My husband and I were both born in the Year of the Rooster.
Photo is from Laos (2016).
Month: January 2017
Ship or Sheep?
Earlier I wrote about the “his/he’s” distinction in Singapore, which corresponds to the “ship/sheep” distinction this pronunciation book refers to.
Apparently people have been struggling to differentiate these two words at least since the time of George Eliot. This is a passage from Middlemarch, published in 1872.
“I hate grammar. What’s the use of it?”
“To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood,” said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision.
“Should you like to speak as old Job does?”
“Yes,” said Ben, stoutly; “it’s funnier. He says, ‘Yo goo’—that’s just as good as ‘You go.'”
“But he says, ‘A ship’s in the garden,’ instead of ‘a sheep,'” said Letty, with an air of superiority. “You might think he meant a ship off the sea.”
Here’s a more modern take: a pun that requires the conflation of “Griddy” (the name of an F&B outlet at Our Tampines Hub) and “greedy”:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
When I read Middlemarch in 2015, I was surprised when the focus shifted away from the character I thought was the protagonist. In fact, the book has an ensemble cast whose stories are woven together by a variety of relationships all contained within the same geographical area, the town of Middlemarch. Hence the title.
One of the Hungry Hundred Book Club members said the book was about “knowing the other”, though obviously not in the science-fiction sense of knowing aliens from other planets. I very much agree. The plot relies on characters who make assumptions and project their own worldviews on others unknowingly, then find, having hurt others or themselves, that they were mistaken.
The characters are not to be blamed for not understanding each other perfectly to begin with (such problems are perennial human ones), but we can certainly judge them for the actions they take and the attitudes they adopt when they realize they are wrong.
My evaluations of some of the characters below as well as information on when and why I read the book.
Arrival (2016)
I love books. I love languages. I built welovetranslations.com. You can read this post on that site!
I’m so glad a friend who wanted to see it it invited me along or I would surely have overlooked this gem.
In Arrival, lonely linguistics professor Louise gets called in by the top army brass alongside your more typical math/physics guy to try to figure out how to communicate with the aliens in one of twelve lens-shaped black ships hovering over different parts of the world (the answer: coffee rings!), but the clock is ticking because the win/lose approach favored by the Chinese (and by some rogue American soldiers, for that matter) could result in catastrophic alien retaliation.
Arrival is not very actiony; there’s a lot of quiet drama in with the sci-fi. There are a couple of nice themes, but nothing overbearing. The film never even gets near the “hold hands and sing kum ba yah” cliche, which I perhaps was dreading. The black lenses recall Arthur C. Clarke’s monoliths, but that’s the only similarity Arrival has with 2001:A Space Odyssey. Nor did it have the nonsensical transcendent mystery of Close Encounters. Nor was it anything like Independence Day (1995). The movies it’s being compared to are all movies I haven’t yet seen (Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian).
The movie has been described as “sophisticated”, “intellectual”, “thoughtful”, “pensive”, and “cerebral”. That’s great. Quibble how you will about inaccuracies in the depiction of linguistics, the fact that Hollywood deigns to depict a linguist at all is nice.
I further approve of this movie because it didn’t announce that it has a heroine (rather than a hero). Arrival contains absolutely no obtrusive feminist rhetoric, spunky, defensive or otherwise. There’s just a likable woman smack at the center of the story. The heroine is played by Amy Adams, seen ten years ago in Disney’s Enchanted. The male scientist (played by Jeremy Renner, Marvel’s Hawkeye) for all his supposed skills, is just along for the ride.
It’s a wild ride, difficult to describe without giving the game away, somewhat like Predestination (2014). I’m also reminded of The Three-Body Problem, which also dramatizes the effect of aliens on humanity.
Since the not-fictional Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is part of the backdrop of the movie, I would like to point out that learning a new language—learning anything—does change your brain, but not like science fiction (or even the real Sapir and Whorf) would have you believe.
Keep reading for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Also see below for a brief comparison of the movie and the short story it was based on.
Five
The sign for this restaurant is a visual pun. It says “five” in English and the character that is serving as the “E” says “five” in Chinese. Genius!
Chinatown decorations for CNY 2017
17 photos below!
Shop theft is a crime
The guy who posed for this ubiquitous crime-fighting cardboard cutout is a minor celebrity in Singapore. His marriage was much celebrated—and much mourned.
I’d like to point out that “low crime does not mean no crime”. Singapore is safer and cleaner than just about anywhere else, but it’s not utopia.
I’d also like to point out that the phrasing of the sign is just weird, even if you’re accustomed to the term “shop theft” rather than “shoplifting”.
I would understand if it said “shoplifting is a crime”. Maybe there are people who rationalize the act referred to as “shoplifting” by thinking of it as the harmless liberation or redistribution of small items. Euphemisms, slang, and jargon all obscure what they refer to: the word businesses use for “unexplained” decreases in inventory—decreases largely due to theft—is “shrinkage”.
As it is, the sign is just providing an intuitive definition. It’s as if someone put up a sign that said “cars are vehicles”. Duh! I can’t imagine anyone being able to construe the word “theft” in any way that doesn’t involve crime.
I would understand if the sign said “shop theft is stupid”, because then the sign would be assuming you know what shop theft consisted of but not how it should be characterized.
Just because the message is a tautology with almost no moral weight doesn’t mean the sign is useless, however. At least one of the pop-psychology books I’ve read said studies show that displaying faces, even if they are cartoon faces, can decrease bad behavior by making people subconsciously feel that someone is watching and judging them. The abstract idea of someone’s eyes pointed in your direction is sometimes enough to tip the balance! The cardboard cutout is not magic, but it does help.
Royal Magic by Ruth Chew
I like the plot of Royal Magic. Reminds me a bit of the Laotian movie The Rocket, in that there’s a society that thinks twins are bad luck.
Ruth Chew writes books that take kids on magic adventures. The only magic in Royal Magic is the fact that two kids are accidentally transported to someplace else when they go to the natural history museum in New York.
When and Why I Read Royal Magic
I was trying to figure out whether the plot involved time travel because a book blogger asked me about it.
Genre: children’s fiction (fantasy)
Date started / date finished: 22-Jan-17 to 22-Jan-17
Length: 127 pages
ISBN: 0590447424 (paperback)
Originally published in: 1991
Amazon link: Royal Magic
Wrong Way Around Magic by Ruth Chew
Ruth Chew writes books that take kids on magic adventures. In Wrong Way Around Magic, the only magic is a pair of field glasses (binoculars) that takes two kids to some place which is probably pre-modern China, though the text never really says.
When and Why I Read Wrong Way Around Magic
I was trying to figure out whether the plot involved time travel because a book blogger asked me about it.
Genre: children’s fiction (fantasy)
Date started / date finished: 22-Jan-17 to 22-Jan-17
Length: 128 pages
ISBN: 0590460234 (paperback)
Originally published in: 1993
Amazon link: Wrong Way Around Magic
Historical Building: Built Since 1826
This one is worse than “Established Since 1984”.
This sign on one of the shophouses at Boat Quay should just say “Built in 1826”.
In fact, all you’d have to do to fix it is get rid of the S, C, and E of “since”, and the C is already looking a bit worse for wear.
