Se-d-ia in UK

Standstill.

That's the word I have been hearing from the long-timers in Scotland. UK comes to a standstill in this snow. Coming from a country whose people laughed at themselves for being kiasu and kiasi, the only thing that can be said about the current situation is "they were not well-prepared". Guess, that's what 居安思危、未雨绸缪 really means. Little red dot was caught off-guard over some other matter two years ago but things with a forecast, I guess we have been trained from young to plan and be kiasu kiasi, to over plan.

I missed my flight to Barcelon 15 min before boarding. Ouch!
I couldn't believe my calmness when I heard the list on the cancelled flights at 5pm.
The people in Edinburgh airport were all so calm and cool. Maybe they have helped the situation a little. Or maybe I had never believed that I was going to take off unless it really happens.
It had started to snow again at 4.30pm and I had a bad feeling by then.

And so, we put on our backpacks and headed for Mylnes' Court again.
Roommates and friends were back in MC waiting for us and we make merry in this misery.
We had a great party in the dining hall, with whatever food left in the fridge. It was warm in the room and I chatted with friends back home. I guess that's a great consolation :)

As for the flight?

There's no more seats available on flights to Barcelona so I won't be seeing Gaudi's work nor Barcelona FC.  We've spent a night rescheduling and in 4 hours' time, we will be trying to fly to Malaga, a place which I just knew of in the airport.

I was sitting at the gate headed for Malaga that day, because it felt less miserable than the one at the end for Barcelona. Such an irony!

  

12月17日

我可能已经有很多年的12月17日没有在家里过了，今年也不例外。刚看了旧博客，发现从来没有在这一天写过文章，后来想想，那是因为我一般都在路上。可能是和朋友，近两年是和家人。

我记得的第一个12月17日是1994年，我们赢得大马金杯的时候。大马金杯不算什么，但是我总是隐隐约约地感觉到，那一年新加坡确实是存在的。不管是不是球迷的人都在讨论着，在国家体育场看球赛时，你会和陌生人说话，为同一个球呐喊。那一年，体育版上常看到的一个字眼是马来词semangat--精神/spirit。那不只是球队内的semangat,还是球迷/国人间的一种semangat。岛国，已经很久没有一起为一件事疯狂了。

98年的12月17日，家里办丧事。

之后，不需要看日历记得的就是05年的12月17日了。

今年的12月17日，我还是在外面过。正在写作业。这一年来的日记+博客产量很少，纸本的日记根本不存在。不知道以后会不会后悔。但是也许我在尽量减少自己多愁善感，写些美丽的哀愁的文字吧，所以这个新博客记录的较多是学习上的感想。

这又是一篇不知是什么的日记吧。继续在严冬中写作业吧。

Technology and Language

World Oral Literature Project, based at the University of Cambridge. Database of Endangered Languages

The site is amazing.

No time for thoughts during crucial assignment time. - will be back .

Someone's thoughts about study abroad

What someone said about study abroad.

我很享受去小地方旅游，却从来没有长时间在小地方呆过（除了岛国以外）。Uttaranchal 的 Shishya school 算不算？突然想到maruchan跑去南非学英语的同时，和她的host family住了一年，之后又跑去彭湖复习汉语，在小地方浸濡了3个月的经历。

回头想想，以前带留学生的时候，帮他们制造了什么机会？以后如果还有机会带留学生的话，又可以怎么样做得更好?

新店开张

啊，不是我当起老板来了。而是侄儿和他老豆联手设立父子档博客，所以我给他们留了张“开张大吉”的帖子。

那，为什么说设立博客就像是新店开张呢？
因为对我而言，两者都一样，是要用心经营的。

写博客-----用心-----经营-----点心店

啊，关点心店什么事？

如果说写篇日记，就算文字不太漂亮，但是写的过程中总得要整理一下想法，想想到底要写些什么事，说些什么话，分享哪些照片。。。那就是=用心+ 经营。

开间店，做生意（这里就以“炖蛋甜点店”为例子吧），也是需要用心经营的。
从开店前的装修工作，店内家具要怎么摆设、给顾客用什么款式的餐具、餐牌上要卖哪些甜点、菜单要怎么设计、甜点要用哪些材料。。。哇，一箩筐的准备工作，就跟开设博客时为自己的博客选桌面、想名字调颜色的过程一样，都是用心+ 经营。

准备好后，开始做第一桩生意，写第一篇文章。之后就是，什么时候写第二篇啊？当然，写日记比做生意容易一点，是比较个人的事。不过我从小学被老师逼着写日记，到后来中学看东运会时自发写体育日记，再来就是不知道从什么时候开始，在床头放一本日记簿，心情不好的时候就写一下，然后去睡觉。。。，还有大大小小的旅游日记，中间不知道换了多少本日记簿。

有些，因为水淹金山寺地被写满了，所以----换。
有些，因为旅途已经结束了，虽然还空着大半本，但是还是决定----换。
还有几本，因为中间有一段时间太忙了、太懒了、结果积了厚厚的一层灰！！当然也要换！

我写过的博客也一样。一个阶段过去了，看着被荒废的版面，实在经营不下去了，就决定重新开始经营另外一个。

反正，写字嘛，不管是一句话，还是一行字，都是用心+经营的：）

祝你们父子俩合作愉快哦！

2011

I rarely make New Year resolutions because usually my plans are longer ones which I keep in my heart. I used to have yearly travel plans, then somewhere along in time, I learnt to be spontaneous and take things as they come. However, by coming to Edinburgh for my masters, I have embarked on one of the last goal which I've set for myself since my uni days. And now, I sit here thinking (especially with apple's constant reminding recently) , "What's next?"

Besides knowing that I will be going back to my pay check in Sept 2011, I have pretty done most things which I would die for. I have probably given up one wish of teaching in Indonesia. So what's next?

I guess, I will just try to be human again, and try to make a "humble" 2011 new year resolution.

Travel   
1. Scandinavian capitals. Central, & Eastern Europe. Even if it is just train city hopping. Sorry but western europe can really wait. And I don't have time for detail trips like what I used to do for the past ten years.

2. Morocco. Erm, I just wanna step on Africa land.

3. Manchester. cos it is Manchester United's territory!

4. Wales. cos it is Ryan Giggs' homeland.

Seriously, given the intensity of my course, and the upsetting fact that I still have lessons every single weekday next semester, I am not sure if i can accomplish this.

Knowledge

1. Besides what I am reading in my course, this includes all the many other things in the world. I found peace for reading here, so I need to create the time for it. Time for reading and asking questions and talking. I realised, I am really losing it ---the ability to ask questions.

Family and friends

Keep up the contact, esp people who are not on facebook.
More Postcards. We can't survive just on the digital touch.

I don't know what else to write already. This shows that I really do not have a habit of writing resolutions.

这个令英国人措手不及的雪天-------打油诗一首

十一月的初雪，惊醒了昏睡的古城

冻坏了崭新的车子，压坏了节庆的帐篷

 一夜的暴雪让早晨的天空特别灰涩

连圣诞老人都瞪大了眼说：“莫非我们也要进入这个月的日历册？”

大雪浇灭不了示威者的热情

乔治广场更是挑起了我们打雪仗的激情

教授被困在三十里外的休闲别墅

所以我们决定抛开课本到城堡庆祝秋天的结束

爱丁堡的圣狗在雪中坚守岗位

古垒上的枪炮依然毫不惧畏

石狮瞪着旅客守着圣殿

亚瑟宝座披着白衫映着阳光

鹅毛飘雪逗起成年的童真

蓝天白云欺骗了零下的温度

有道是：雪落堪玩直须玩，莫待雪化空惋惜！

先贤休谟點首道是！

严以待己，宽以待人

冷静后，提醒自己要坚持自己的思维方式----严以待己，宽以待人。

说自己是岛国教育制度特产出来的multi-tasking工作狂是有道理的。
即使对学术成绩很一般的学生，我们也会鼓励他们要相信人类在压力中会有进步。学习的道路上，不仅是为了不顾一切地追求特优的成绩，而且也是为了磨练自己抗压和时间管理的能力。至少，我的老师以前对我这么说。而我成了老师后，我也这样对我的学生说。

还记得卢汉霖老师那一年教我们如何应对一天3门测验、一周n项测验的疯狂日子时说的话：“给你多一个月的时间也不够你准备，因为每天都有新的事要做。当你只有三天的时间，你就要学会用三天的时间复习；当你只有三个小时的时间，那你只好用三个小时的方式去看书。”当时觉得他在唬我们，不过也照着做了，因为实在没有其他办法。而这样看待现实的方式，让我们很多人都成了应对岛国高压环境的能手。也许，岛国教育制度诸多不完美中的一个特点就是，培养出了一代代应付过各种“精神折磨”的岛民。

记得那一年，我给几班学生讲卢老师的这方宝典时，他们有些人也觉得我是在胡扯的。但是，后来我加了一段话，让他们一些人觉得很受用----“所以，我要说的是，你不懂的，就赶紧问。不要等到考试快到的时候，慌张得哭着找老师。考试嘛，到时连哭的时间都是奢侈的。时间不够了，还哭？！当然是看完书去睡觉，睡醒了再看。疯狂考试后，记得疯狂享受。”用夸张一点的语气保重一般的“逆耳忠言”，一般都能把初中生逗乐的。之后，谁愿意接纳意见，就是他们自己的事了。

哈，好像真的该回学校了。

Our Bilingual Education 40 years on

Was researching on language education and came across some old information, which was really interesting to read about 40 years later. I don't think I have seen it in the discourse on our bilingual education in recent times, even though old sources are often quoted. Maybe it's because this is dated in the years of transition?

1972. That's the time when they were still experimenting the change in medium of instruction. My dad had just graduated from high school, a year later than his peers, as he didn't make it through the first year he transferred to a full English medium program. Ironically, the switch was made under the recommendation of his teacher, who felt that the top student in the Chinese medium stream should be able to take handle it within a year and sit for his graduation examinations.

Anyway, that's another story. Here's the quote from a 2005 journal article. The writer was using it to explain the background of bilingual education in Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister and currently Senior Minister, makes this clear (The Mirror 20 November 1972):

(1) When I speak of bilingualism, I do not mean just the facility of speaking two languages. It is more basic than that, first we understand ourselves . . . then the facility of the English language gives us access to the science and technology of the West. It also provides a convenient common ground on which . . .everybody competes in a neutral medium.

With the language [mother tongue: LW] go the fables and proverbs. It is the learning of a whole value system, a whole philosophy of life, that can maintain the fabric of our society intact, in spite of exposure to all the current madnesses around the world.

I remember when I was in Primary school, I was really looking forward to study option modules like Buddhism and Confucianism in school. Then when it was my turn to go to secondary school, Religious Studies were no longer part of the curriculum. Of course, the nation had some concerns about the effects of the implementation of these courses. Then, we still had a lot of fables and proverbs in our classes. As time goes by, there was feeling that imparting of values and philosophy of life has taken on a different form in our education system. Languages seem to be reduced to merely vehicles of information. Then we seem to have some problems with our language education and discussion were focused on how best to improve the teaching of English and mother tongues. In the discourse, the amount devoted to the teaching of culture and values were not aplenty.

Eventually, we have bi-cultural programmes in some schools. Then what about the other schools in the mainstream system? How should we maintain the fabric of our society? 2 horrid teen murder incidents recently sparked concerns about the values of our youth. Of course, not all our youth are inclined to such behaviour. 

It is really interesting to review some speeches from long ago. How has the discourse of a person changed over time? How has our concern of certain matters evolved over 40 years?  

Semantics in The Importance of Being Earnest

As seen from the title, this isn't going to be a typical show review. It is probably an amazement for myself, that I have not read the script of this famous play before.

Nonetheless, that being so, it called for an even greater surprise, as I analysed how Oscar Wilde actually constructed his play with a grand assembly of lines which exploited the use of implicatures. It was semantics at work! A quick glance of the lines in the first act would throw up numerous examples of how the Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner, as defined in Grice's Logic and Conversation, were being flouted to express the true meaning of the characters' words.

Such as:

Algernon. Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire?
Jack. Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.
Algernon. How immensely you must amuse them! [Goes over and takes sandwich.] ......

Such is the beauty of natural language and the ability of human beings to exploit the figures of speech, that this play continues to be such a classic a hundred years on. Well, it sounds crazy to be thinking about semantics while watching a play but I simply can't help thinking about it, since our semantics group had such a vibrant discussion about it this afternoon!

Read this morning

The point of view of the present study is that one cannot understand the development of a language change apart from the social life of the community in which it occurs. Or to put it another way, social pressures are continually operating upon language, not from some remote points in the past, but as an immanent social force acting in the living present. ( Labov, 1963)

(Half) A Life Story and the Evolution of Language

It's like one of those days in China, where someone whom you catch a glimpse of every few days is one of the most important person in that field of studies in the world.

Went for a Lang Soc talk by Prof Jim Hurford without knowing who he is. (Opps!) But it was all fun again and I could see how the undergrads would really enjoy the Prof's lectures.

Prof Jim titled his story "Lucky Jim", after a supposedly famous novel, and used his life story as the parallel outline of the general linguistics field , the emergence of Evolution of Language as a field of studies and how the linguistics field has evolved in the last 45 years.

To demonstrate how lovely a lecturer he was, here's 2 pictures of what he did as an opener.

Prof Jim demonstrating how lectures were carried out in the past. He asked students to imagine lecturers writing all the logic statements in semantics line by line while they lecture. And how they had to copy furiously the spoken words from 2 hour lectures, in those days without any copier device.  

Prof Jim demonstrates how technology advanced and we moved into the OHP times.

Of course, he moved on to a ppt presentation later on. ( and oh, those chalkboards in this LT are controlled by automation buttons, so that you can lever them up all the way) . He told of days when they had no audio recording devices and all that you bring to the research field site to record the sounds of languages are your ears and your mouth, which were well-sync with the other research team members using Daniel Jones' Vowel Cardinal system, and the pen and paper for transcription...

I love it the way he told his story, as if he was narrating a folklore to his grandchildren, anecedoting it and drawing moral of the stories at the end of each section. His life was peppered with surprises as he took chances that came along and he made good out of them with some beliefs. Just to share some of his moral of the story here:

1. Learn all you can from other's work
2. Read widely outside your own subject and try to make connection
3. Teaching can interact productively with research
4. Don't always resist being pushed into things by other people. It can turn out well.

The last line seems to be speaking to me. I had heeded this kind of advice once and it led me to Edinburgh eventually, reading this subject, instead of translation. The second advice also serves as a good reminder for me, that while being out here for a year, I should do all the things which I didn't have time for back home.

More thoughts

If the last 2 posts have seem a little contradictory, they are in fact not. As said, I applaud the sociolinguists view of recognising the evolutionary nature of languages and thus the existence of varieties of languages. At the same time, because mankind has decided, with his ability to dwell deep into philosophical issues, to come up with Language Standards, therefore, the evolution of language and language varieties has become a more complicated issue than ever. The last post was about the usage of Chinese in Singapore and how certain translations (at this moment, it is restricted to nouns) have been replaced with some other places' standard overnight (or over a few days) in the media. I am not sure if I am right to view it in this way, but some part of the variety of Chinese that has been in existence in Singapore for as long as I have been reading and watching the news ( I haven't had time to do a research on terminology usage in our media, so I could only based it on my own experience) has been altered within a few days. Or perhaps, it is an attempt to alter some parts of our own variety. Now, that said, our variety of Chinese doesn't differ that much from the adopted standard. However, we have been keeping our localised terms and certain ways of expressions, which are unique to us, and are not ungrammatical. For this issue, I am talking about the written language.

In the case of the post about HK English and Singapore English, the case study used in the lecture was in fact about the written language too (HK English). However, probably in most situations, Singlish as Singaporeans understand it, is about the spoken language and is a creole based on a mixture of a few languages. Hence, there is a fundamental difference between the two issues.

Nonetheless, in both cases, I celebrate the recognition of variation and varieties.

Therefore, in the case of the Chinese used in media, I thought we should be more aware and proud of our grammatically correct local variety, since it is what most of the population who do understand Chinese have been using. In sociolinguistics view, it is the people who uses the language in that local context that bring about the variation over time. In my prof's book, this evolution has to do with identity building as well.

In the case of Singapore English, grammatically correct but varied use of the language should probably be accepted, as suggested by prof. So, it is probably fine to start a sentence with the word "Besides", instead of "Furthermore" or "Moreover".  However, in his case study, there were actually glaring grammatical errors which has been analysed as a feature of HK English, and suggested to be accepted as a variety. Perhaps, it is because HK English is not that complicated a creole or variety after all ? Since sociolinguists tend to examine languages in its spoken form, it seems pretty confusing to use the same yardstick on both spoken and written, creoles and parent languages. Unless we start to teach creoles in school ?

In conclusion, I do celebrate the unique heritage of the island I live on , and am proud of the varieties which have emerged in spite of our short history.        

               

翻译，统一翻译的若干问题。。。A Problem of Translation or Was it Transliteration?

来爱丁堡以前，发生了一件让我一直耿耿于怀的事。去年纽西兰之旅呆了3天的基督城，在一场7级地震后，突然不见了。随后，纽西兰也遭了殃，变成了新大陆，成了“新西兰”。问了两名算是知情的朋友，才发现尽管我们在很短的时间里囊括了很多的第一名，但我们还是原来那一个需要依附在他人认同上的小红点。

原本忙于学习，渐渐忘了此事。没想到近日课上讨论的课题、参与的讲座都涉及到了“语言与身份认同”的问题。再加上出国前和友人揣测，以后报道翁山淑枝的新闻时，是不是也需要跟着他人的标准把她称为“昂山素季”一事竟然很吊诡地发生了却没实现——她依然还是我们熟悉的“翁山淑枝”，这让我实在觉得既庆幸又迷惑。

上网找了一下，发现有人早已把此事写成文章。可能当天我刚好动身前来爱丁堡，所以一直没看到。
反正，在这里与大家分享吧：）

http://luochaoster.blog.hexun.com/56532979_d.html


后续：再让诸君想想，如果Christchurch是按照音译（或者可能是所谓的Transliteration转写法）被译成了“克莱斯特彻奇”，Mahathir “马哈迪”成了“马哈迪尔”，那为什么同一拨人翻译New Zealand 用的则是音译兼意译的“新西兰”呢？ ）

The Linguists' View of Languages is really different.

I learnt something in my lecture on Thursday afternoon. I have been reading diligently and have been applauding the linguists' view that there are no "good" or "bad" languages, that standard languages are man-made prototypes. I took a good two weeks to tune myself to the truth and the notion that spoken language existed long before the written, and no matter how long the chinese writing system has been in place, when one goes back to the history, the fact remains that in a time not so long ago, the tongues under the big umbrella of  the Chinese language family were really separate tongues. 想一想，秦始皇统一中原之前，谁都不是一家的？

I should have seen it coming then but it still hit me real hard when the proposition was presented in class. My Prof was using the case of HK English as an example to discuss the notion of World Englishes and language varieties.

It's a wonder...in the Linguistis' view of World Englishes, when grammatical mistakes are systematic enough, they are classified as a variety of English. I know we usually "discuss something", not "discuss about something" ; my teacher taught me long ago that it is "a bowl of noodles" not "a bowl of noodle". That was listed as a trait of HK English. I will probably accept "discuss about something" , but what about "have a close look TO Amah Rock", " multilingualism is need for a country" ? We have to draw the line somewhere, don't we?

On a facebook discussion later on, E reminded me that HK English and Singapore English are recognised as creoles, not standard languages. It was a good reminder. Perhaps that was why i thought that the Prof pushed it a bit too far in the lecture, when he asked those of us who teach, if we would mark the errors in the HK article wrong, or just leave it there and mark for content instead.

Some nodded their heads like me, while others shook theirs.

If one reads the grammar part of the wikipedia entries for HK English and Singapore English, one would easily understand my discomfort as a teacher. Prof said when he was in HK, he had to make some adjustment and decide that marking for content in his top HK students' assignments is more important. I agree with that. However, he didn't quantify the question he posted us and he didn't really take a stand when I posed the question of where to draw the line? I proposed that the ideology of just marking for content in the university is totally plausible but it may not be so for teachers teaching secondary and primary school kids.  Perhaps, I should have cited the example of how English teachers in Singapore uses a focused method of marking for either content or language only for some of the written assignments. Nonetheless, I didn't want to answer my own question, as I really wanted further views from Prof, and I wasn't sure if this methodology was applied in most of Singapore schools. Anyway, I did a bit of research when I was back and I really can't imagine Prof wanting to mark essays from Singapore students, written with that kind of grammar cited in the wiki page above.  

Certainly, I do understand that he was coming from a sociolinguist point of view that language varieties should be recognised as that was how languages evolved and how the Romance languages broke away from Latin. As a matter of fact, I rememberd clearly that afternoon in Beida, when my Prof in China told me that is nothing wrong with my sense of the language when I feel that the "蛮”in "满/蛮好的"could also be used to express negative terms, though older corpus showed that it is usually used with positive terms. She explained that language is always evolving and if in Singapore's context, we do say "蛮差的"， "蛮糟的"，then we can't say that it is wrong, because language usage is really 约定俗成, ie when things becomes a convention, it would eventually be deemed as acceptable. (a search online today, will probably show that the use of "蛮”has indeed evolved! ) 

In addition, it should be clarified that the examples given on the wiki page for Singapore English is actually more of Singlish. The linguists studies on Singapore English are more of what one gets from the HK English page, where we differ in our use of prepositions, articles etc. Nonetheless, I can't imagine how would he react if I try to submit my essay in overt Singapore English. Obviously, I ain't going to risk my marks. Never die before arh?  

The Power of Speaking Their Language

This semester was spent reading about language and how human beings use language to mark their identities, to use it to mark the in-group and out-groups and how language acts as a double-edged sword, giving people the legitimacy to unite as a nation or to dispell those who didn't speak the same tongue.

Obama's speech at the University of Indonesia was scripted with bits and pieces of Bahasa Indonesia. And from the video, it was clear how his near perfect pronunciation of that few Bahasa Indonesian won over his audience. Of course, his personal childhood ties with Jarkarta in the 1960s probably brought him some fans among his audience, explaining the wide cheers. Nonetheless, the decision to script his speech with Bahasa Indonesian, though it's probably not difficult to recall all these lexical terms, was a strategy, precisely due to the fact that it is all too known the kind of power language can bring about. In this case, it is clearly an attempt to show that the distance between us is not that great. (For a linguist's take on his speech, check out the language log article.)

Such is the power of language, that language learning, and foreign language learning, even if it is just at the conversational level, should really be an important part of our education. If not, we will simply lose out.

The Value of Language(s) Education

Just came across this interesting article amidst a very busy week (and more busy weeks awaits). The Chronicle Review published an article "The World Beyond Reach"   , questioning the logic and appropriateness of cutting advanced foreign language courses in the universities, as a means to minimize spendings. 

It has been 2 months since I re-immerse myself into the world of languages. People around me generally speaks and write 3 -4 languages. Sometimes, I get new friends who tries to speak to each other in classical Latin and Greek, or Japanese and Korean which they have learnt off books. And I have to remind myself that, I am in the linguistics school after all. I have not found the same enthuse in myself to try my hands at new languages yet, after failed attempts to master Japanese and Indonesian 10 years ago. But at least, it was really fun learning new languages and the experience helps me in completing my current readings. I could probably afford to try another sure to fail attempt at Russian or Spanish, I would love to, but I simply could not afford the time now. How pragmatic can one get?! As pragmatic as the university mentioned in the article?

I definitely see the value in learning new languages, at a conversational level. Perhaps I have been stuck too long in a system which requires me to be at my best for everything, such that efforts which would never lead to mastery are sometimes deemed as ineffective use of time. I seek to sit on both ends of the pole, where I would eventually be able to say that I am really good at something, while remembering that being able to try out everything at hands is a fortune in itself. So perhaps, I should really start learning my Russian characters, despite the busy schedule, just to get things going a bit!   

So is he ready to play for the country? We don't know!

Prof Geoffrey K. Pullum has this sense of humour which tickles and amuses to an amazing satire effect, be it in his lectures, speeches or writings. And I discovered 2 weeks ago that he was actually part of a rock band before he went to university for his degrees. No wonder his Linguistics students adore him to the core.  Here's another witty entry about language use. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2725 In my view, I think Wenger simply wasn't sure, hence he chose to use negations to avoid outright commitements in his statements and left us confused.

As I Learn About the Rhotic and Non-Rhotic /r/ in English......

As I sat in the library writing out revision notes for the Phonology test, I made a discovery of this site, courtesy to a Library IS Guide which was left on the study desk by the previous occupier.

Aptly, the first entry shall be about Phonology. It's a link to a interesting application of what I have just read . http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2737

A bit of Africa in Edinburgh

I have to admit I have almost no knowledge about African history and the images of Africa in my mind remains pretty much of the stereotype.
1. News about war, hunger, illness and poverty.
2. The soccer nations and the teams in World Cup every 4 years.
3. Documentary films about African tribes and tribal culture.
4. The wildlife on African lands on the cable channels.

It was an unknown world to me. So it was really out of curiosity and a keen interest in world cinematography that lured me to buy 6 tickets at the Edinburgh African Film Festival.

If last night's premiere movie gave the audience a light-hearted insight into the struggles of a 3-generation African immigrant family in France, and how they learn to deal, as a family, with similar issues which would also arise in any Western or Asia society, then tonight's screening of the 1992 documentary, Africa, I Will Fleece You, is essentially a guide to African's violent history and postcolonialism problems. The film was based on Cameroon's history and according to the director, who hosted a Q&A session after the disturbing film, 18 years on, many issues raised in the film still remains. Interestingly, CIA's World Factbook stated that "Cameroon has generally enjoyed stability", which was definitely not the impression one leaves with after watching the film, which featured precious interviews with elders who had been through the pre-independence days. Perhaps, it was a statement made in comparison to the other African nations?

The most enlightening part of the documentary for me was when the narrative brought the audience back to school to hear the story of the Cameroon writing system. A visionary king from the pre-colonial days had envisioned that for his people to progress further, their oral tradition has to be aided by a writing system. Hence, King Njoya went through several stages to invent a writing system for their language in the beginning of 20th century and started educating his people in their own writing system. (And I've learnt that it's definitely a misconception that the African traditions is a purely oral one.) But history has it that things are not to be. Today, the Cameroon land speaks French and one of the director's lament would be on the lost of the native language(and writing), culture and identity.

The film has definitely opened up a new world of knowledge awaiting my exploration. And, it adds another dimension to my understanding of my Prof lectures on language and identity.

What impact does the writing system has on the concept of what constitutes a language?

I read the following content from one of my Prof's book with keen interest.

" Much to the chagrin of modern linguistics, which treats only the spoken as real language and writing as a secondary indication of speech, the fact is that cultures generally recognise themselves as having 'the same language' so long as they share the same written language, regardless of how much variation there may be in how they speak." - John E.Joseph, Language and Politics, 2006,Pg 28

Joseph states the example of the Arabic speaking world, where Muslims and Christians Arabic mother tongue speakers view the classical written language as the original and correct Arabic, the difference only being Muslims view the written Arabic language with an addition perspective, that of the sacred authority of Koran. Then he continues exemplifying his notion with the example of "the family of Chinese languages".

" More dramatic however is the effect of a non-alphabetic writing system, and particularly the Chinese system of character writing. Chinese characters are logographs, which is to say that each character represents a word. Some characters are basic and cannot be broken down... ... However, despite the inclusion of phonetic elements, the characters do not analyse each word into its component sounds the way alphabetic writing does. The result is that a character such as 然 corresponds to the spoken Mandarin word ran, the Cantonese jin, and the Wu zφ, each pronounced with a different tone in addition to the consonant and vowel differences. Yet speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese and Wu, while fully aware of the divergences and of the fact that they cannot understand one another's speech, are entirely certain that there is one single Chinese word 然 that they are each saying in their particular dialectal way. When asked why they believe this, the proof they cite is usually the existence of the written character, which is the word as far as they are concerned. " (Joseph, 2006)

He contrasts this example with the English 'yes' and German 'ja' and concluded that

"whether different writing systems caused the different ways of thinking about words,or vice versa, is a chicken-and-egg question... ...the Chinese system, by allowing so much more latitude in the visual-sound link, enables belief in a single Chinese language much more robustly than an alphabet does, even for a pair of languages as closely related as English and German. Yet neither determines the cultural beliefs in question......"

He was actually talking about the relationship between language, politics and national identities. He concluded the paragraph citing the case of Taiwan maintaining the traditional writing form as a choice with "political motivations and ramifications", using it as a potent way of performing a distinct national identity.

This isn't any new conclusion for me. What interest me is the contrasts shown in my perception of Chinese as a language and the way modern linguists define a language. This was a point of contention at the beginning of term, as a seminar room of Chinese speaking students had to clarify what constitutes a language in the study of linguistics. By virtue of the way I learn the language in school, and by virtue of various experiences where I was able to clarify my reception of speech with dialect speaking elders or differentiate allophones in the language through the written forms, I had, as exemplified in the text above, view the basis of my language as the written form of the words themselves.

In fact, I had tried to explain to my Kazakh friend that the Chinese language is a totally differnt world and since unification of the written form took place way in B.C times, the modern linguists classification of what constitutes a distinct language may not work well for analysing the Chinese language. The question about "What's the Chinese language like?" was posed by my Kazakh friend as she explained that with the establishment of the new nation, their people work hard to establish the standardised Kazakh language. I didn't really understood what it really meant then, since I reckoned that the Kazakh language has been around for a long time. I had thought that it only meant efforts to revitalise and enhance the vitality of the language, as the Russian language had been widely used during the Soviet years. That was in Week 1 of school. Finally, as term progresses, I realised that things aren't that simple. What intrigues me even more is the choice of representation for this language, as it has been represented by the Latin, Arabic and presently the Cyrillic form. Pardon my poor knowledge in the Philology of world languages but this was definitely unraveling for me. 

In retrospect, the most intriguing question in my mind now is, then how important is the writing system in the Chinese language? To me, the writing system for the Chinese language probably has a higher weightage than its counterparts in other languages. This is all too familiar as I recall students who can speak Chinese but can't really write asking the teacher innocently " 为什么'中间'的‘中’means 'middle',可是zhongdian 的'zhong; means 'the end'?  As some foreign modern linguistics continue to fret over the fact that Chinese is not going to be abandon its "complicated" writing system and romanise the language anytime soon, enthused Chinese foreign language learners would probably get an introduction to the Chinese written language that looks like this. Now my question is, by teaching students only the spoken form and the typed-input form of the language, how will this change the way we cognize the language?    

And to end this off, I found an interesting link about the Vietnamese language.

我在爱城看的第一部电影！

来爱城的第一周，我和同学饭后随处乱逛的时候，发现了爱丁堡的一颗宝石——独立电影院Filmhouse. 精彩的节目表让我想到了北大东门外那个平房里那一间卖很多独立电影影碟的“镇宇”小店。

这周，终于在爱城的第一部电影——Made In Dagenham （达格南制造）。这部BBC Film注资拍摄的英国本土电影讲述的是60年代的一次历史事件。故事虽然是经改编的，不过却真实地反映了女性在社会中的不平等待遇。一群工厂女工为了争取工资平等待遇，间接推动了英国甚至是世界工业国家实施平等工资法令。故事虽然把这群女工的罢工和宣导行动所带来的效应给夸大了，但是看到电影结局时，我不禁想到了刚过世的柯玉芝女士在争取岛国女性拥有平等待遇中作出的贡献。而昨天，刚好和表姐在脸书上稍微讨论了这个问题。今天，我们好不容易争取到男女平等工资（其实，认真想想，这也不尽然），但是我们的社会在公平对待职业女性，尤其是拥有家庭的职业妇女时，不一定是公平的。一个家庭，当小孩儿需要照顾时，我们的男士普遍上还是认为作出牺牲的应该是女性，尽管女方可能在职业中有更好的发展。

其实，我不是什么女权注意者。我出世的时候已经视这些为理所当然的。不过，身旁的例子，甚至是西方社会报章的报道都显示，40年后的今天，我们的进步其实也就只有那么多。法令通过了，但是老板不一定买法令的账。有些老板，认定职业妇女是无法同时百分百地投入家庭和事业的。岛国近日不断讨论雇主无故解雇怀孕妇女的问题，我原以为这类问题早已经获得解决了，但是显然的，在经济低靡时，公司相竞节约开支的时候，还是有不少雇主把怀孕妇女的产假看作是一种奢侈的。虽然这不是惟一的原因，但是也难怪我们的出生率这么低。

Made In Dagenham 的影评就提到了现实中，男女工资还是大有差别的。其中的原因当然非常复杂。不过，影片中有个角色非常有意思。那名剑桥历史系毕业的一等荣誉生Lisa，因为看到女工Rita带领的工潮新闻而大为震撼， 不禁跑去平民小区找Rita，鼓励她一定要继续为女性们奋斗到底。她义愤填膺地告诉Rita," 你知道我是谁吗？我是剑桥历史系最优秀的学生。但是我的丈夫把我当作白痴！”( 这只是我大约的翻译。电影中有一场戏很有技巧地透露了这一点。）我又想到，其实我们要的不只是工资平等，我们要的更是尊重。世界各地的文化不尽相同，但是各地职业女性在兼顾事业和家庭时，往往是先作出职业牺牲的那一方。但是在“退居幕后”的同时，最终要的那一份尊重，而不是一种“理所当然”的忽视。

The Lure of Learning

This place is cool. There's always new discoveries and new things to learn about. I read with excitement this news. New languages are being discovered (or uncoverered) by the linguists.  Could I say that a year is defnitely not enough ?

The Scots and their Capital!

As I listen to the live debate on BBC Radio Scotland, where the panel speculate and debate about the possible recommendations in the upcoming government spending review and lay out their views on UK's biggest budget cuts since Thatcher's days, I shall pen an entry on this beautiful city they call Edinburgh.

It's been a month since I arrived in this place which they still call "a small town". So, besides the weather, the castles and the proud Scots, what are some of the other little things which spell Edinburgh?

1. The Coffee Places

With J.K Rowling claiming her fame from writing the Harry Potter series in the cafes in Edinburgh, one simply couldn't miss out on the numerous coffee places in this city.

It is always great to have a good cup of cappuccino and watch time pass by. It's just that I have not had the luxury to do the latter yet.

2. The Green Recycling Drive

This city is big on recycling. We have to sort food wastes from the reclyable materials, just as people do in Japan. Besides making it convenient for people to dump their recylable wastes into the various colour bins, supermarkets play their part by producing strong and big recycled plastic bags. One just need to spend 9p on the first big bag and you are on your way to a lifetime of free big bag, as you could exchange the old one for a new one when it gets completely worn out.

I wouldn't say that all Edinburgh dwellers are catching on this big bag idea but it has definitely changed my shopping habits at supermarkets. I have packed one in each of my handbags here and given my roommate one too, so that our flat won't be flooded with plastic bags from grocery shopping. I thought the bag exchange idea is really a cool idea to try, since we are producing far too many non-woven bags on our little island (I thought we are practically drowning in these bags) and making people pay that extra 10 cents or giving that 10 cents rebate on our island's BYOB days doesn't  seem to have any long term habit changing effect.

And as glass recyling is a little different, so this bottle is still sitting on the window ledge in my apartment. I will bring it to the school's recyling bin soon.

Needless to say, I could never understand why the recyle bin at my void deck back home was designed in that manner, where everything goes into the same big bin.

3. The Clobbered Streets and the Steps

My feet have been doing a lot of work. This is a walking city and some of the clobbered paths from the 17th century could well be the cure to my suspected heel spurs and plantar fasciitis-If only they  worked like reflexology stones. In the span of 4 weeks, I have already worn out 3 sets of foam heel cups, which I got for 1.99 each at PoundStretchers. They work much better than the expensive sillicon gel heel cups from Scholls but are currently sold out. I am banking on the new stocks coming in soon so that I may carry on clobbing on the streets.

4. The Traffic Lights

Something which many of us have not figured out are the traffic lights in Edinburgh. One has a hard time trying to anticipate when it will turn green. It probably works on a 3-way-turn, instead of the usual 2-way-turn back home. (Not sure how should I describe it but it is probably due to the right turns or left turns having their own timings in the whole traffic light system, so it gets some time getting used to.) One thing we are quite sure though is the rate of changing is too slow even for the locals, such that people are always prone to jaywalking. And as the saying goes, "When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do", hence we are starting to behave like a true local.

5. The Patient Drivers

Luckily for us, the drivers in Edinburgh are as patient as one can get. Or perhaps, we are simply too impatient and fast-paced back home? The friendliness of the drivers never fail to surprise me.

6. The Theatres

The city of Edinburgh is peppered with many theatres which offer a wide range of theatre activities. I pass by one, the Bedlam Theatre, everyday on my way to class.

I watched my first performance, Havana Rakatan in the Festive Theatre  last friday. Theatre culture seems so different here. We were allowed to bring in wine glasses and cocktails, so the theatre floor felt like a party dance floor when the lights were on at intermission, as the well-dressed audience got on their feet and swayed to the music. I might have exaggerated a little but theatre culture was one of a truly festive mood.

7. The Accessibility 

Accessibility in this sense, is not about the bus services and transport. I picked up this programme booklet at the Festive Theatre before the show, thinking that it listed performances across the Scottish land. I wasn't really wrong. The booklet did list most of this season's performances across Scotland . Nonetheless, it was meant for a different purpose, ie, Accessibility! The second page read like this:

The whole booklet was arranged to allow people with accessibility needs to figure out when and where is the best time for them to catch a performance. Parking information, transport information, lift information, information about position of the special seats, heaviness of doors at the entrance are some of the information provided. If there's any culture shock for me, it has to be this! Accessibility is definitely not only about infrastructure. The software has to be in place too!  

The Proud Scottish

In case someone mistook the meaning of this header, it wasn't meant to be read as "The Snobbish x". Having been here for a mere 3 weeks, I would definitely not risk my life by saying that. Not that I have met anyone who could be labelled as snobbish. Absolutely no one. Nonetheless, the header was meant to be taken literally, in the sense of "People who are Proud of their Heritage and Country."  

I went on one of the daily guided tours of the Scottish Parliament on the 5th day I arrived in Edinburgh and I was truly won over by the parliament tour guide who gave a detailed insight into the workings of the Scottish Parliament. One could literally see her eyes brimming with pride as she brought us walk on the daily routes taken by the MPs while explaining the structure of the parliament and how the people could play a part in bringing up issues which concerns them. There is even a regular update available online for concerned Scottish to keep track on how their MPs have voted for the issues discussed in the parliament.

I regret to say that I have not visited my own parliament house before, so I decided to blog about this enriching visit only after finding out if my country's parliament house if open for visits. And the answer is ....Yes! However, it seems that it is easier to get access to the tours if one is a student.  Actually, I was pretty surprised that the Scottish Parliament is a tourist spot. However, given the complicated history of Scotland, one could easily guess the significance of letting more people from around the world to know about the existence and works of the Scottish Parliament. 

Other than the realisation that I should find out more about my own country, the gem of the tour that day was actually the availability of multi-lingual visitor brochures.

Do take special notice of the last photo, which has a line which says “若您想要此文件的中文繁体字版本，请联络我们。我们欢迎任何语言的来信。”

我们都只是凡人一个

来爱丁堡的那一天，在法兰克福机场看到了资政在《纽约时报》上的专访。那个早上，读到老人家在谈到卧病在床的夫人时坦诚自己对于生命、生活的无奈时，心中闪过了这样的一个念头——老人家毕竟也是凡人一个。

而不过三周，资政夫人走了。

生命，就是如此坚强与脆弱着的。

谁说汉语？谁说华语？

前两天大讲堂里上课时听到的，存在脑子里两天，忍不住还是要记下来。

我刚坐下几秒，坐在我后面那一排的两名女生说了这样一段对话：

“她会说中文啊？”
“是啊，那天......” （我没听清楚另一名女生说了什么）
“嗯......确实一点也长得不像中国人......”

我霎时愣住了。两名女生不是我班上的同学，学的也不是应用语言学。这两周大家还在旁听，确定这学期的选修课，所以我见过他们几次，但是不认识他们，更不知道他们是在说我，还是在说旁边那名打扮得很漂亮，有点像日本OL的台湾女生。（我认为有可能是说我，是因为开学第一天，班上有名台湾同学课后说“啊，原来你会说中文啊！”-她当时还不知道我是新加坡的。）

我原来不太介意的，只是我确实很怕听到有人这么说，因为我从小就不觉得华语是我的第二语言或者是外语。尽管很多人因为常碰到华语说得不太灵光的新加坡人而觉得我们岛上大家的华语水平都不太好，但我不介意别人对我们的不认识，也很乐意去解释其中的种种复杂原因。我不觉得我说得是别人的语言，我更不觉得我从小说的母语其实正统上就只是属于某个地方的，而我因为说这个语言就得长得这个样。估计两名女生没有选社会语言学这么课，否则她们第一周的书都是白看的了。这么说吧，同样的对话，如果两名女同学在苏格兰这个讲堂里看到的是他们口操汉语，样子明显不同的少数民族同胞，那这段对话岂不是显得很吊诡？

无意挑起任何愤怒之情，只是我常会想起自己几年前教过的学生。记得自己当时很有意识地想让他们认识到语言和语言的使用，其范围和界限比他们原来认识的广得多。一些被政治化的想法和概念，不管自己的观点如何，人到了国外，想法就要灵活一些，视野也要放宽一些。虽然他们未必懂得我当时说的一些故事背后到底有什么隐藏的意义，但是至少我希望我那些北大教授对于语言和语言的使用的宽广视野的故事是没有白讲的。

Readings of the week

I am following the language log this week, so that I could have a better idea of what's going on during the reading session on Wednesday night. Besides reading quite a bit of Mair's post on Chinglish, the latest post by Eric Baković  was quite interesting and pretty relevant to our country's situation as well.

Apparently, actress Emma Thompson had said on an occasion that youngsters' poor language use is driving her crazy and she called for awareness of the need to speak appropriately to the situation or occassion.

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  "There is the necessity to have two languages - one that you use with your mates and the other that you need in any official capacity. Or you're going to sound like a knob," she added.

This comment of "having two languages" really struck a chord with me. I have always thought of myself as being a little weird and I thought I probably had a sort of pretence in me when I spoke to different people. I would be speaking standard Hanyu Pinyin style Mandarin to my students in and out of class, a slightly "relaxed" and localised version after they graduated and become more like my juniors; then I would be speaking Mandarin with a slight Beijing accent with my mainland Chinese friends, accentuating words with the right kind of varied intonation (since we tend to be less expressive in tones when we are at home). I could also do Mandarin with a slight Taiwanese accent for the whole week when my family's Taiwanese friends came over to stay with us.

Then there's English, which I could rattle off in a "standard" (it has been quoted as there are debates on what "standard" is.) , localised or slightly American accented way. Unfortunately, the supposedly Scottish accent has not made a significant appearance in my life yet and I still couldn't make much sense out of the phonetics difference that the good old Scottish uses to try speaking in their accent. 

Of course I could also do a perfect rendition of Singlish (either Chinese peppered with English and dialect terms or English peppered with Chinese terms ) , so much so that recently, I received a word of caution from my close friend that I am really lacking in awareness and my language seems to be pretty "polluted" since I left my frontline job in the classroom. I have since reminded myself to be more conscious, since I should be going back to the classroom in the future soon, lest language attrition occurs. Then there's the language that you use with people who are officials ( I recall my dad being very pleased with himself for trying his newly acquired "Law and Order" kind of language on a special occassion. ) versus the language that you would use with heartlanders, as well as the language that you would use to make connection with your relatives......and the list goes on......

It so happened that our lecture on sociolinguistics touched on this topic today and the content has been categorised under "Language and Identity" . I came off from the lecture acknowledging the notion that the usage of Singlish was really a natural way of identity forming. Perhaps it's not really national identity (since the older generation tend to have less mixed-lingual phenomenon), just identity of some form. Nonetheless, I have exemplified it to my students that  of course there's a need to know how to speak appropriately at the right times. However, just as the people who posted the comments on the language log article revealed, some teenagers might not even know what's wrong. It's really no wonder that we have this very "weird" "Speak Good English" campaign since 2000. I called it "weird" since we are supposedly teaching our children and teenagers English at a first language level but that's beside the point in this blog entry. I searched for the first official speech online and it helped me recall what was said by then DPM Lee .

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  "There is nothing wrong for us to inject a few Chinese or Malay words to our daily usage of English, when we are talking about local things, especially food. Char kway teow is char kway teow, not rice noodles fried with egg, cockles and sweet black sauce; even chao guo tiao does not quite taste the same. Likewise with nasi lemak. But it is wrong to think that we are only Singaporean if we speak Singlish. We want to strengthen our common Singaporean identity, but let us do so in other ways, and not by using Singlish."

Besides the mockery that I felt about this campaign, I really appreciate some of the efforts being put into the drive to get people to speak or toe learn how to speak appropriately in different situations. However, to be about to code-switch between the standard form of languages (or the more posh form) and the colloquial form probably requires the speaker to be relatively proficient in the languages that he is code-switching from too. Hence, I thought that perhaps it is not that much of a mockery after all. However, I am not so sure about not using Singlish to identify ourselves. It is obviously not the perfect choice and it is obviously not the best candidate in the list of criteria but it has already occurred and it is probably just something that happens naturally as our society evolves. Perhaps, the nicer way to put it is, let's use our Singapore accent but not Singlish to identify ourselves ?