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!

Thank you, Britain!

"Thank you, Mr Lee" has been the most spoken and written phrase this past week (23-29 March 2015). Mr Lee Kuan Yew was a giant of a man. Much has been said about him publicly and privately. He was truly great inside and out.

So many Singaporeans displayed this week what Mr Lee had built over 50 years of independence. Around 479,500 people stood patiently in line for hours and hours (the longest being 10 hours) to pay their last respects to our Founding Father. I waited 4.5 hours. Countless volunteers and uniformed personnel worked tirelessly and cheerfully to make sure that order prevailed and people were well fed and hydrated. We picked up trash after ourselves, chatted with strangers, braved the sun and the rain, with nary a contrary word. Mr Lee, our father, taught us all this. And he has taught us well.

Yet, as I reflected on this, I realised that we Singaporeans really need to say, "Thank you, Britain" for teaching Mr and Mrs Lee how to be civil and care for the disadvantaged and marginalised. Both Mr and Mrs Lee studied at English schools (as opposed to Chinese schools of the day). They both furthered their education at prestigious colleges in Britain. Their two sons also studied there. It was in Britain that Mr Lee saw how the British treated everyone fairly. Injustice was not tolerated. Standing in line, or queuing, is what Britishers do best.

If you look not too far back in the news, you will have noticed that when the students in Hong Kong protested against China in 2014, they set the gold standard for civil protest. They sat quietly on the streets, many with school work in hand, ate and drank and cleaned up after themselves. Volunteers cheerfully gave out food and drink and collected trash.

From where did they learn civil behaviour? Britain.

Both Hong Kong and Singapore share the same heritage as former British colonies. The British gave us an English education, taught us manners and instilled in us a sense of law and order. Yes, Hong Kong and Singapore have a majority Chinese population. So what? British influence prevails in society, while Chinese values are drilled in us at home. We have become better persons because of the two cultures instilled in us.

So, while the world says, "Thank you, Mr Lee" for all that you have done for Singapore, I want to add "Thank you, Britain" for teaching Mr and Mrs Lee what it means to have the milk of human kindness and how to behave in civil society.

We owe you much. Thank you.

#rememberingleekuanyew

Mr Lee Kuan Yew and bilingualism in Singapore

On 23 March 2015 at 0318H, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, founding father of Singapore and the nation's longest-serving Prime Minister, passed away at the age of 91. The country is observing seven days of mourning for this giant of a man.

One of the policies that Mr Lee implemented was bilingual education. All basic education was conducted in English, and every child from the day he entered school had to learn his mother tongue i.e. Chinese students learned Mandarin, Malay students learned Malay, and Indian students learned Tamil.

For many of us, especially those from English-speaking homes, learning a second language, namely Mandarin, was a nightmare. Myself included. Apart from weekly lessons in school, we never heard Mandarin or had any opportunity to use the language. Tuition in Mandarin was not an option for us, but oh, how I hated the lessons! My classmate vividly remembers me reading an English storybook hidden inside my Chinese textbook during Chinese class, a fact that I have long since forgotten.

Learning Mandarin was to pass the exams with a decent grade so that I could get into a local university. Barely scraping by was more like it for me. I wrote essays using the English grammatical structure and thought pattern. Idioms and proverbs did not exist in my vocabulary. I was an anglophile.

Working in a predominantly Chinese-speaking office many years after leaving school was a culture shock. Not only did I now have to communicate in simple English to be understood, I had to read the Chinese newspapers daily as part of my job! This is where I learned to match the photos in the English and Chinese newspapers, then figure out the headline. It was torture.

Then I switched jobs to an English-speaking office environment. I had a colleague who took on the job of reading the Chinese newspapers. She went to a very good bilingual primary school. When we had to host visitors from China, she took the lead. We learned all the technical terms and facts and figures, and managed to do a fairly good job of leading tours in Mandarin. When I needed to do a television interview in Mandarin, she wrote the script and I rattled it off in front of the camera. When the interview was broadcast, she said I sounded just like her, until she realised that she had written the script for me!

Fast forward to today. Many of my friends praise me for my linguistic ability. While English is and will probably always be, my most proficient language, I can operate decently in four other languages. I put in the effort to learn how to speak, read and write each of those languages so that I would have a complete picture, rather than only learning to speak. I am still on the learning journey.

In honour of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his bilingual education policy, may I say "thank you from the bottom of my heart" for forcing me to get on the bilingual road. I would not be here today if not for you.

Mr Lee, rest in peace. Rest assured that generations of Singapore-educated people will carry on the torch for bilingual education into the future.

Thank you, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. You will be missed.



#rememberingleekuanyew
(Photo credit: Ministry of Education, Singapore)