focus is not so much on the proximity of the school's location to a town or a district. Instead we define and label neighbourhood schools as something undesirable, as a school where students are intellecutally challenged , where academic perfomances are alot more inferior to our top-schools. Our definition of a neighbourhood school also leads us to stereotype students such as their behavior (uncouth, unrefined, rowdy), their inability to excel in the future..etc.
On the flip side of the coin, the ideological notion of a top school is a school which has an excellent reputation of producing students who excel in their studies. Status of these schools are more superior.
All in all, it appears as if the word neighbourhood school, appropriated in our context acts as a pejorative term to label negatively students and the reputation of the school itself. This, for me was something very novel when I first arrived in Singapore and it took me quite a while to get used to this term. = )
mercredi 17 mars 2010
A vulgar affaire
Apologies to all readers of this post especially to Professor Ooi who may find this a very taboo discussion. Today’s discussion will feature on extremely vulgar words and its usage and meaning in different social communities and society. I was encouraged to write after watching this British TV serial The inbetweeners. Click on this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYr9Vg9Uj0 You’ll be fasicinated by the number of vulgar words used in this comedy. If I’m not wrong, there were numerous instances of words such as “dickhead”, “twat”, ”wanker”, “fuck”. Speaking of fuck, I wish to highlight that the Brits are very fond of using this word in their everyday conversation amongst their peers . My constant interaction with the Brits while I was in France tells me so.
Here are some of the phrases that caught my attention:
“I fucked with a girl last night”
“Dickhead”
“You wanker “
“You twat”
“Balls “
“you’re Mental”
I remembered that one of my British friend claims that the F word is so beautiful because it can used as a noun , verb, adjective, intensifier, interjection, exclamation, and an adverb.
Definition of Fuck taken from the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary:
Fuck (verb) : To have sex with someone
Fuck (noun) : an act of having sex /or a sexual partner
Fuck (exclamation): Shut the fuck up!/ Fuck off
Fuck(adjective) : This fucking pen doesn’t seem to work.
Fuck(adverb) : She is so fucking mental! (literally means crazy or deranged)
Dickhead (nouns) offensive ..refers to a stupid person.
Wanker (noun) UK : a very stupid person, usually refers to a man
Twat (noun) ;Female sex organ, vagina
Twat (noun) UK: A stupid person . may be referred to a man or a woman
Mental (adj) UK slang: crazy
Balls(noun) UK : utter nonsense
Merriam Webster dictionary:
Twat: vagina
Mental: 2 a (1) : of, relating to, or affected by a psychiatric disorder (2) : mentally disordered : MAD, CRAZY b : intended for the care or treatment of persons affected by psychiatric disorders
3 : of or relating to telepathic or mind-reading powers
Main Entry: wank•er
Pronunciation: \ˈwaŋ-kər\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1961
1 chiefly British usually vulgar : a person who masturbates
2 chiefly British usually vulgar : JERK, DOLT
Main Entry: dick•head
Pronunciation: \ˈdik-ˌhed\
Function: noun
Etymology: dick (penis) + head
Date: 1964
usually vulgar : a stupid or contemptible person
Main Entry: 1fuck
Pronunciation: \ˈfək\
Function: verb
Etymology: akin to Dutch fokken to breed (cattle), Swedish dial. fókka to copulate
Date: circa 1503
intransitive verb 1 usually obscene : COPULATE
2 usually vulgar : MESS 3 —used with with transitive verb 1 usually obscene : to engage in coitus with —sometimes used interjectionally with an object (as a personal or reflexive pronoun) to express anger, contempt, or disgust
2 usually vulgar : to deal with unfairly or harshly : CHEAT, SCREW
The entry for the word Balls cannot be found in the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
This gives a rough insight of how even swear words take on meaning in different social communities. In the British society, a stupid person may be called a twat and a crazy person might be labelled as mental in a British society and a psycho in the American context.. Also, there seems to be some commonness between certain swear words such as Fuck in both the American and British context.
Then what about in Singapore? I’m am pretty sure everyone has sweared once. Yet,what form of swearwords do most Singaporeans use? Do they take on the same meaning as our native English counterparts? Lets ignore Hokkien swear words here since the comparison is on English swear words. How would a Singaporean use the word fuck? I have decided not to discuss words like dickhead (very common insult in Australia too) simply because I have rarely heard any Singaporean using it.
So how is fuck used in our society then? The only way to do so is to google this word and observe how fuck is being used and which words does it collocate with!
Here is the definition of the word fuck in the Singaporean context thanks to http://www.singlishdictionary.com
fuck n. [Eng.] vulg. 1 In big fuck: a A ‘very important person’ (VIP), esp. a high-ranking guest or official, often regarded with derision. b A person who has a high opinion of himself, a conceited person. 2 In fuck care [< Eng. not to give (or care) a fuck]: not care in the slightest, not give a damn. Compare HECK CARE.
2 [1929 FREDERIC MANNING The Middle Parts of Fortune vol 1, ch 5, 87 ‘They don’t care a fuck ’ow us’ns live,’ said little Martlow bitterly. 1962 JEAN IRIS MURDOCH An Unofficial Rose, ch 6, 63 Not that I care a fuck.]
fuck v.i. [Eng.] vulg. Berate, rebuke, reprimand, scold.
2006 NEIL HUMPHREYS Final Notes from a Great Island 36 “He take any small thing and make it into a big thing. I tell you, any small thing, he want to make it into a big thing. So I fuck him, lah.” They were criticising their supervisor, I believe, but the dialogue could equally have detailed a gay romp they had enjoyed the previous night.
Phrase: fuck upside down v. phr. Reprimand or scold severely.
fuck spider int. [origin uncertain; poss. < Eng. spider (mil. slang) the dirt in a rifle barrel; or f. the practice of boys catching spiders and having them fight each other (Coxford Eng. Dict.)] vulg. 1 An exclamation expr. extreme frustration. 2 In go fuck spider: go away, get lost, leave me alone. Compare GO FLY KITE.
2006 NEIL HUMPHREYS Final Notes from a Great Island 133 .. National Servicemen are all fluent in bizarre Hokkien and Singlish phrases that mean nothing to anyone else. Approach a Singaporean woman and say “fuck spider” and she almost certainly will not clean your rifle. .. Singaporean men possess the ability to converse in an exclusive, members-only language. It is not Malay, it is not Singlish, it is not even Hokkien. It is Army Speak. If you do not know the language, you can go “fuck spider”.
fucked-up a. [< Eng. fuck up v. ruin, spoil, mess up; blunder, make a (serious) error; fail: see quots. 1968, 1971]
[1968 JOHN UPDIKE Couples, ch 4, 294 This fucks up our party, doesn’t it? 1971 EUGENE E LANDY The Underground Dictionary 84 Fuck up, v. 1. Make a gross error..]
vulg. 1 Of a person: incompetent, ineffective, useless. 2 Of things: broken, damaged, faulty, useless. See also COCK-UP a.
fuckshop n. [Eng. fuck + shop, poss. alt. of tuckshop] coarse mil. slang A brothel.
Some interesting observations: In our society, we actually say fuck spider(slang in Singapore English) and fuckshop. This is something very novel, in my opinion. We actually use fuck spider to tell someone to fuck off. Fuck is collocated with spider and shop in our society which has a meaning to it.
Another point to make is how in the Singaporean context, fuck actually takes the meaning of to scold. Eg: He was so annoying so I fucked him.
Also, fuck is primed with care to give fuck care...I don’t give a damn.
Yet another interesting point of observation is that in our society, the verb fuck does not take the form of a transitive verb as in the case of AmE and BrE. Similary, in Singapore, this verb is not associated with the meaning of having sex.
We will rarely hear people saying: I fucked with a girl last night. ( I had sex with a girl)
In addition: the word fuck as a noun seems to be very unique in our society. Someone who is arrogant or an important person is labelled as a fuck. Interesting indeed! Refer to the first definition.
Conclusion:
Lexical words , be it our normal English words or vulgar words differ in various social communities and societies. Each word reflects a different degree of rudeness. Some vulgar words may seem to bear some commonness across the globe ( such as fuck amongst the English speakers.) , yet from our data above, there are indeed subtle difference in the way this word is used. In our society, we have seen that the f word collocates with spider and shop to give a meaning to the form while such is not the case in the BrE and AmE context. In addition, how we define and perceive the F word to be varies slightly from our native English counterparts.
I really hope that this blog has been interesting even though it should be censored because of its inappropriate content. So the next time you go to Britain, you wouldn’t feel like an idiot should someone call you a dickhead, twat or a wanker. =).
Apologies to all readers of this post especially to Professor Ooi who may find this a very taboo discussion. Today’s discussion will feature on extremely vulgar words and its usage and meaning in different social communities and society. I was encouraged to write after watching this British TV serial The inbetweeners. Click on this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYr9Vg9Uj0 You’ll be fasicinated by the number of vulgar words used in this comedy. If I’m not wrong, there were numerous instances of words such as “dickhead”, “twat”, ”wanker”, “fuck”. Speaking of fuck, I wish to highlight that the Brits are very fond of using this word in their everyday conversation amongst their peers . My constant interaction with the Brits while I was in France tells me so.
Here are some of the phrases that caught my attention:
“I fucked with a girl last night”
“Dickhead”
“You wanker “
“You twat”
“Balls “
“you’re Mental”
I remembered that one of my British friend claims that the F word is so beautiful because it can used as a noun , verb, adjective, intensifier, interjection, exclamation, and an adverb.
Definition of Fuck taken from the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary:
Fuck (verb) : To have sex with someone
Fuck (noun) : an act of having sex /or a sexual partner
Fuck (exclamation): Shut the fuck up!/ Fuck off
Fuck(adjective) : This fucking pen doesn’t seem to work.
Fuck(adverb) : She is so fucking mental! (literally means crazy or deranged)
Dickhead (nouns) offensive ..refers to a stupid person.
Wanker (noun) UK : a very stupid person, usually refers to a man
Twat (noun) ;Female sex organ, vagina
Twat (noun) UK: A stupid person . may be referred to a man or a woman
Mental (adj) UK slang: crazy
Balls(noun) UK : utter nonsense
Merriam Webster dictionary:
Twat: vagina
Mental: 2 a (1) : of, relating to, or affected by a psychiatric disorder (2) : mentally disordered : MAD, CRAZY b : intended for the care or treatment of persons affected by psychiatric disorders
3 : of or relating to telepathic or mind-reading powers
Main Entry: wank•er
Pronunciation: \ˈwaŋ-kər\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1961
1 chiefly British usually vulgar : a person who masturbates
2 chiefly British usually vulgar : JERK, DOLT
Main Entry: dick•head
Pronunciation: \ˈdik-ˌhed\
Function: noun
Etymology: dick (penis) + head
Date: 1964
usually vulgar : a stupid or contemptible person
Main Entry: 1fuck
Pronunciation: \ˈfək\
Function: verb
Etymology: akin to Dutch fokken to breed (cattle), Swedish dial. fókka to copulate
Date: circa 1503
intransitive verb 1 usually obscene : COPULATE
2 usually vulgar : MESS 3 —used with with transitive verb 1 usually obscene : to engage in coitus with —sometimes used interjectionally with an object (as a personal or reflexive pronoun) to express anger, contempt, or disgust
2 usually vulgar : to deal with unfairly or harshly : CHEAT, SCREW
The entry for the word Balls cannot be found in the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
This gives a rough insight of how even swear words take on meaning in different social communities. In the British society, a stupid person may be called a twat and a crazy person might be labelled as mental in a British society and a psycho in the American context.. Also, there seems to be some commonness between certain swear words such as Fuck in both the American and British context.
Then what about in Singapore? I’m am pretty sure everyone has sweared once. Yet,what form of swearwords do most Singaporeans use? Do they take on the same meaning as our native English counterparts? Lets ignore Hokkien swear words here since the comparison is on English swear words. How would a Singaporean use the word fuck? I have decided not to discuss words like dickhead (very common insult in Australia too) simply because I have rarely heard any Singaporean using it.
So how is fuck used in our society then? The only way to do so is to google this word and observe how fuck is being used and which words does it collocate with!
Here is the definition of the word fuck in the Singaporean context thanks to http://www.singlishdictionary.com
fuck n. [Eng.] vulg. 1 In big fuck: a A ‘very important person’ (VIP), esp. a high-ranking guest or official, often regarded with derision. b A person who has a high opinion of himself, a conceited person. 2 In fuck care [< Eng. not to give (or care) a fuck]: not care in the slightest, not give a damn. Compare HECK CARE.
2 [1929 FREDERIC MANNING The Middle Parts of Fortune vol 1, ch 5, 87 ‘They don’t care a fuck ’ow us’ns live,’ said little Martlow bitterly. 1962 JEAN IRIS MURDOCH An Unofficial Rose, ch 6, 63 Not that I care a fuck.]
fuck v.i. [Eng.] vulg. Berate, rebuke, reprimand, scold.
2006 NEIL HUMPHREYS Final Notes from a Great Island 36 “He take any small thing and make it into a big thing. I tell you, any small thing, he want to make it into a big thing. So I fuck him, lah.” They were criticising their supervisor, I believe, but the dialogue could equally have detailed a gay romp they had enjoyed the previous night.
Phrase: fuck upside down v. phr. Reprimand or scold severely.
fuck spider int. [origin uncertain; poss. < Eng. spider (mil. slang) the dirt in a rifle barrel; or f. the practice of boys catching spiders and having them fight each other (Coxford Eng. Dict.)] vulg. 1 An exclamation expr. extreme frustration. 2 In go fuck spider: go away, get lost, leave me alone. Compare GO FLY KITE.
2006 NEIL HUMPHREYS Final Notes from a Great Island 133 .. National Servicemen are all fluent in bizarre Hokkien and Singlish phrases that mean nothing to anyone else. Approach a Singaporean woman and say “fuck spider” and she almost certainly will not clean your rifle. .. Singaporean men possess the ability to converse in an exclusive, members-only language. It is not Malay, it is not Singlish, it is not even Hokkien. It is Army Speak. If you do not know the language, you can go “fuck spider”.
fucked-up a. [< Eng. fuck up v. ruin, spoil, mess up; blunder, make a (serious) error; fail: see quots. 1968, 1971]
[1968 JOHN UPDIKE Couples, ch 4, 294 This fucks up our party, doesn’t it? 1971 EUGENE E LANDY The Underground Dictionary 84 Fuck up, v. 1. Make a gross error..]
vulg. 1 Of a person: incompetent, ineffective, useless. 2 Of things: broken, damaged, faulty, useless. See also COCK-UP a.
fuckshop n. [Eng. fuck + shop, poss. alt. of tuckshop] coarse mil. slang A brothel.
Some interesting observations: In our society, we actually say fuck spider(slang in Singapore English) and fuckshop. This is something very novel, in my opinion. We actually use fuck spider to tell someone to fuck off. Fuck is collocated with spider and shop in our society which has a meaning to it.
Another point to make is how in the Singaporean context, fuck actually takes the meaning of to scold. Eg: He was so annoying so I fucked him.
Also, fuck is primed with care to give fuck care...I don’t give a damn.
Yet another interesting point of observation is that in our society, the verb fuck does not take the form of a transitive verb as in the case of AmE and BrE. Similary, in Singapore, this verb is not associated with the meaning of having sex.
We will rarely hear people saying: I fucked with a girl last night. ( I had sex with a girl)
In addition: the word fuck as a noun seems to be very unique in our society. Someone who is arrogant or an important person is labelled as a fuck. Interesting indeed! Refer to the first definition.
Conclusion:
Lexical words , be it our normal English words or vulgar words differ in various social communities and societies. Each word reflects a different degree of rudeness. Some vulgar words may seem to bear some commonness across the globe ( such as fuck amongst the English speakers.) , yet from our data above, there are indeed subtle difference in the way this word is used. In our society, we have seen that the f word collocates with spider and shop to give a meaning to the form while such is not the case in the BrE and AmE context. In addition, how we define and perceive the F word to be varies slightly from our native English counterparts.
I really hope that this blog has been interesting even though it should be censored because of its inappropriate content. So the next time you go to Britain, you wouldn’t feel like an idiot should someone call you a dickhead, twat or a wanker. =).
Something that really caught my attention was the way most students use the word "got". Very often, we hear students, even university students saying" got" in this manner: I got lots of homework to do. I got lots of project to complete.Numerous times when I receive messages from my project mates, I realize that the word "got" nu I would expect alot more from university students simply because in order to secure a place in a prestigious university like NUS, they must have a certain level of competency in the English Language. Is this an example of Singlish then?
I decided to do a check on the meaning of "get"
MW says:
transitive verb
1 a : to gain possession of b : to receive as a return : earn
2 a : to obtain by concession or entreaty b : to become affected by (a disease or bodily condition) : catch
3 a : to seek out and obtain b : to obtain and bring where wanted or needed
4 : beget
5 a : to cause to come or go b : to cause to move c : to cause to be in a certain position or condition d : to make ready : prepare
6 a : to be subjected to b : to receive by way of punishment c : to suffer a specified injury to
7 a : to achieve as a result of military activity b : to obtain or receive by way of benefit or advantage
8 a : seize b : overcome c : to have an emotional effect on d : irritate e : puzzle f : to take vengeance on; specifically : kill g : hit
9 : to prevail on : cause
10 a : have —used in the present perfect tense form with present meaning b : to have as an obligation or necessity —used in the present perfect tense form with present meaning
11 a : to find out by calculation b : memorize c : hear d : understand
12 : to establish communication with
13 : to put out in baseball
14 : deliver 6b
intransitive verb
1 a : to succeed in coming or going : to bring or move oneself b : to reach or enter into a certain condition c : to make progress
2 : to acquire wealth
3 a : to be able b : to come to be —often used with following present participle
4 a : to succeed in becoming : become b : to become involved
5 : to leave immediately
OED says:
trans. To obtain, procure.
1. a. To obtain possession of (property, etc.) as the result of effort or contrivance.
2. a. To obtain as the proceeds of one's business or employment; to earn.
3. a. To obtain (much, little, nothing, etc.) by way of profit; to be benefited or advantaged to the extent of; to gain.
4. To capture, gain possession of (a fortress, etc.). Obs
5. a. To earn, win, acquire (fame, credit, glory, renown, love, favour, etc.).
Doing a quick check on the concordance sampler, I noticed that there were instances where the word got is primed to colocate with the auxillary verb have.
So for instances we have examples like :
1.) they've got a network of people that they do know
2.)you've got a fine er upper torso of hair
3.) you've got a neck a chin and a mouth and a nose
4.)I've got no driving faults,
Now, contrast this with examples where the word got does not have to collocate with auxillary have.
1.) I got a cake for my mother on her birthday.
2.) The boys got 2 pencils from their teacher.
3.) I got 3 presents from my classmates .
Now, relating the comparison above, what can we say about the use of "got" in I got 3 projects to do. Intuitively, I know that this sentence is not only grammatically wrong but semantically odd as well. Rather, we should say: I 've got lots of projects to do. Wwould you also consider this as Singlish ? For me , I would.
I decided to do a check on the meaning of "get"
MW says:
transitive verb
1 a : to gain possession of b : to receive as a return : earn
2 a : to obtain by concession or entreaty
3 a : to seek out and obtain
4 : beget
5 a : to cause to come or go
6 a : to be subjected to
7 a : to achieve as a result of military activity b : to obtain or receive by way of benefit or advantage
8 a : seize b : overcome c : to have an emotional effect on
9 : to prevail on : cause
10 a : have —used in the present perfect tense form with present meaning
11 a : to find out by calculation
12 : to establish communication with
13 : to put out in baseball
14 : deliver 6b
intransitive verb
1 a : to succeed in coming or going : to bring or move oneself
2 : to acquire wealth
3 a : to be able
4 a : to succeed in becoming : become
5 : to leave immediately
OED says:
trans. To obtain, procure.
1. a. To obtain possession of (property, etc.) as the result of effort or contrivance.
2. a. To obtain as the proceeds of one's business or employment; to earn.
3. a. To obtain (much, little, nothing, etc.) by way of profit; to be benefited or advantaged to the extent of; to gain.
4. To capture, gain possession of (a fortress, etc.). Obs
5. a. To earn, win, acquire (fame, credit, glory, renown, love, favour, etc.).
Doing a quick check on the concordance sampler, I noticed that there were instances where the word got is primed to colocate with the auxillary verb have.
So for instances we have examples like :
1.) they've got a network of people that they do know
2.)you've got a fine er upper torso of hair
3.) you've got a neck a chin and a mouth and a nose
4.)I've got no driving faults,
Now, contrast this with examples where the word got does not have to collocate with auxillary have.
1.) I got a cake for my mother on her birthday.
2.) The boys got 2 pencils from their teacher.
3.) I got 3 presents from my classmates .
Now, relating the comparison above, what can we say about the use of "got" in I got 3 projects to do. Intuitively, I know that this sentence is not only grammatically wrong but semantically odd as well. Rather, we should say: I 've got lots of projects to do. Wwould you also consider this as Singlish ? For me , I would.
lundi 15 mars 2010
We serve you grill!
Any thoughts about this? The problem lies in the word grill. But before going deeper into the discussion, we must understand where this sentence came from. Context is crucial in faciltating our understanding of a phrase because it directs our thought processes along a certain line. Ok, this was a Burger King advertisement that I came across while I was on my way to university.
Firstly, when we look at the word grill, our mental lexicon, comprised of a complex network systems immediately sends signal to words that are in one way or another connceted to the word grill. Together with context, the first thing which comes to mind is food. Hence, the advertisement here is implying to observers that it is at Burger King where grilled food will be served. But the phrasing here is not natural.
When we dine at restaurants ,have you ever heard waitors saying:
1.) We serve you baked. (Baked what? )
2.) We serve you deep-fried. (deep-fried what? )
I tried googling this phrase 'serve you grill' but it does not seem to appear in most search engines regardless of the region. The concordance sampler does not seem to be useful here because the concordance sampler gives a corpus where the context in which the word is used is too general. If we limit the context to food, the phrase "serve you grill..."must be accompanined with a NP. In addition, I wish to highligh that even grill should be in the past form "grilled" because food has already this process of grilling before it can be served. Thus it would sound abnormal to say grill food.
If we change this grill to grilled such that we get" we serve you grilled..." we further propose that a NP must proceed the word grilled. So we should say things like "we served you grilled chicken, grilled hamburgers etc.
Doing a google search , we observe that grilled is always accompanied with a NP (food item) if the context is limited to food.
Any thoughts about this? The problem lies in the word grill. But before going deeper into the discussion, we must understand where this sentence came from. Context is crucial in faciltating our understanding of a phrase because it directs our thought processes along a certain line. Ok, this was a Burger King advertisement that I came across while I was on my way to university.
Firstly, when we look at the word grill, our mental lexicon, comprised of a complex network systems immediately sends signal to words that are in one way or another connceted to the word grill. Together with context, the first thing which comes to mind is food. Hence, the advertisement here is implying to observers that it is at Burger King where grilled food will be served. But the phrasing here is not natural.
When we dine at restaurants ,have you ever heard waitors saying:
1.) We serve you baked. (Baked what? )
2.) We serve you deep-fried. (deep-fried what? )
I tried googling this phrase 'serve you grill' but it does not seem to appear in most search engines regardless of the region. The concordance sampler does not seem to be useful here because the concordance sampler gives a corpus where the context in which the word is used is too general. If we limit the context to food, the phrase "serve you grill..."must be accompanined with a NP. In addition, I wish to highligh that even grill should be in the past form "grilled" because food has already this process of grilling before it can be served. Thus it would sound abnormal to say grill food.
If we change this grill to grilled such that we get" we serve you grilled..." we further propose that a NP must proceed the word grilled. So we should say things like "we served you grilled chicken, grilled hamburgers etc.
Doing a google search , we observe that grilled is always accompanied with a NP (food item) if the context is limited to food.
samedi 13 mars 2010
THIS LUNAR NEW YEAR, LET OUR CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA FILL YOU UP WITH THE JOYS OF SPRING. TOPPED WITH A MOUTHWATERING SPREAD OF DICED BBQ CHICKEN, CHICKEN FLOSS AND PINEAPPLES ON COOL LIME MAYONNAISE, IT OFFERS A DELIGHTFUL EXPLOSION OF FLAVOURS YOU'LL WELCOME HOME THIS SPRING.
There are numberous things to talk about regarding this extremely hilarious PIZZA HUT ad. All it takes is just a quick glance of the sentence to make a mockery out of this ad in its quest to be novel and creative. An effective way to go about marketing its pizzas and to stand out from its adversaries? Perhaps! Given that chinese new year is approaching, Pizza Hut advertisers must be obssessed with this whole notion of a joyous occassion for celebration, a time where family memebers gather together for a hearty meal, engaging themselves in endless conversations amidst the occassional outbursts of laughter, young children greeting and wishing their elders a happy new year accompanied by a string of chinese idioms to signify prosperity , luck , health, etc. In light of this fetive occassion, it is no surprise that advertisers put in a great amount of effort in ensuring that the theme of their ads encapsulates the festive dynamics of a celebration t oplay up to this festive mood. Hence the incorporation of terms like cherry blossom, delightful, joys, welcome home. Firstly, let me try to interpret this advertisement:
1.) Since chinese new year is a festive occasion and a joyous one, OUR PIZZAS CAN BRING JOY TO YOU BECAUSE IT IS A CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA (NOT AN ORDINARY ONE) a hawaiin pizza cannot bring as much joy to you during chinese new year.
2.) Our cherry blossom pizza DOES NOT SIMPLY BRING YOU JOY BUT IT FILLS YOU UP (TO THE BRIM) WITH JOYS OF SPRING after consuming them. This is analagous to that of an empty container being filled to its brim by another medium that possesses a certain quantity of liquid which will be transferred to the empty container when the action of pouring is conducted. In this case, the pizza becomes an object that possess a certain quantity of an object X which will can fill up another medium only through the process of transference. That explains why I am dubious about the way this choice of lexical items used by the advertiser sounds strange since no process of transference is involved. I would have replaced the word fill with bring such that we generate a sentence as such:OUR CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA BRINGS YOU THE JOYS OF SPRING. Again, I am being critical here. What on earth is joys of spring? Can we say "joys of winter, summer, autumn? " I know very well that the word 'spring' is indexical to the lunar new year but supposedly I am not a chinese but somebody of another race and culture, I would not be able to see this connection between spring and the lunar new year and such a message will appear very "alien" to me and if I should want to order the pizza by virtue of the fact that the image of the pizza appears very interesting and novel, I might consider not doing so simply because the description of the pizza does not seem to make sense.
The ad could have done better by saying OUR CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA BRINGS YOU THE JOYS OF THIS FESTIVE SEASON ! TOPPED WITH A MOUTHWATERING SPREAD OF OF DICED BBQ CHICKEN, CHICKEN FLOSS,AND PINEAPPLES ON COOL LIME MAYONNAISE! Ok, another problem here, COOL LIME MAYONNAIS! I can see that the advertisers are trying their very best to play around with words in the hope of capturing the attention of its customers and also to promote the uniqueness of their pizza as a commodity that will eventually be purchased and consumed.
I went to the collins cobuild concordance sampler typed the word mayonnaise and from a corpus of 100 phrases, I saw some phrases like "lemon mayonnaise".Thus, lime mayonnaise would be perfectly fine. But what about the adj cool modifying the NP lime mayonnaise? Based on the concordance sampler, I found NO phrases similar to cool lime mayonnaise. ADJ ADJ NP does nto seem to be reflected in the sample.
Doing a google search: If you look at the first page of google.co.uk, there are alot of sentences with the NP lime mayonnaise. Going over to google.com (US), the same results are obtained as well. However, if you were to search under google.sg, interestingly there are 2 instances where cool lime mayonnaise appeared. However, these were taken from Pizza Hut's website. Thus on the whole, we could generalize that while lime can be prime with mayonnaise, cool being primed to collocate with lime mayonnaise poses a problem.
I realize I am being very long winded here since blogs are supposed to be succint but yet I feel there is a necessity to explain everything in detail by penning all my thought processes down on this blog.
Another problem that this advert has is the VP offers a delightful explosion of flavours. It has dawned on me that analysis of a short phrase is tedious, needless to say an entire sentence. So what are the problems here? 1.) The priming of the word explosion and PP of flavours. 2.) the VP offer an explosion (omit the adj first since the adj merely modifies the explosion) .
My findings based on the concordance sampler: ...your choice of flavours
.....amazing range of flavours
.......with layers of flavours
...........A really good balance of flavours
So there were no instances of explosion of flavours.
My findings for explosion: explosion of diverse styles ....
explosion of micro and phantom midge.
explosion of anger
explosion of expressionist writing
Ok, based on what I have here, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way the words are primed to collocate with to one another. The next thing to do is to consider the semantic meaning and to see if such a phrase has been used by people today and if so, are there any constraints to this? Example, is this phrase used only by a certain community of people or is it uniquely in a particular country?
So again, googling the phrase seems to be a useful tool to answer my doubt on this. Again, we see that the phrase explosion of flavours are used by the americans, brits and australians themselves.
What are your thoughts about delightful explosion? Again, googling the phrase delightful explosion, it was observed that there was no such instances in the US and British context. Yet in the Singaporean context, we do get instances as such: delightful explosion of contrasting taste and textures /with its delightful explosion of colours.
What could account for this?Is this part of our Singapore Standard English ? Is it right to say this? Apparently there is nothing wrong with the grammatical structure! Yet why is it that the Native speakers of English do not use a pharse like this?
To conclude, I am going to say that this phrase is part of standard singapore english. As we all, English was exported to the rest of the world mainly as a consequence of colonization. The English brought to each colonized country was the Queen's English which as a result of many factors, such as geographical, social factors can bring about a change in the language. Also, it is crucial to highlight that even though English is a first language in many countries across the globe, the english that we all speak are very different , be it syntactically or lexically. Of course this is not to deny that these varieties are unintelligible. Another thing I would wish to highlight to myself is that,every language used in a community or a large social groups serves a crucial purpose which is none other than communication. Thus, the choice of words that we use may differ from another variety of English to suit our communicative needs. We create and invent certain phrases, appropriate it into our own community which can best express what we would like to say. It is fallacious to say that there exist, in today's society a STANDARD English ! English has attained its status as a World Language and today we see it manifesting in different forms. Today, we have what we call American Standard , Singapore Standard, Malaysian standard English , Indian Standard English all with its own unique linguistic features.
There are numberous things to talk about regarding this extremely hilarious PIZZA HUT ad. All it takes is just a quick glance of the sentence to make a mockery out of this ad in its quest to be novel and creative. An effective way to go about marketing its pizzas and to stand out from its adversaries? Perhaps! Given that chinese new year is approaching, Pizza Hut advertisers must be obssessed with this whole notion of a joyous occassion for celebration, a time where family memebers gather together for a hearty meal, engaging themselves in endless conversations amidst the occassional outbursts of laughter, young children greeting and wishing their elders a happy new year accompanied by a string of chinese idioms to signify prosperity , luck , health, etc. In light of this fetive occassion, it is no surprise that advertisers put in a great amount of effort in ensuring that the theme of their ads encapsulates the festive dynamics of a celebration t oplay up to this festive mood. Hence the incorporation of terms like cherry blossom, delightful, joys, welcome home. Firstly, let me try to interpret this advertisement:
1.) Since chinese new year is a festive occasion and a joyous one, OUR PIZZAS CAN BRING JOY TO YOU BECAUSE IT IS A CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA (NOT AN ORDINARY ONE) a hawaiin pizza cannot bring as much joy to you during chinese new year.
2.) Our cherry blossom pizza DOES NOT SIMPLY BRING YOU JOY BUT IT FILLS YOU UP (TO THE BRIM) WITH JOYS OF SPRING after consuming them. This is analagous to that of an empty container being filled to its brim by another medium that possesses a certain quantity of liquid which will be transferred to the empty container when the action of pouring is conducted. In this case, the pizza becomes an object that possess a certain quantity of an object X which will can fill up another medium only through the process of transference. That explains why I am dubious about the way this choice of lexical items used by the advertiser sounds strange since no process of transference is involved. I would have replaced the word fill with bring such that we generate a sentence as such:OUR CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA BRINGS YOU THE JOYS OF SPRING. Again, I am being critical here. What on earth is joys of spring? Can we say "joys of winter, summer, autumn? " I know very well that the word 'spring' is indexical to the lunar new year but supposedly I am not a chinese but somebody of another race and culture, I would not be able to see this connection between spring and the lunar new year and such a message will appear very "alien" to me and if I should want to order the pizza by virtue of the fact that the image of the pizza appears very interesting and novel, I might consider not doing so simply because the description of the pizza does not seem to make sense.
The ad could have done better by saying OUR CHERRY BLOSSOM PIZZA BRINGS YOU THE JOYS OF THIS FESTIVE SEASON ! TOPPED WITH A MOUTHWATERING SPREAD OF OF DICED BBQ CHICKEN, CHICKEN FLOSS,AND PINEAPPLES ON COOL LIME MAYONNAISE! Ok, another problem here, COOL LIME MAYONNAIS! I can see that the advertisers are trying their very best to play around with words in the hope of capturing the attention of its customers and also to promote the uniqueness of their pizza as a commodity that will eventually be purchased and consumed.
I went to the collins cobuild concordance sampler typed the word mayonnaise and from a corpus of 100 phrases, I saw some phrases like "lemon mayonnaise".Thus, lime mayonnaise would be perfectly fine. But what about the adj cool modifying the NP lime mayonnaise? Based on the concordance sampler, I found NO phrases similar to cool lime mayonnaise. ADJ ADJ NP does nto seem to be reflected in the sample.
Doing a google search: If you look at the first page of google.co.uk, there are alot of sentences with the NP lime mayonnaise. Going over to google.com (US), the same results are obtained as well. However, if you were to search under google.sg, interestingly there are 2 instances where cool lime mayonnaise appeared. However, these were taken from Pizza Hut's website. Thus on the whole, we could generalize that while lime can be prime with mayonnaise, cool being primed to collocate with lime mayonnaise poses a problem.
I realize I am being very long winded here since blogs are supposed to be succint but yet I feel there is a necessity to explain everything in detail by penning all my thought processes down on this blog.
Another problem that this advert has is the VP offers a delightful explosion of flavours. It has dawned on me that analysis of a short phrase is tedious, needless to say an entire sentence. So what are the problems here? 1.) The priming of the word explosion and PP of flavours. 2.) the VP offer an explosion (omit the adj first since the adj merely modifies the explosion) .
My findings based on the concordance sampler: ...your choice of flavours
.....amazing range of flavours
.......with layers of flavours
...........A really good balance of flavours
So there were no instances of explosion of flavours.
My findings for explosion: explosion of diverse styles ....
explosion of micro and phantom midge.
explosion of anger
explosion of expressionist writing
Ok, based on what I have here, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way the words are primed to collocate with to one another. The next thing to do is to consider the semantic meaning and to see if such a phrase has been used by people today and if so, are there any constraints to this? Example, is this phrase used only by a certain community of people or is it uniquely in a particular country?
So again, googling the phrase seems to be a useful tool to answer my doubt on this. Again, we see that the phrase explosion of flavours are used by the americans, brits and australians themselves.
What are your thoughts about delightful explosion? Again, googling the phrase delightful explosion, it was observed that there was no such instances in the US and British context. Yet in the Singaporean context, we do get instances as such: delightful explosion of contrasting taste and textures /with its delightful explosion of colours.
What could account for this?Is this part of our Singapore Standard English ? Is it right to say this? Apparently there is nothing wrong with the grammatical structure! Yet why is it that the Native speakers of English do not use a pharse like this?
To conclude, I am going to say that this phrase is part of standard singapore english. As we all, English was exported to the rest of the world mainly as a consequence of colonization. The English brought to each colonized country was the Queen's English which as a result of many factors, such as geographical, social factors can bring about a change in the language. Also, it is crucial to highlight that even though English is a first language in many countries across the globe, the english that we all speak are very different , be it syntactically or lexically. Of course this is not to deny that these varieties are unintelligible. Another thing I would wish to highlight to myself is that,every language used in a community or a large social groups serves a crucial purpose which is none other than communication. Thus, the choice of words that we use may differ from another variety of English to suit our communicative needs. We create and invent certain phrases, appropriate it into our own community which can best express what we would like to say. It is fallacious to say that there exist, in today's society a STANDARD English ! English has attained its status as a World Language and today we see it manifesting in different forms. Today, we have what we call American Standard , Singapore Standard, Malaysian standard English , Indian Standard English all with its own unique linguistic features.
THE MOST SHIOK HAIR WASHES IN TOWN- extracted from the front cover of the magazine HER WORLD , February 2010 edition. It is astonishing to see how Singlish terms as the aforementioned creeping into local magazines occassionlly. I'm not an avid reader of fashion magazines so to simply make an assumption that singlish terms are finding its way into print media is of course debatable. Magazines, a form of print, is expected to conform to certain rules such as choice of words used and expressions used. It is a norm for us to associate written media with the standard variety of a language. In addition, sentence structures are expected to be grammatically correct and choice of lexical items employed conform to the notion of a "standard" language. In the case of magazines classified under the genre of entertainement and fashion, if the targeted audience of these magazines are the general public of different socio economic background and educational status, it becomes obvious that language employed here should be simple to render easy comprehension of what is being written. In addition, the use of SHIOK in this context adds a very unique Singaporean flavour to this locally based magazine. Yet, the phrase MOST SHIOK appears semantically awkward. As the coxford dictionary briefly states :
SHIOK-Originally a Malay exclamation, but now a universal Singaporean expression denoting extreme pleasure or the highest quality.1. “This char kway teow is damn shiok, man!”2. “I ate the char kway teow until damn shiok.If shiok is defined as something of the "highest quality" how on earth is it possible to intensify this further through the addition of an adverbe most? Syntactically, the structure is fine, yet semantically, it appears strange. It is equivalent to saying that within a set of even numbers that X can hold, there are no constraints to this. To illustrate this: VALUE OF X= 12. X contains At most 6 elements in the set of even numbers namely (2,4,6,8,10,12) . 7 elements would obviously be illogical. Likewise in the above example, if something is of the highest quality (reached the extreme end) , the use of 'most' either erases this extreme quality thus rendering 1.) the definition of shiok as fallacious or 2.) the sentence as being semantically illogical.Another observation made here is that, notice how in the 2 examples, shiok is collocated with damn (damn appears on the left of shiok acting as an adverb). Interestingly, I do not seem to know the actual definition of damn albeit using this word on many occassions as a means of swearing. Definition of damn based on the Merriam Webster dictionnaire:DefinitiMain Entry: 3damnFunction: adjective or adverbDate: 1775: damned— damn well : beyond doubt or question : certainly on ofStrangely, there seems to be no definition of what damn means. Other than the mere fact that it acts as an adverbe or an adjective. Secondly, the only meaning which they gave was damn +well which does not aid much in my understanding of the word damn. Unfoutunately, I had difficulties accessing to the OED site in public, so I am going to make a guess and say that the word damn serves neither to intensify nor describe this "extreme pleasure "and "highest quality." It could act like an interjection or perhaps as a phrase to arouse our emotions . Think of "f..." and "bloody" . It would be interesting, on the contrary to have a unique Singlish dictionary with an indepth analysis of the way words are used and the way they appear in phrases.
SHIOK-Originally a Malay exclamation, but now a universal Singaporean expression denoting extreme pleasure or the highest quality.1. “This char kway teow is damn shiok, man!”2. “I ate the char kway teow until damn shiok.If shiok is defined as something of the "highest quality" how on earth is it possible to intensify this further through the addition of an adverbe most? Syntactically, the structure is fine, yet semantically, it appears strange. It is equivalent to saying that within a set of even numbers that X can hold, there are no constraints to this. To illustrate this: VALUE OF X= 12. X contains At most 6 elements in the set of even numbers namely (2,4,6,8,10,12) . 7 elements would obviously be illogical. Likewise in the above example, if something is of the highest quality (reached the extreme end) , the use of 'most' either erases this extreme quality thus rendering 1.) the definition of shiok as fallacious or 2.) the sentence as being semantically illogical.Another observation made here is that, notice how in the 2 examples, shiok is collocated with damn (damn appears on the left of shiok acting as an adverb). Interestingly, I do not seem to know the actual definition of damn albeit using this word on many occassions as a means of swearing. Definition of damn based on the Merriam Webster dictionnaire:DefinitiMain Entry: 3damnFunction: adjective or adverbDate: 1775: damned
lundi 22 février 2010
hair rebonding
During my 6 months of stay in France, I became acquainted to many students of different nationalities. Interestingly, in the hostel where I live, there was a large group of brits residing there so we became fast friends. So after a long tiring day, we were so knackered that we decided to go drinking in one of the pubs in the city centre. We took a tram there and along our way we talked about fashion and how minted the parisian women were. Along the way, one of my friend Melissa asked me if chinese people had naturally straight hair. She was talking about how unnaturally straight their hair was and that they looked gorgeous.
I brought up the subject of hair rebonding but they don't seem to get what I said. So I typed the word Rebond. Interestingly, the word does not appear in dictionaries, like the Encarta World Egnlish dictionary, OED, Merriam Webster. No wonder, they looked at me with a puzzled look. So i proceeded to google.co.uk but the there was no such relation between rebonding/rebond and hair. This was the same to when I typed rebond in google USA. On the contrary, when I went to google .sg, I see heaps of "hair rebonding" and rebond hair. It seems as if hair rebonding is used uniquely in our society as compared to the Brits and the Americans. Perhaps this word is created by locals to be appropriated in our local context? Perhaps the word rebond has a takes a unique meaning in our society? However, this was not even found in our local Singapore English dictionary. So why is it that there were numerous instances of hair rebonding in our society?
How did this word creep its way into the Singaporean context? Who initiated this? What about the Malaysians? Do they use this as well? Yes ! They do! I went to google.my and like Singapore, there were numerous occurences of hair rebonding too. I 'm going to extend my search to neighbouring countries of Singapore to see how widely spread rebond is. Guess what? In India, hair rebonding is used. Even if we go as far as South Africa, we see hair rebonding too! Then why is it that the Brits and Americans don't use this term? Hair rebonding is not a Singaporean thing afterall! Perhaps etymology of the word rebond or the phrase hair-rebonding would help us better understand how the word came about. At least for now, this remains a mystery for me since rebond cannot be found in our MW, Oxford, Cambridge dictionaries. Even using our concordance sampler does not show any instances of hair collocating with rebonding.
I brought up the subject of hair rebonding but they don't seem to get what I said. So I typed the word Rebond. Interestingly, the word does not appear in dictionaries, like the Encarta World Egnlish dictionary, OED, Merriam Webster. No wonder, they looked at me with a puzzled look. So i proceeded to google.co.uk but the there was no such relation between rebonding/rebond and hair. This was the same to when I typed rebond in google USA. On the contrary, when I went to google .sg, I see heaps of "hair rebonding" and rebond hair. It seems as if hair rebonding is used uniquely in our society as compared to the Brits and the Americans. Perhaps this word is created by locals to be appropriated in our local context? Perhaps the word rebond has a takes a unique meaning in our society? However, this was not even found in our local Singapore English dictionary. So why is it that there were numerous instances of hair rebonding in our society?
How did this word creep its way into the Singaporean context? Who initiated this? What about the Malaysians? Do they use this as well? Yes ! They do! I went to google.my and like Singapore, there were numerous occurences of hair rebonding too. I 'm going to extend my search to neighbouring countries of Singapore to see how widely spread rebond is. Guess what? In India, hair rebonding is used. Even if we go as far as South Africa, we see hair rebonding too! Then why is it that the Brits and Americans don't use this term? Hair rebonding is not a Singaporean thing afterall! Perhaps etymology of the word rebond or the phrase hair-rebonding would help us better understand how the word came about. At least for now, this remains a mystery for me since rebond cannot be found in our MW, Oxford, Cambridge dictionaries. Even using our concordance sampler does not show any instances of hair collocating with rebonding.
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