Oct 14 2010
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Oct 04 2010
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Sep 19 2010
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Know how to eat
Over lunch today, my brother mentioned that our grandmother (and I suppose a number of our older relatives here in Singapore) often ask the question: ‘You know how to eat ______?’ about any local dish ranging from buah keluak (sometimes translated as candlestick nuts) to steamed pomfret.
The thing is, the question isn’t about whether we know the method or art of eating that particular dish (usually: open mouth, insert food, masticate, swallow). It’s about whether we eat the dish at all, with the implication that we like to eat it.
The form of the question is most likely a calque or word for word borrowing from a southern Chinese language/dialect like Teochew or Hokkien. Mum said the question in Teochew over lunch: ’leu hiau chiat?’ (lit. ‘you know eat?’) (not really sure how to transliterate these), where ‘hiau’ is a modal verb that can be translated as ‘can’ (in the sense of possessing the general ability) or ‘know’. Other languages often obligatorily use a verb meaning ‘know’ when referring to behaviour that must be learnt, such as cooking and driving, where English has the more general ‘can’ which can apply to general ability to do something, having permission to do something or having the opportunity to do something. An example off the top of my head: ‘He can cook (in the sense that he knows how to, not that he will have time to do so).’ would be ‘Il sait faire la cuisine’ in French (from what I understand, ‘Il peut faire la cuisine’ would be more appropriate if one means he has the opportunity to cook.)
In Teochew, this modal verb is also applied to the act of eating particular dishes, which is viewed as behaviour that must be learnt. It’s therefore not surprising that when I tell my grandmother, “Yes Mama, I know how to eat this”, she will often respond with, ‘Wah, so clever.’
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I friend you, you unfriend me
Over lunch yesterday, a few Singaporean friends and I were celebrating the fact that ‘friend’ is now a commonly used verb. Prior to the advent of Facebook, ‘friend’ as verb - pronounced closer to ‘fren’ - had been relegated to the realm of Singlish kid speak. For example:
Kid 1: I fren u, u fren me.
Kid 2: (I) Dun fren u.
(‘dun’ sounds like ‘doe’ with vowel nasalisation - derived from ‘don’t’)
Or something like that - it’s been a while since I was in kindergarten.
It conveys a sense of liking someone, something to the effect of ‘I want to be friends with you, do you want to be friends with me?’. But adults may still jokingly say to one another, ‘I dun/donch fren you’ if the other person offends them mildly.
I then asked people if they preferred the verb ‘unfriend’ or ‘defriend’ (neither of which is in Singlish kid speak). The unanimous response at the table was ‘unfriend’, even though after some consideration, people realised that ‘un-’ generally negates adjectives while ‘de-’ negates verbs. One reason suggested for why ‘unfriend’ sounded better was the existence of the word ‘unfriendly’.
Having done a bit of googling, I found this article: The Un-believable Un-Verb from September 21, 2009, which explains that there is an ‘un-’ prefix added to verbs (marking the reversal of an action, e.g. ‘unfasten’, ‘unmask’ - and also ‘undo’) which has a different etymology to the ‘un-’ prefix added to adjectives. ‘Unfriending’ someone on Facebook therefore makes more sense since you are undoing the action of ‘friending’ them.
But I wonder if there are still people who would prefer ‘defriend’?
Sep 18 2010
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Diverse Languages, One Identity
A few days ago I was wandering my favourite section at my favourite bookshop in Singapore - the languages section at Books Kinokuniya at Takashimaya. I came across a small booklet titled Diverse Languages, One Identity, “a joint initiative between the National Institute of Education (NIE) and the National Library Board.
As you can see, the booklet covers basic conversations in the four official languages of Singapore: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The blurb on the back adds, “This booklet aims to create an awareness of the spoken mother tongue among students and teachers and serves as a good platform to build understanding and respect among the various races in Singapore.”
Sep 16 2010
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Smashing the ceremonial champagne bottle
It’s back to the world of blogging for me, as I spend two weeks of limbo in Singapore waiting my visas to Nepal and India to be processed. With the MA in Linguistics behind me, I suppose it’s time for another adventure.
This next trip starts with three weeks in Kathmandu, followed by two weeks of trekking in the Khumbu region around Everest. I’ll be flying to India in early November, where I plan to be in the North east from early November to late January 2011. I’ve never been to Nepal, and I only spent a few weeks in NE India in early 2009. (My last memory of Nagaland was getting poisoned by my breakfast omelette at the Hotel Japfü before having to catch a -thankfully quick- train from Dimapur to Diphu that same day.)
I’m interested in work that’s happening in Nepal on endangered languages and looking at what can be done in NE India, which in theory is the main motivation for the blog. Of course, there’ll be the odd hellish travel story (with details slightly embellished) and tales of language learning difficulties.
Looking forward to learning some Nepali over the next weeks!
