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.

Queue for taxi

at the National Skin Centre
at the National Skin Centre

The sign says “QUEUE FOR TAXI”.

I wonder whether it means “[This is the] queue for [getting a] taxi” or “[Please ] queue [here] for [a] taxi”.

In one case, ‘queue’ is a noun, and in the other case, ‘queue’ is a verb. Actually, I think ‘queue’ is probably a verb.

Not that it really matters.

It only matters if the sign is trying to say, “[This is the] queue for [the] taxis [themselves]” because then it would be a singular/plural error.

The sign should just say “taxi queue” like most of them do.

In the US, we don’t really use the word ‘queue’. Which is fine with me, since as far as I can tell, ‘queueing’ is pretty much the only English word that has five consecutive vowels (HT XKCD).

In other news, ‘strengthlessnesses’ is a plausible hypothetical word with surprisingly few vowels, all of them ‘e’.

On a related note: at some point, Gallup chairman Dr. Donald O. Clifton apparently decided to name his awesome analysis tool  The Clifton Strengthsfinder, ensuring it would be unpronounceable even to native speakers of English and completely inconceivable to anyone else. I mean, ‘strengths’ is bad enough, but to then follow it up with a word starting with ‘f’? What was he thinking? I guess he never taught a small child how to read.

‘There’ is a noun.

In English, ‘there’ is an adverb. In Chinese, ‘there’ can be a noun. Or at any rate, can be analyzed as one.

那儿很热吗?
Nàr hěn rè ma?
There very hot [question particle]?
Is it hot there?

Same with ‘here’.

是的。 这儿很热。
Shì de. Zhèr hěn rè.
Is [particle]. Here very hot.
Yes. It’s hot here.

If that isn’t proof enough, then observe that you can apply the possessive to ‘here’ and ‘there’.

这儿的菜很好吃。
Zhèr de cài hěn hǎo chī.
Here’s dishes very good eat.
The food here is delicious.

I am not sure whether ‘hǎo chī’ is considered a word or a phrase. I don’t think it matters.

If you translate zhè li and nà li as ‘this place’ and ‘that place’, they make perfect sense as nouns. Then you have to account for the fact that these phrases are used without prepositions as if they were adverbs and not nouns.

他在那里。
Tā zài nà li.
He is [located] that place.
He’s there.

But in fact lǐ is not a noun meaning ‘place’. It is a noun that means ‘in’ or ‘inside’, or it’s the preposition ‘in’. So ‘zhè li‘ is ‘this inside’ and ‘na li’ is ‘that inside’.

‘Sure’ is an adverb.

In English, ‘surely’ and ‘for sure’ are adverbs and ‘sure’ is an adjective:

If you ask, you will surely get a discount.
If you ask, you will get a discount for sure.
If you ask, you are sure to get a discount.

In Singlish, ‘sure’ can be an adverb even without ‘for’, and you would never put the adverb at the end of the sentence; it goes before the verb:

If you ask, you will [for] sure get [a] discount.

No MSG?

no-msg-added
at Eggs & Berries at Westgate

Let this banner teach you to quit while you’re ahead.

“No MSG added” is fine, but “in all our food” doesn’t make sense. In fact it almost makes it sounds like there is MSG… in all the food.

Original:

No MSG added in all our food.

Recommended:

All our food is made without MSG.
No MSG added to any of our food.
No MSG in any of our food.
No MSG.

Genuine if totally opaque multiculturalism

Haq-Insaf's Eating House
Haq-Insaf’s Eating House

Haq-Insaf’s Eating House is a good place to get Indian food at West Coast. This is the back wall of the inside of the eating space in their shophouse unit.

Three things about it struck me.

  1. It’s really festive. You can’t visit this place and not feel cheerful. The whole place is always decorated for some reason or other.
  2. Those squiggles are all words, but I can’t read any of them. Wait, no, actually, I know two of the Chinese characters (‘spring’ and ‘fortune’). Yay.
  3. Hang on, why is there Chinese and Arabic? Oh, right. Because this is Singapore. Everyone celebrates Chinese New Year here. You don’t have to be Chinese, or East Asian, or Asian.

So yeah. This is multiculturalism at its best… and most opaque.

Salt Water Giant Arachnoid

salt-water-arachnoid
at an educational supply store called Nurture Craft at Forum The Shopping Mall

The front of the box says:

Children may be awesome and scary to this direct but simple eight-feet reptile animal. After the fuel battery is activated by the salted water, the metal magnesium plate (3PCS) can successively provide the spider with 4-6 hours of power. Do to it is too real-like, the player may stop it during the time of playing. You can simply remove the fuel battery module and just clean it with running water, hang and dried it. All the material applied on this toy are environment-friendly, safe and clean. There is no any other toxic substance or waste. It won’t produce heat as well, which makes it absolutely safe for the children.

Unfortunately my picture of the side of the box was out of focus, so I can’t show you what it said. I’m sure it was hilarious.

The giant arachnoid is also available on Amazon.

As you might imagine, reviews are mixed.

Happy year of the Caprinae!

year-of-sheep-goat
in Chinatown

According to the Chinese zodiac, most of 2015 is the year of the 羊. The word 羊 (‘yáng’) can refer to both sheep and goats, hence the confusion over what to call this zodiac year in English (sheep/goat/ram). Wikipedia kindly informs me that the most accurate translation of ‘yáng’ would be Caprinae, a Latin word corresponding to the biological subfamily that encompasses sheep and goats.

Therefore, I wish you a happy year of the Caprinae.

Pesky conjunctions

The same taxi had two signs prohibiting eating and drinking. One said “no food and drinks” and the other said “no food or drink”.

“No food and drinks” is wrong. It assumes that the ‘no’ applies to one combined entity, food-and-drinks. One could imagine this syntax being valid if someone said, “You can’t come in, you have no suit and tie.”

It’s also weird that ‘food’ is treated as a noncount noun and ‘drink’ is treated as a count noun. It would sound slightly better, though still wrong, if the sign said “no food and drink”. Then I would, perversely, wonder whether it would be okay to have just food or just something to drink, as long as I didn’t have both. The ‘no’ doesn’t distribute, so “no food and drink” doesn’t mean “no food and no drink”.

Now I wonder why we don’t say “no food and no drink”. And what verb would you use? “No food and no drink is/are permitted in this taxi.”

I wonder why we don’t use ‘neither… nor’ on signs like this. “Neither food nor drink is permitted in this taxi” would be correct.

“No food or drink” sounds normal. At least, I thought it did. Now I’ve been thinking about it too much and everything sounds strange.

“No eating or drinking” would be good. It wouldn’t rule out someone bringing food and drink into the taxi, but perhaps that’s okay anyway. Certainly I’ve transported groceries, snacks and leftovers in taxis.

But not durians! Some taxis have signs specifically prohibiting them:

no-durian-in-taxi
“No Eating / Drinking”. That slash adroitly dodges the whole issue of the conjunction! Well done.

The reminder on the far right to “please state your preferred route” is to protect drivers from being scolded at the end of the trip for taking the surface streets when obviously going by the highway is faster, or for taking the highway when obviously going by the surface streets is cheaper, or whatever.

EKIT

Oops.

ekit
at Ryozen Kannon, Kyoto, Japan

It’s not like English needs the letter X anyway. Anything with an X in it could be spelled with some other letter or letters, usually ‘ks’ or ‘z’.

Of course, it’s possible to go too far in trying to simplify English spelling. It’s pretty much impossible not to, in fact, which is why no one since Noah Webster has really succeeded. (You have him to thank—or curse—for most of the differences between American and British spelling.)