How the language you speak changes your view of the world

How the language you speak changes your view of the world

Have a read and start learning a language today!

Mangled pronunciations

Very often, one language will borrow a word from another until it becomes part of the everyday language. After many (mis)pronunciations in the new language, it becomes unrecognisable from the original.

A good example would be: croissant (a flaky, buttery French pastry that is popular around the world). In Japanese, a croissant is known as クロワッサン (pronounced "kurowassan"). The only way we can tell it is a borrowed word is in the writing. The use of Katakana tells me that this is not a native Japanese word. (Katakana is used when writing foreign words in Japanese text.)

When I was studying second year Japanese, I had a Frenchman in my class. When the teacher was talking about "kurowassan" in the lesson, none of us understood what she was talking about. After several more descriptions, a few of us went, "Oh! Croissant!" The teacher replied, "Hai, kurowassan desu." ("Yes, it is croissant.") Our French classmate almost fell off the chair! He felt as though the Japanese had completely violated and destroyed his language! He left the class that day rather disgusted at this new discovery.

My Filipino friend +Lloyd Estrada studied Spanish in Costa Rica. One day, he wore a t-shirt with the word "tunais" printed on it, to class. His Spanish teacher was not too happy when she saw this. "This is because, over the years, the English expression "too nice" evolved into "tuanis" in their country!" Today, "tunais" in Costa Rica may mean excellent, great, or nice. Well, borrow a word here and there and very soon, we may all be speaking only one language around the world!

Here's to speaking "Globish" or bad English!

Share your excitement!

How do you express excitement or joy? The body language is pretty much the same across cultures and languages. However, the words or sounds we express could be different. Here's some words that I have heard of or used before:

Hurrah!
Hurray!
Yay!
Yahoo!
Woohoo!
Yehey!
Cheers!
太棒了！
Asssikk!
Mantap!
Luar biasa!
ល្អណាស់

No matter what language you may use to express joy, everyone around you will know it at once. Joy is a universal feeling.

Let's be joyful today!

Food descriptions

Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, has a new building that will be open soon. It is designed such that all the classrooms are round (instead of square or rectangular in shape), to facilitate discussion among students and their lecturers. In fact, the students will go online to read the lecture on their own time. Class time is meant solely for discussion of the week's lesson.

While the building has yet to have an official name (as of March 2015), it has been nicknamed the "dimsum baskets" building (pictured above). If you have ever seen pictures of steaming hot dimsum (点心) being served in bamboo baskets stacked up, you will get the idea.

When the design of The Esplanade (pictured on top right) performing arts venue was first released, many criticised it, saying it was ugly. However, very soon, the description that became most popular (and has stuck since) was "the durian". Today, bus and taxi drivers may not know "Esplanade", but if you tell them "The Durian", they know exactly where that is. (To the uninformed, durian (pictured on bottom right) is a fruit with a hard, spiky shell. It "smells like hell but tastes like heaven".)

This got me thinking about Singaporeans' obsession with food. We are known to be a nation of foodies. While eating breakfast, we are discussing what to eat for lunch and dinner, where to go for the best dish, how fresh the ingredients are, what special spices or herbs go into the dish, etc, etc. When we visit an aquarium, we do not simply admire the beauty of the fish in terms of colour or shape, but rather wonder how the fish would taste when cooked with some special combination of spices. Needless to say, we like our food!

In short, we Singaporeans tend to view quite a few things around us with "food-coloured" lenses. In the fast-paced life that we lead, we all need something to give us a break and brighten our day.

Happy eating!

Kid + nap = ???

Kid = child
Nap = a short sleep
Why does kidnapper is completely different?
Shouldn't be just "a person that help a child to get a short sleep?
#Englishiscomplicate

Credit: Raksmey Chamreun, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The English may not be perfect, but I have to agree with the logic, or lack of logic in the English language.

Very proud of my former students. They are thinking for themselves and having very good ideas.

Keep up the good work!