Okay, so I know that logo is a K and a backwards C. But it looks a bit like a Chinese character. Okay, not exactly like a Chinese character, but enough like one that my brain has to struggle to interpret the shape. It could even be a five-pointed leaf, like a maple leaf, though it would have to be a more leaf-like color. Or it could even be a snowflake, since it’s blue.
Category: language
» I’ve been an avid reader all my life.
» I have a BA in Linguistics.
» I’ve studied seven foreign languages.
» I taught reading for over two years.
» I wrote a grammar curriculum.
Words are really important to me.
The Three Circles of English edited by Edwin Thumboo
The Three Circles of English is a collection of conference papers published in Singapore on 2001.
The title refers to the varieties of English in the inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle of the “three circles” model invented by Braj Kachru.
I’m glad I read this book, though parts of it were eye-stabbingly inarticulate and other parts contained opinions that went all the way through defensive and out the other side…
I now have more sympathy for people who feel that although they have grown up speaking English, they can never really achieve a respectable level of English, simply because they weren’t born and educated in places where the local variety of English is automatically respected. I mean, how unfair is that? Especially since all our enshrined standards are nothing but historical accidents. I’m not saying that we don’t need standards, or even, necessarily, that they should change or multiply, just that it stinks if you’re on the receiving end of one, so to speak, through no fault of your own.
For a list of the papers and what I found interesting about them, keep reading. (TL;DR? Try this summary instead.)
Continue reading The Three Circles of English edited by Edwin Thumboo
The mission of a dictionary
If you accept a ‘word’ such as ‘alright’ (which I consider to be a mistake) just because it’s in the dictionary, for consistency you will probably also have to accept ‘words’ that you consider to be mistakes. (How accepting do you feel towards nucular?)
Furthermore, if you accept any word that’s in the dictionary just because it’s in the dictionary, you are trapping yourself in an inescapable bit of circular logic.
I’m using it because it’s in the dictionary…
and it’s in the dictionary because I’m using it.
That’s because the mission of a dictionary (these days, anyway) is to document how people actually write, not to dictate how people should write.
Dictionaries are comprehensive. They’re not carved in stone and increasingly they include examples of anything and everything that’s statistically common enough to pass some minimum threshold. There’s no value judgment involved. In fact, descriptivism, the linguistic philosophy that motivates lexicographers, categorically prohibits interference from value judgments. The passing of judgment on any form of linguistic expression is termed ‘prescriptivism’ and is frowned on by academic linguists.
To my way of thinking, then, there’s a huge difference between the mission of dictionary writers and the mission of pretty much any other kind of writer. Writing is all about value judgment—writers must constantly choose what to say and how to say it to best communicate with the audience, for a given purpose, in a given context. Therefore, writers are constantly looking for and giving one another advice on appropriate forms and formulations.
There are many, many books out there that purport to contain well-considered recommendations for word use. They’re just not dictionaries.
Don’t all write ‘alright’, all right?
I must have been told early and often that ‘all right’ must be written as two words because it just absolutely baffles me that anyone would want to write it any other way.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Why don’t we get some other opinions on this?
Below are the first ten Google hits for “all right vs alright”.
- Grammar Girl says historically ‘alright’ was always wrong, but that it might somehow be gaining limited acceptability.
- Dictionary.com says ‘alright’ is acceptable in written dialog and informal writing only.
- Oxford Dictionaries says despite the existence of ‘altogether’ and ‘already’ in standard English, it is still inadvisable to use ‘alright’ because it is widely regarded as incorrect.
- Writer’s Digest says ‘alright’ technically isn’t a word. Its status could change but hasn’t yet.
- Grammarist says that because ‘alright’ has never been accepted by dictionaries or usage authorities, for now you should play it safe and avoid it, unless you’re feeling particularly bold.
- Writing Explained says young writers may not even be aware that there’s a debate over ‘alright’ and ‘all right’, and then beats readers over the head with the mnemonic “It’s not all right to use alright.”
- Merriam-Webster says you can use ‘alright’ if you don’t care that it’s not the favored form, but points out that ‘all right’ is exactly equivalent, and furthermore keeps you from looking like you don’t know what you’re doing.
- Merriam-Webster’s dictionary entry for ‘alright’ says ‘alright’ is common in dialog and informal writing. (Incidentally, beware of insisting that something “is a word” just because “it’s in the dictionary”.)
- Grammar Monster says ‘alright’ is a nonstandard variant of ‘all right’ and is best avoided in formal writing.
- Cambridge Dictionaries Online says that ‘all right’ may be written as one word but that it’s less common to do so.
I think there’s overwhelming evidence in favor of avoiding ‘alright’. Unless you’re militantly anti-conservative, linguistically speaking.
In which case, what’s next? A big push for spelling ‘a lot’ as one word?
So, upshot: I may be fighting a losing battle, but according to the authorities, it isn’t lost yet. And I’m not fighting alone, even if it for sure feels that way sometimes. Fight with me! If you’ve read this far, you can no longer claim that you just didn’t know better.
Q: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?
A: I don’t know and I don’t care.
Move over, Morton
My salt’s got a Chinese pagoda on it now. And some Arabic, for good measure.
Man child, age 6
I would like to point out that this is hilarious. From a certain angle.
From another angle, it is also evidence of a good deal of hard work and bravery on the part of the parent…
Imagine you’ve just moved to another country with your wife and son and you have to function in another language, one that you’ve studied but that you didn’t grow up with. Furthermore imagine that it is one that uses a writing system totally different from your own and contains combinations of sounds you can’t accurately pronounce.
You’re going to send your son to a school that uses your family’s language, but you want him to study the local language, too. You go to a private education provider and find a class suitable for your son’s age and language ability level. You decide to register him for classes there.
Then they give you a form to fill out. It’s not in your language.
Even if it were, nobody likes filling out forms.
Or should you say, filling them in? Or up? Why does English have all these pesky phrasal verbs anyway?
You do your best with the form.
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
I was eager to see the Chinese fantasy sports comedy Shaolin Soccer because I’d already seen and enjoyed Steven Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle. I think I liked Kung Fu Hustle better, but this wasn’t bad.
Steven Chow (writer, director, star) is a poor boy named Sing who has five brothers and who wants to bring Shaolin martial arts to the masses by packaging it in a unique way. He tries kung fu singing, but that doesn’t really work, and gets him and one of his brothers into trouble with some local rabble-rousers. Luckily, a crippled ex-soccer star is interested in teaching him to combine his kung fu with the game of soccer. Half the movie is gone by the time our protagonist has successfully recruited his brothers, seemingly unsuited for soccer, to form a team. Will this strange team be able to defeat the Evil Team, owned and managed by the cripple’s former rival? Yeah, probably so. And will our protagonist also win the love of the woman who uses kung fu for baking? Yep, that’s kind of a given, too. How do those two goals come together? That’s worth seeing.
The seams between the live action filming and the special effects are generally obvious, but the CG effects are amazing for 2001 and still pretty enjoyable. The best is when the Puma soccer ball turns into a puma.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/shaolin-soccer/id669315509
SPOILERS BELOW, including a detailed plot summary in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Chinese for Dummies
I feel like my 2005 copy of Chinese for Dummies is a bit out of date, though apparently the 2013 edition also has a CD inside. (If you ask me, CDs were rightly mocked as obsolete by Nick in Zootopia.)
I’m a fan of the “for Dummies” series published by Wiley. I have dummies books on several topics, and in every case, the information inside is characterized by its simplicity and clarity. The dummies books are an easy first step into any topic, saving readers from needing to understand and evaluate a wide range of available reference books in an unfamiliar niche. Wiley’s got you covered.
This book’s tagline is “Speak Mandarin Chinese the fun and easy way”. Now, no matter how much I like and respect the dummies brand, I do not believe there is any book, or teacher, or class that can make Mandarin Chinese easy for a native speaker of English. That being said, a useful feature of this particular book is the Englishy spelling approximations (e.g., nee how) that are shown alongside the pinyin (e.g., nĭ hăo) to aid pronunciation.
Note that this book teaches readers how to speak Mandarin, not how to read or write it. That’s a totally different thing. This book has no Chinese characters in it anywhere.
Some things it does have:
- a fascinating list of the different names for Chinese in Chinese and where and why they are used
- a list of some Chinese proverbs
- a cartoon for each part of the book
- a verb list separate from the glossary
- practice exercises and answers to them
- bits of cultural knowledge and etiquette advice
Overall the book is fine, but it’s really for absolute beginners, and I’m not one.
Still, I suppose I should learn to say this sentence from page 162:
I really need [to] practice.
Genre: Non-fiction (foreign language)
Date started / date finished: 10-Nov-15 to 22-Mar-16
Length: 314
ISBN: 047178897X
Originally published in: 2005
Amazon link: Chinese for Dummies
Transitive and phrasal verbs and taxis
The word ‘alight’ didn’t used to really be part of my vocabulary, probably because in the US we had a car and we drove ourselves everywhere we couldn’t walk or fly. In Singapore we use buses, trains and taxis to get around. So now I hear automated announcements that say something like:
The next stop is XXX interchange. Passengers traveling to YYY, please alight at the next station.
Please allow passengers to alight before boarding.
That’s all very well and good. I have nothing against the verb ‘alight’. I don’t think there’s necessarily a better word to use, if you want an expression more formal than ‘get off (or out of) the vehicle’.
No, what amuses me is when ‘alight’ is used transitively to mean ‘drop someone off’. Or when someone means ‘drop you off’ and only says ‘drop you’.
May I alight you here?
May I drop you here?
I don’t think it’s just taxi drivers who use ‘drop’ to mean ‘drop off’, though. I think non-Singaporean native English speakers say that too, don’t we?
This is language evolution in progress. Why shouldn’t any verb be able to take an object? Why shouldn’t we just kill off—I mean, um, kill—all those pesky phrasal verbs? Maybe this is the future.
Mind your steps!
Broken idiom alert. This sign at the National Skin Centre pharmacy says:
CAUTION!
Tripping Hazard.
Mind Your Steps!
I think in the US we’d be more likely to say “watch your step” rather than “mind your step”, but pluralizing ‘step’ would be wrong in either case.
Sure, it’s logical that you’d want to be careful over the course of many steps, but conventionally, that’s not what we say.
I think we use the singular noun because this ‘step’ really means ‘manner of walking’. Here are some examples that showcase this singular sense of ‘step’.
The job promotion put a spring in his step.
The dancer has a graceful and lovely step.
The thief listened for the confident step of the policeman.
There is room for confusion because ‘step’ more often means ‘footstep’, and footsteps are often potentially plural, even when they are not syntactically plural.
The craftsman hoped his son would follow in his (foot)steps.
The sound of (foot)steps faded away down the hall.
Every (foot)step brought her closer to her goal.
Now that I think about it, the noun ‘stride’ has a similar duality: the singular noun means a manner of walking and the plural noun is used to refer to a series of individual movements.
I think there’s also pressure to pluralize ‘step’ coming from the common use of ‘steps’ to mean ‘stairs’.
The spilled water cascaded down the steps.
Anyway, the upshot is that the warning to “watch your step” or “mind your step” means “pay attention to your manner of walking”, not “pay attention to each of your footsteps”.
