IPA: /ʔot.'ku.tyʁ/
Fr., from feminine of haut (high) + couture (nf.), "sowing, dressmaking", from Vulgar Latin consutura, formed from the supine consutum from Latin consuere, from suere, "to sew", from PIE root *siw-. *sju-, "to sew". English cognate "sew" descends from this PIE root, via Proto-Germanic siwjanan into Old English siwian. Latin -ere verb ending alerts one to the fact that descendant verbs of this PIE root are ablaut verbs, hence, sewn. Sewing may have been an important part of PIE culture, given a direct verb is present (in contrast, PIE had no direct verbs for writing).
Frequently (ab)used as a false cognate of "high culture". Dude, it only means "high dressmaking", but people - I've observed this of Singaporeans especially - mistakenly transfer the association of elitism in the industry to that of society in general. An observed comment on a Singapore blog: "Paris is all about haute couture, the language of love, the monuments...." Paris is all about dressmaking? Really?
"High culture" would be plain haute culture in French. Coincidentally, "culture" is a feminine noun, but that's where the similarities end.
Culture (nf.) [IPA: /'kʌl.tʃɚ/ (Eng.), /kyl.'tyʁ/ (Fr.)] from Latin cultura, "tilling of land". The semantic drift in English is from "maintainence of arable land" (1440) to "personal cultivation and sophistication" (1510) to "lifestyles and customs of civilisations cultivated carefully" (1867). From past participle stem of "colere", "to cultivate, inhabit, guard, grow, practice", which led to senses of "worship, respect" -- compare colonus (colony) and cultus (cult). Colere is from PIE root *qwel-, "to turn around", with descendant words like Latin cyclus (cycle), Sanskrit cakram (cf. Indonesian-Malay cakra, "discus") and Old English hweol, which became modern English wheel. Indeed, cultivation (agriculturally at least) can be thought of as a cycle.
As you can see, culture and couture have very different roots. I can see plausible associations, because culturing something -- be it your crops, your personal character or a society -- is comparable to the fine work of sewing a dress; that of creation, of tending and whatnot. But no, they are not actually connected etymologically or semantically.
I suspect that people choose this phrase because rendering it in French, even though one might not actually know the language, sounds more posh or something, while ironically ignoring the direct French cognate la culture. I have a slight trouble with such folks.
Lately I have been reading arguments that attack Singlish because of the very fact that it's not posh or "high culture". They consist of fallacious accusations that generally argue several of these things: Singlish is broken English (despite it being a creole with its own grammar). It is a "problem". It is a "sub-standard" language. It is a "crutch" in some way. It needs to be discouraged from use, suppressed, wiped out.
It is of a basilectal and informal register, I will grant that. Singlish is an intimate language and can be overly familiar at times: it is just like the French would tutoyer their friends and other intimate contacts but vouvoyer strangers and superiors. It does not mean the language used while tutoying is any more inferior -- in fact it can be the other way round due to the intimacy and familiarity.
People who make the accusation that Singlish is inferior have neither real knowledge of linguistics nor the true meaning of culture, especially when they are as bigoted to imply that speaking dialects is "as bad" as speaking Singlish. (Ng Ya Ken, are you telling me the Chinese dialects are "broken Chinese" too? Dude, I hope you know that Cantonese is centuries older than Mandarin itself.) Singaporeans are a resilient lot, and Singlish is so pervasive in the national culture that is unlikely to go soon. The elitist upper class Putains Au Pouvoir ("bitches in power", or PAP) hate this fact. But they will use whatever campaign necessary to try to have Singlish eliminated in twenty, thirty or fifty years time.
As this elitist and superficial "high culture" mentality occurs at the expense of what should be otherwise thriving legitimate national culture, I bear a strong antipathy to such attitudes.
Sunday 11 March 2007
Saturday 10 March 2007
lugi
variants: lugi, rugi
IPA: /'lu.ɡ̊i/, /'ru.gi/
Singlish, meaning "lose out". It bears associations with kiasuism, because the word assumes a comparison with others (the world) although it is intransitive. One lugies if he allows other people to cut in front of him in a queue, for instance.
A Hokkien corruption of Malay rugi, "loss", from Sanskrit roga, "disease, broken", from reconstructed PIE *leug-, "to break, to cause pain", from *leu-, "loosen, separate, cut apart".
/l/ <=> /r/ appears to be a frequent sound change between languages, probably because they are both approximants involving curling the tongue. Sanskrit changed *leug- => rog-, but uncannily the Hokkien corruption from rugi to lugi restores the Sanskrit root closer to the original PIE. Note that the sound also affects the quality of the /g/ - the Hokkien variant voices it considerably less than the Malay.
Coxford asserts rugi as the default, probably for etymological reasons, calling "lugi" the "hardcore beng" pronunciation. However, it seems that lugi is more common on the street, probably because of its similarity to English "lose".
Lose is an actual cognate of this Singlish word. Because of the Hokkien reversal of the Sanskrit sound change, on top of Malay changes to the Sanskrit, lugi is not very different from its 7000-year English cousin. English "lose" is from Old English losian, from los, from reconstructed Proto-Germanic *lausa, from the same PIE root *leu- (see the link at *leu-). "Loss" is from the same root.
Interesting classical cousins of Singlish lugi include Greek -lysis, "to break apart", (e.g. hydrolysis) and Latin lugubris, "sad, mournful", from descendant root *leug- (see link above for *leug-), found in English as lugubrious. Other Sanskrit descendants from *leug- include rujati, "breaks, torments".
Notes: etymology reconstructed from personal research. Time periods for entry into Malay and Singlish respectively would be appreciated, as well as dialect data for widespreadness and demographics of variants.
IPA: /'lu.ɡ̊i/, /'ru.gi/
Singlish, meaning "lose out". It bears associations with kiasuism, because the word assumes a comparison with others (the world) although it is intransitive. One lugies if he allows other people to cut in front of him in a queue, for instance.
A Hokkien corruption of Malay rugi, "loss", from Sanskrit roga, "disease, broken", from reconstructed PIE *leug-, "to break, to cause pain", from *leu-, "loosen, separate, cut apart".
/l/ <=> /r/ appears to be a frequent sound change between languages, probably because they are both approximants involving curling the tongue. Sanskrit changed *leug- => rog-, but uncannily the Hokkien corruption from rugi to lugi restores the Sanskrit root closer to the original PIE. Note that the sound also affects the quality of the /g/ - the Hokkien variant voices it considerably less than the Malay.
Coxford asserts rugi as the default, probably for etymological reasons, calling "lugi" the "hardcore beng" pronunciation. However, it seems that lugi is more common on the street, probably because of its similarity to English "lose".
Lose is an actual cognate of this Singlish word. Because of the Hokkien reversal of the Sanskrit sound change, on top of Malay changes to the Sanskrit, lugi is not very different from its 7000-year English cousin. English "lose" is from Old English losian, from los, from reconstructed Proto-Germanic *lausa, from the same PIE root *leu- (see the link at *leu-). "Loss" is from the same root.
Interesting classical cousins of Singlish lugi include Greek -lysis, "to break apart", (e.g. hydrolysis) and Latin lugubris, "sad, mournful", from descendant root *leug- (see link above for *leug-), found in English as lugubrious. Other Sanskrit descendants from *leug- include rujati, "breaks, torments".
Notes: etymology reconstructed from personal research. Time periods for entry into Malay and Singlish respectively would be appreciated, as well as dialect data for widespreadness and demographics of variants.
Singapore Heritage Dictionary
What a grand title eh. I've decided to launch this little project, within here at least. It may later require moving onto another blog entirely. What is this anyway? Well, it's a dictionary project, or currently more like a selected word list, with etymology, for language from a Singaporean perspective.
Well, isn't this all redundant anyway? Got etymonline leh, wiktionary, Coxford, if not the regular dictionaries already. I use them regularly quite often, actually. But they all have deficiencies. Etymonline only goes for standard English etymology, which is not enough to cover the multilingual breadth of what the average Singaporean citizen will encounter: wiktionary is an admirable project but it doesn't have the Singapore-centrism that is needed. Coxford - at least the online version - is a laugh really, since it doesn't go too much into etymology.
It's called the Singapore Heritage Dictionary since I couldn't think of a real name. Plus, it's purposes are similar to the American Heritage Dictionary - with a greater emphasis on origins and history, since our government doesn't seem to see it fit to preserve our Singlish heritage in any way.
This will probably need lots of suggestions. So uh, send them in.
Well, isn't this all redundant anyway? Got etymonline leh, wiktionary, Coxford, if not the regular dictionaries already. I use them regularly quite often, actually. But they all have deficiencies. Etymonline only goes for standard English etymology, which is not enough to cover the multilingual breadth of what the average Singaporean citizen will encounter: wiktionary is an admirable project but it doesn't have the Singapore-centrism that is needed. Coxford - at least the online version - is a laugh really, since it doesn't go too much into etymology.
It's called the Singapore Heritage Dictionary since I couldn't think of a real name. Plus, it's purposes are similar to the American Heritage Dictionary - with a greater emphasis on origins and history, since our government doesn't seem to see it fit to preserve our Singlish heritage in any way.
This will probably need lots of suggestions. So uh, send them in.
Wednesday 7 March 2007
the would omission
Part of the grammar error series.
If Singaporeans properly used the conditional more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Sometimes it seems that "would" is not part of some Singaporeans' English vocabulary. By that, I don't mean that they're rude, or that they are the types who would say "Uncle, I wan this" rather than "I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît" when ordering from the hawker stall.
Rather, I mean it's really not part of their vocabulary. It's like got no sense of conditional mood one. Let me illustrate. Take for example, the recording for the NDP 1988 song "We are Singapore":
Wah, official government-sanctioned song one and got gross grammar error! I in fact cringe every time I hear that part of the song, though the rest is fine as far as aesthetic propaganda goes.
On further analysis, if some people really wish to protest, it appears there is a /d/ somewhere in the middle of "won't". But if the singer had been really saying "wouldn't" at the time, it would seem his pronunciation is a bit off. Wodn't make it? How did the /u/ become an /o/? You go through Romance sound changes or what?
Technically, there are two main types of "would", not including further derivations like "would have been". One is in a hypothetical sentence:
If Singaporeans used the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Which takes the form of [past subjunctive clause], [conditional clause]. Note that although the first clause ("if Singaporeans used ...") is in the past subjunctive, it's a "present hypothesis". The hypothesis supposes that if you could change something about the present situation, something would happen. It just happens that in English, using the past tense is the way to render the hypothetical subjunctive. It occurs in many other Indo-European languages too, apparently. We'll come to that later. Basically, keep in mind that the past tense of subjunctive "used" is in the "modal present" for this context. A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense. We'll come to that later.
Anyhow, the other is in a "past future" sentence. What in the world is a past future sentence, you say? How is that not a self-contradiction? Well, let me demonstrate:
The government promised they wouldn't raise the GST.
Okay, not fair lah. Guv'men never made such promise liddat one. Got another one:
George Bush Sr. promised there wouldn't be any new taxes.
At the time, George Bush the Elder said, "there will be no new taxes". (Well actually he said, "read my lips: No new taxes", but you get the idea.) It was a past promise of what would happen in the future - at that point in the past. Now, with our perspective of the present, we render that "future clause" in the "past of the future", with would, which is the past tense of the auxiliary verb will (as in I will do it). Hence, "there wouldn't be any new taxes".
If I were to write "George Bush promised there won't be any new taxes", I must be living in a time before George Bush passed the 1990 US Budget but after he got elected, because well, that clause can only remain in the future if it hasn't happened yet (or has not been prevented from happening). Even after this condition is fulfilled, there is a potential for tense conflict due to inconsistency in tense. This is the issue of whether one would say "I didn't know that today was a half-day" or whether "I didn't know that today is a half-day". But that's for another post.
What's the difference between the "past of the future" and the conditional anyway? They both correspond to one auxiliary verb mood with "would", do they not? Does this question really matter? Well, I suppose it does since they could be two different grammatical concepts and we want to find out why Singaporeans omit them at times, do we not? We will examine this later.
There are some further "extra" uses for "would", that are fairly related or can be thought of special cases of one of the two situations above.
"I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît."
No one would say this to a hawker, I hope, since it was just an exaggeration of the kind of euphemistic language used in polite company. With formal French s'il vous plaît tossed in for comic effect. But suppose there be an ang-moh tourist who doesn't get that the hawker centre is the place where you tutoyer and you dispense with formality.
"Could I have some of that, er, what do you call it? Horr fun?? Whore fun?! Well, okay, I would like to have of that please?"
*cough*
This is the use of the conditional in order to make a polite request. Well, where's the subjunctive clause? It's actually implied. "If you it would please you / if you would grant my request / if it's acceptable to you / if it doesn't bother you too much .... I would like this." The idea is, well, you would want something only if the owner were happy to give it. Well, duh. But it's a bit deeper: due to the rules of society and all, it's not nice to leave someone wanting. So the idea is not to vex the person you're requesting a service from.
If he's happy to serve, then you want it. If he's not, then you don't want it (or you say you don't want it even though you really do). That way, by saying "I would like", you ritualistically give room for the person being asked to refuse (although this doesn't really happen in practice). This occurs even in business transactions, especially in the French language, in the form of "je voudrais" or "pourrais-je..." It's partly also due to a euphemistic nature. The more verbs you put between yourself (i.e. the pronoun "I", specifying yourself) and your actual request, the more distance you put between yourself and the speaker, in order not to potentially offend. Which is why formality is almost mutually incompatible with familiarity.
The sheer flexibility of what if-clauses a person can imply for politeness with "would" can be confounding. Am I implying "if it doesn't bother you" or "if it pleases you" whenever I use "would" for politeness? It seems to evolve into a new mood all on its own: it can almost take this use out of the conditional and put this in one of them fancy optative moods that doesn't exist in English but perhaps might as well. It consigns verbs and exchanges between speaker an audience to a whole world of wanting. For example, let us examine another use of "would", modifying my first hypothetical statement slightly:
If Singaporeans would use the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
It sounds like a valid sentence, but what happened to the past subjunctive? How can I have two conditional clauses in a hypothesis? Well, actually the first is not really the conditional really. For proof, if I were to say:
I wish I would be rich (as opposed to if I were rich)
or
If it wouldn't have snowed (as opposed to if it hadn't snowed)
or
if I would be you
I would sound slightly funny, because it's just grammatically incorrect: these are conditional uses attempting to replace the subjunctive. Yet, "if Singaporeans would use" sounds okay it must mean that clause is rather equivalent to the subjunctive. Or rather, it's that optative (a close relative of the subjunctive) we were talking about. This because I am making a subjunctive wish (optative) that they use the conditional properly more often. I want them to use the conditional properly.
One should further note that "if it would please you ... I would like this" and "if it doesn't bother you" both show that the "polite would" request doesn't conform to the normal "if" hypothesis structure, something which will be covered somewhere below. When I say, "if you would only stop being so annoying", I am using a special kind of "request mood". This becomes special mood becomes evident in a phrase like "I wish you would stop being so annoying", where the "would" replaces the subjunctive, and the structure as a whole replaces the infinitive of "I want you to stop". The second clause "... that you would stop being so annoying" has no accompanying hypothetical-if structure. Hence, this kind of "would" not just a simple conditional.
There's also the "rhetorical would", which is sort of like the combination of the polite would, and the hypothesis would, depending on the exact context. It rather assumes the implication of, "assuming our premises is true" coupled with "if you please". It wasn't my intention, but discussing grammar often invokes lots of rhetorical uses of would. Let me list some of the rhetorical woulds used in this post:
it would seem
one would say
they are the types who would say
no one would say this
[if I were to say] .... I would sound
A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense [if we were making a past hypothesis]
You can try to figure out the implicit hypotheses yourselves, with the last two given. And yes, rhetorical woulds deal a lot with saying something. This is not a coincidence. ;-0
Yet another type of "would" is the "past habitual action" would. "When I used to walk to primary school, every morning I would get up and leave at 6:20 am in the morning, and I would walk through the awakening market under the blanket of stars ... " In this case "would" is synonymous to "used to", except it's cleaner and is used to replace it perhaps because it's only needed for consistency. It's close to the French imparfait as well as Greek and PIE aorist: English has in fact lost quite a few simple tenses over the millenia compared to its ancestors, to the extent that both the sense of "future" and "past habitual action" now need to be conveyed with periphrastic constructions like "going to", "will", "used to" and "would".
If you are starting to get confused, don't worry. The conditional, optative and subjunctive *and* the future tense are all related. There is a theory that Proto-Indo-European didn't have a real future tense at all (just like English). Rather, some of its descendants formed it by combining the desiderative (a want-related verb form) with the subjunctive. When Latin speakers wanted to make a subjunctive hypothesis, they used a format of si [subjunctive], [subjunctive], rather than si [subjunctive], [conditional]. The Romance languages like French and Spanish - the descendants of Latin - invented the conditional tense separately from the Germanic languages themselves. To know this, it helps to know the reason behind the formation of the Romance future, which is much different from the Latin future.
Latin renders the future tense (in the indicative, singular and for the first three persons) for amare as: amabo, amabis, amabit, whereas French goes: aimerai, aimeras, aimera. The ama- => aim- is a regular and expected sound change. The -bo => ai is not. (One should also know that amare/aimer are regular verbs and are frequently cited as they are models for conjugating many other verbs in Latin and French respectively.) This sudden change occurs because they use different constructions. In Proto-Romance and Vulgar Latin, the "street forms" of classical Latin (just like Singlish to English), the future tense was actually periphrastic. This was just like in English, except with the verb habere ("to have") (habere => haveir => avoir for French / avere for Italian / haber for Spanish ) rather than "will". The link was from obligation to future action. Thus, it doesn't take a great leap from "I have to do something" => "I will do something". In those days, due to syntax of Latn, the auxiliary verbs tended to go in front. Hence, the infinitive first, followed by the conjugated forms of "habere". "I will love" would thus be, "amare habeo."
But in time, as Vulgar Latin broke up, the syntax for word order was reversed and the idea behind the Romance future as an infinitive + auxiliary construction was lost. The custom became thought of as a "simple tense". Yet, it is still possible to detect this Vulgar Latin custom in the Romane languages, even today.
In French aimera for instance, it is really composed of aimer + a ([he] will love: [he] has to love), as well with aimerai <= aimer + ai (I will love) and aimeras <= aimer + as (you will love). And the conditional forms? Put avoir in the subjunctive, which is ais, ait, ayons, ayez, aient. Thus, aimer + ait => aimerait (were he to have to love => he would love); aimer + aient => aimeraient (were they to have to love => they would love); aimer + ayons => aimerions (were we to have to love => we would love).
This happened in Old English too: make a conditional tense by subjunctivising the future tense. How do you put something in the subjunctive? You could make it past tense. Ta-da! You get would, the past tense of will, to express the conditional. You also get would, to express past wishes of the future, would, to express past habitual actions, and would, to subjunctivise requests like "will you get the door?" into "would you get the door?" Or probably more like, "would you get our weapons so we can overrun Londonium?", but you get the idea.
As a result, "would" is one of them preterite-present verbs. It's a verb that is historically the past tense of another verb, and well, it's kind of tough to literally take the past tense of what is an already conjugated past tense form. Hence, one cannot say, "I musted do it!", but has to say "I had to do it!" to convey an obligation in the past tense. This is because "must" is already the past tense of Old English motan, "to have to". It was historically put in the past subjunctive for politeness reasons too. However, we may not realise this because the verb motan, present tense and everything, has all but disappeared, save for its past tense.
One can easily find other preterite-presents: you can't say I woulded, coulded, shoulded or what have you, for the same reasons that you can't say musted. Canned is well, different for reasons that are obvious.
So why do I bring all this history up? The uses of "would" are grammatically myriad and sometimes complex to classify. There are grammatical functions that are hard to replace through circumvention or by omitting the "would" in favour of the simple future. Besides, some of the inflection - unlike some others as I will talk about in my next post - is useful.
I do note that the Singlish dialect generally can get away with not using it:
"Haha, that Ah Pek, he go (and) say I'll win one, but look at how much I won already liao."
[Ah Pek said that I wouldn't win, but look at how much I have won already.]
Note that while the inflection is dropped with "go (and) say", the event of Ah Pek telling our speaker his advice is clearly in the past. Also, strong verbs (verbs that change vowel grade based on tense, e.g. "sing/sang/sung", "fly/flew/flown", and in this case "win/won") often tend to remain conjugated in Singlish, though not always - sometimes it depends on context, emphasis and position within the sentence whether it's conjugated or not. Anyhow, "go [verb]" often acts as a past tense marker in Singlish, in the logic of "he went and did this", whereas "to go" would mark the future in other contexts ("I'm going to fly off tomorrow"). So, anyway, before you think that "won't" isn't changed to "wouldn't" simply perhaps because of the same non-conjugation principle (which is arguably conjugated in the past anyhow), I can also envision this:
"Ayah, he already told me he won't go liao."
Which can have two interpretations:
"He has told already told me he isn't going."
OR
"He told me he wouldn't be going [but he went!]"
But note that I defend Singlish, but hate Singaporean grammar errors in the standard English register (as I have clarified before). The first has a grammar, the second is just annoying. If I say in Singlish "how come you never do homework one!", I can either mean "why didn't you do your homework?" or "why do you keep refusing to do your homework?" If I could toss in "aw hor! [you're screwed / shame on you]" in there along with the right tone inflection, I would unambiguously specify the former. If I toss in "always" in there instead, I would specify the latter. Singlish can get away with this because it often relies on tone and various other cues: standard English isn't quite so rich in particles and tone inflection as Singlish is. Therefore, one should switch to "would" when the wish for the future is in the past, if one is speaking in the standard English register.
Now, I really feel guilty to bring up a friend's blog, but here is an excerpt from Carissa, a friend from primary school, to show how it creeps up in even quite acrolectic (i.e. fairly standard and professional) registers.
"If there was a subject called 'Movies, Celebs, Eyecandies & You', I'll totally ace it"
There are two things that could be highlighted here. One is the subjunctive "if there was" clause. Some grammarians regard this as ungrammatical and incorrect. I regard it as colloquial, something you wouldn't write in your A-level essays but perfectly acceptable for speech and blogging. Also note, there can be indicative "if there was" clauses. More on this later. Anyhow, I don't think this is such a gross error because it doesn't sacrifice the main feature of the past subjunctive: putting things in the "unreal past", which is the main concept - change something in the past to modify a concrete thing in the present; change something something in the pluperfect (more than past) in order to change something about the past. The subjunctive "were" has this feature of being the same whether it is singular or plural. Besides, "was" is mainly understood easily without any flinching, because the past tense is the main concept.
The omission of "would" however (in this case, "I'd" in contracted form, which has a tendency to merge with "I'd" of "I had" sometimes) to me is considerably more serious, since it blots out a whole grammatical concept with it. And Carissa is a rather strong and rhetorical writer as she is - which alerts me to something about the state of disuse "would" might be facing even in the acrolectical dialects of Singaporean society.
Sometimes even Members of Parliament mar the structure. Let's try the p65 blog:
... I personally do not believe even if Crazy Horse were allowed to place advertisements wherever they like, the show would have done much better than it did.
Now, Baey Yam Keng is one of the more progressive and responsive members of the p65 blog, (compared to the arrogant Josephine Teo, whose writing style I cannot stand, and Lateef who doesn't approve comments that make critique over any part of her posts). So this is not a personal dig at them or whatever (even if I do favour the opposition). But there's an "if-clause" structure error here.
As a reminder, this is how hypotheses are structured:
If I receive a million dollars ..... I will be very happy.
If I received a million dollars ..... I would be very happy.
If I had received a million dollars ..... I would have been very happy.
Baey's error is in saying "if Crazy Horse were allowed .... ". This is the past subjunctive, and affects the present condition (crazily enough, crazily ...). One has to say "even if Crazy Horse had been allowed" in order to follow up with "would have been".
Note that for indicative hypotheses like the first example, there is more flexibility depending on context. I can say, "if your rice tastes so hard, it means you didn't cook it enough"; "if it's not very wet outside, that means it hasn't been raining for very long", etc. I can use future perfect or present continuous tenses or whatever. However, if I am talking about personal decisions, my sentences will generally follow the structure outlined above; most exceptions to this will be in places where future plans are idiomatically stated in the present (simple and continuous). Hence, "if it's not raining out, I'm going for a walk" only works because "I'm going for a walk" means "I will take a walk".
However, subjunctive hypotheses definitely do not have any such flexibility and must follow fixed structure. You cannot say, "if water were to boil at zero degrees Celsius, there must be no oceans now", for example. But I can say, "if SPECTRE [supervillain of your choice] has caused all water on this planet to boil at zero degrees Celsius, all the oceans in the world must be disappearing!" The first statement is subjunctive; the second is likely to occur in the context of a fiction film where reality gets defied (should I say, totally, totally, raped) from time to time anyway so it is its plausible to put it in the indicative.
This entire phenomenon regarding Singaporeans' treatment of "would" is interesting as well as annoying. I do note that for example, that I pronounce "would" with an /l/ in it at times. Although the consonant doesn't generally appear audibly (as a lateral approximant in a cluster it tends to get elided most of the time in quick speech), it appears when words are stressed and also when I am talking in a low voice (like in a library). This is mainly because most of my normal vocabulary comes from reading in second, third, fourth and fifth grade, from age 7 to 10: and I tended to apply stress distinctions for words that were homophones for Americans. For example "night" is a fairly stressed vowel, and I attributed this to the "-ight", and "nite" didn't quite seem to carry the same stress. I perceived "would" to have an /l/ in this regard, but I was never corrected, probably because it wasn't noticeable enough in my speech. So you see, even though I have an American accent I do not think like the average American English speaker!
My conclusion? Words that are picked up from reading rather than acquired in speech I consider to be "literary" or "non-native" vocabulary - I encountered "would" in the classroom naturally, but apparently the reading perception with the /l/ superseded the /l/-less classroom pronunciation of "would". (This was also aided by the fact that I first read Green Eggs and Ham by myself silently, as I suspect that's when I first encountered "would" -- would you like them with a goat? would you eat them in a boat? -- rather than having it read to me.) The fact that "would" is thus a "non-native" word for me means that I didn't encounter "would" too much in Singapore, or at least not enough by the age of five, for it to have entered my native vocabulary. My Singlish heritage is interesting: because of it, I can both say that I am both a native speaker and not a native speaker of English.
If it wasn't part of my early childhood linguistic environment in Singapore, I expect it wasn't part of many other Singaporeans' early childhood linguistic environments too. Apparently, "would", with all of its optatives, conditionals and aorists, didn't become part of many Singaporeans' English grammar structures until much later in life: a late acquisition of the concept would undermine fluency and natural grasping of the concept. It is thus not surprising that many Singaporeans end up omitting it in speech.
Grammarians lament that the English subjunctive is facing demise. Despite this, I think the subjunctive survives quite well in the modal auxiliaries would and should as well as in periphrastic constructions. English, is after all, an analytic language: sentences are most oftenly composed of free morphemes - words that are not bound to other words as suffixes or verb endings. It's only natural to move from an inflected form of the subjunctive to one conveyed with modal auxiliary verbs, just like we have done with the future tense.
But to drop "would" entirely, well, it would result in the loss of too many convenient constructions of delicate moods, wants, hypotheses and declarations. So let's not lose it.
If Singaporeans properly used the conditional more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Sometimes it seems that "would" is not part of some Singaporeans' English vocabulary. By that, I don't mean that they're rude, or that they are the types who would say "Uncle, I wan this" rather than "I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît" when ordering from the hawker stall.
Rather, I mean it's really not part of their vocabulary. It's like got no sense of conditional mood one. Let me illustrate. Take for example, the recording for the NDP 1988 song "We are Singapore":
"There was a time, when people said that Singapore won't make it ... but we did."
Wah, official government-sanctioned song one and got gross grammar error! I in fact cringe every time I hear that part of the song, though the rest is fine as far as aesthetic propaganda goes.
On further analysis, if some people really wish to protest, it appears there is a /d/ somewhere in the middle of "won't". But if the singer had been really saying "wouldn't" at the time, it would seem his pronunciation is a bit off. Wodn't make it? How did the /u/ become an /o/? You go through Romance sound changes or what?
Technically, there are two main types of "would", not including further derivations like "would have been". One is in a hypothetical sentence:
If Singaporeans used the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Which takes the form of [past subjunctive clause], [conditional clause]. Note that although the first clause ("if Singaporeans used ...") is in the past subjunctive, it's a "present hypothesis". The hypothesis supposes that if you could change something about the present situation, something would happen. It just happens that in English, using the past tense is the way to render the hypothetical subjunctive. It occurs in many other Indo-European languages too, apparently. We'll come to that later. Basically, keep in mind that the past tense of subjunctive "used" is in the "modal present" for this context. A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense. We'll come to that later.
Anyhow, the other is in a "past future" sentence. What in the world is a past future sentence, you say? How is that not a self-contradiction? Well, let me demonstrate:
The government promised they wouldn't raise the GST.
Okay, not fair lah. Guv'men never made such promise liddat one. Got another one:
George Bush Sr. promised there wouldn't be any new taxes.
At the time, George Bush the Elder said, "there will be no new taxes". (Well actually he said, "read my lips: No new taxes", but you get the idea.) It was a past promise of what would happen in the future - at that point in the past. Now, with our perspective of the present, we render that "future clause" in the "past of the future", with would, which is the past tense of the auxiliary verb will (as in I will do it). Hence, "there wouldn't be any new taxes".
If I were to write "George Bush promised there won't be any new taxes", I must be living in a time before George Bush passed the 1990 US Budget but after he got elected, because well, that clause can only remain in the future if it hasn't happened yet (or has not been prevented from happening). Even after this condition is fulfilled, there is a potential for tense conflict due to inconsistency in tense. This is the issue of whether one would say "I didn't know that today was a half-day" or whether "I didn't know that today is a half-day". But that's for another post.
What's the difference between the "past of the future" and the conditional anyway? They both correspond to one auxiliary verb mood with "would", do they not? Does this question really matter? Well, I suppose it does since they could be two different grammatical concepts and we want to find out why Singaporeans omit them at times, do we not? We will examine this later.
There are some further "extra" uses for "would", that are fairly related or can be thought of special cases of one of the two situations above.
"I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît."
No one would say this to a hawker, I hope, since it was just an exaggeration of the kind of euphemistic language used in polite company. With formal French s'il vous plaît tossed in for comic effect. But suppose there be an ang-moh tourist who doesn't get that the hawker centre is the place where you tutoyer and you dispense with formality.
"Could I have some of that, er, what do you call it? Horr fun?? Whore fun?! Well, okay, I would like to have of that please?"
*cough*
This is the use of the conditional in order to make a polite request. Well, where's the subjunctive clause? It's actually implied. "If you it would please you / if you would grant my request / if it's acceptable to you / if it doesn't bother you too much .... I would like this." The idea is, well, you would want something only if the owner were happy to give it. Well, duh. But it's a bit deeper: due to the rules of society and all, it's not nice to leave someone wanting. So the idea is not to vex the person you're requesting a service from.
If he's happy to serve, then you want it. If he's not, then you don't want it (or you say you don't want it even though you really do). That way, by saying "I would like", you ritualistically give room for the person being asked to refuse (although this doesn't really happen in practice). This occurs even in business transactions, especially in the French language, in the form of "je voudrais" or "pourrais-je..." It's partly also due to a euphemistic nature. The more verbs you put between yourself (i.e. the pronoun "I", specifying yourself) and your actual request, the more distance you put between yourself and the speaker, in order not to potentially offend. Which is why formality is almost mutually incompatible with familiarity.
The sheer flexibility of what if-clauses a person can imply for politeness with "would" can be confounding. Am I implying "if it doesn't bother you" or "if it pleases you" whenever I use "would" for politeness? It seems to evolve into a new mood all on its own: it can almost take this use out of the conditional and put this in one of them fancy optative moods that doesn't exist in English but perhaps might as well. It consigns verbs and exchanges between speaker an audience to a whole world of wanting. For example, let us examine another use of "would", modifying my first hypothetical statement slightly:
If Singaporeans would use the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
It sounds like a valid sentence, but what happened to the past subjunctive? How can I have two conditional clauses in a hypothesis? Well, actually the first is not really the conditional really. For proof, if I were to say:
I wish I would be rich (as opposed to if I were rich)
or
If it wouldn't have snowed (as opposed to if it hadn't snowed)
or
if I would be you
I would sound slightly funny, because it's just grammatically incorrect: these are conditional uses attempting to replace the subjunctive. Yet, "if Singaporeans would use" sounds okay it must mean that clause is rather equivalent to the subjunctive. Or rather, it's that optative (a close relative of the subjunctive) we were talking about. This because I am making a subjunctive wish (optative) that they use the conditional properly more often. I want them to use the conditional properly.
One should further note that "if it would please you ... I would like this" and "if it doesn't bother you" both show that the "polite would" request doesn't conform to the normal "if" hypothesis structure, something which will be covered somewhere below. When I say, "if you would only stop being so annoying", I am using a special kind of "request mood". This becomes special mood becomes evident in a phrase like "I wish you would stop being so annoying", where the "would" replaces the subjunctive, and the structure as a whole replaces the infinitive of "I want you to stop". The second clause "... that you would stop being so annoying" has no accompanying hypothetical-if structure. Hence, this kind of "would" not just a simple conditional.
There's also the "rhetorical would", which is sort of like the combination of the polite would, and the hypothesis would, depending on the exact context. It rather assumes the implication of, "assuming our premises is true" coupled with "if you please". It wasn't my intention, but discussing grammar often invokes lots of rhetorical uses of would. Let me list some of the rhetorical woulds used in this post:
it would seem
one would say
they are the types who would say
no one would say this
[if I were to say] .... I would sound
A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense [if we were making a past hypothesis]
You can try to figure out the implicit hypotheses yourselves, with the last two given. And yes, rhetorical woulds deal a lot with saying something. This is not a coincidence. ;-0
Yet another type of "would" is the "past habitual action" would. "When I used to walk to primary school, every morning I would get up and leave at 6:20 am in the morning, and I would walk through the awakening market under the blanket of stars ... " In this case "would" is synonymous to "used to", except it's cleaner and is used to replace it perhaps because it's only needed for consistency. It's close to the French imparfait as well as Greek and PIE aorist: English has in fact lost quite a few simple tenses over the millenia compared to its ancestors, to the extent that both the sense of "future" and "past habitual action" now need to be conveyed with periphrastic constructions like "going to", "will", "used to" and "would".
If you are starting to get confused, don't worry. The conditional, optative and subjunctive *and* the future tense are all related. There is a theory that Proto-Indo-European didn't have a real future tense at all (just like English). Rather, some of its descendants formed it by combining the desiderative (a want-related verb form) with the subjunctive. When Latin speakers wanted to make a subjunctive hypothesis, they used a format of si [subjunctive], [subjunctive], rather than si [subjunctive], [conditional]. The Romance languages like French and Spanish - the descendants of Latin - invented the conditional tense separately from the Germanic languages themselves. To know this, it helps to know the reason behind the formation of the Romance future, which is much different from the Latin future.
Latin renders the future tense (in the indicative, singular and for the first three persons) for amare as: amabo, amabis, amabit, whereas French goes: aimerai, aimeras, aimera. The ama- => aim- is a regular and expected sound change. The -bo => ai is not. (One should also know that amare/aimer are regular verbs and are frequently cited as they are models for conjugating many other verbs in Latin and French respectively.) This sudden change occurs because they use different constructions. In Proto-Romance and Vulgar Latin, the "street forms" of classical Latin (just like Singlish to English), the future tense was actually periphrastic. This was just like in English, except with the verb habere ("to have") (habere => haveir => avoir for French / avere for Italian / haber for Spanish ) rather than "will". The link was from obligation to future action. Thus, it doesn't take a great leap from "I have to do something" => "I will do something". In those days, due to syntax of Latn, the auxiliary verbs tended to go in front. Hence, the infinitive first, followed by the conjugated forms of "habere". "I will love" would thus be, "amare habeo."
But in time, as Vulgar Latin broke up, the syntax for word order was reversed and the idea behind the Romance future as an infinitive + auxiliary construction was lost. The custom became thought of as a "simple tense". Yet, it is still possible to detect this Vulgar Latin custom in the Romane languages, even today.
In French aimera for instance, it is really composed of aimer + a ([he] will love: [he] has to love), as well with aimerai <= aimer + ai (I will love) and aimeras <= aimer + as (you will love). And the conditional forms? Put avoir in the subjunctive, which is ais, ait, ayons, ayez, aient. Thus, aimer + ait => aimerait (were he to have to love => he would love); aimer + aient => aimeraient (were they to have to love => they would love); aimer + ayons => aimerions (were we to have to love => we would love).
This happened in Old English too: make a conditional tense by subjunctivising the future tense. How do you put something in the subjunctive? You could make it past tense. Ta-da! You get would, the past tense of will, to express the conditional. You also get would, to express past wishes of the future, would, to express past habitual actions, and would, to subjunctivise requests like "will you get the door?" into "would you get the door?" Or probably more like, "would you get our weapons so we can overrun Londonium?", but you get the idea.
As a result, "would" is one of them preterite-present verbs. It's a verb that is historically the past tense of another verb, and well, it's kind of tough to literally take the past tense of what is an already conjugated past tense form. Hence, one cannot say, "I musted do it!", but has to say "I had to do it!" to convey an obligation in the past tense. This is because "must" is already the past tense of Old English motan, "to have to". It was historically put in the past subjunctive for politeness reasons too. However, we may not realise this because the verb motan, present tense and everything, has all but disappeared, save for its past tense.
One can easily find other preterite-presents: you can't say I woulded, coulded, shoulded or what have you, for the same reasons that you can't say musted. Canned is well, different for reasons that are obvious.
So why do I bring all this history up? The uses of "would" are grammatically myriad and sometimes complex to classify. There are grammatical functions that are hard to replace through circumvention or by omitting the "would" in favour of the simple future. Besides, some of the inflection - unlike some others as I will talk about in my next post - is useful.
I do note that the Singlish dialect generally can get away with not using it:
"Haha, that Ah Pek, he go (and) say I'll win one, but look at how much I won already liao."
[Ah Pek said that I wouldn't win, but look at how much I have won already.]
Note that while the inflection is dropped with "go (and) say", the event of Ah Pek telling our speaker his advice is clearly in the past. Also, strong verbs (verbs that change vowel grade based on tense, e.g. "sing/sang/sung", "fly/flew/flown", and in this case "win/won") often tend to remain conjugated in Singlish, though not always - sometimes it depends on context, emphasis and position within the sentence whether it's conjugated or not. Anyhow, "go [verb]" often acts as a past tense marker in Singlish, in the logic of "he went and did this", whereas "to go" would mark the future in other contexts ("I'm going to fly off tomorrow"). So, anyway, before you think that "won't" isn't changed to "wouldn't" simply perhaps because of the same non-conjugation principle (which is arguably conjugated in the past anyhow), I can also envision this:
"Ayah, he already told me he won't go liao."
Which can have two interpretations:
"He has told already told me he isn't going."
OR
"He told me he wouldn't be going [but he went!]"
But note that I defend Singlish, but hate Singaporean grammar errors in the standard English register (as I have clarified before). The first has a grammar, the second is just annoying. If I say in Singlish "how come you never do homework one!", I can either mean "why didn't you do your homework?" or "why do you keep refusing to do your homework?" If I could toss in "aw hor! [you're screwed / shame on you]" in there along with the right tone inflection, I would unambiguously specify the former. If I toss in "always" in there instead, I would specify the latter. Singlish can get away with this because it often relies on tone and various other cues: standard English isn't quite so rich in particles and tone inflection as Singlish is. Therefore, one should switch to "would" when the wish for the future is in the past, if one is speaking in the standard English register.
Now, I really feel guilty to bring up a friend's blog, but here is an excerpt from Carissa, a friend from primary school, to show how it creeps up in even quite acrolectic (i.e. fairly standard and professional) registers.
"If there was a subject called 'Movies, Celebs, Eyecandies & You', I'll totally ace it"
There are two things that could be highlighted here. One is the subjunctive "if there was" clause. Some grammarians regard this as ungrammatical and incorrect. I regard it as colloquial, something you wouldn't write in your A-level essays but perfectly acceptable for speech and blogging. Also note, there can be indicative "if there was" clauses. More on this later. Anyhow, I don't think this is such a gross error because it doesn't sacrifice the main feature of the past subjunctive: putting things in the "unreal past", which is the main concept - change something in the past to modify a concrete thing in the present; change something something in the pluperfect (more than past) in order to change something about the past. The subjunctive "were" has this feature of being the same whether it is singular or plural. Besides, "was" is mainly understood easily without any flinching, because the past tense is the main concept.
The omission of "would" however (in this case, "I'd" in contracted form, which has a tendency to merge with "I'd" of "I had" sometimes) to me is considerably more serious, since it blots out a whole grammatical concept with it. And Carissa is a rather strong and rhetorical writer as she is - which alerts me to something about the state of disuse "would" might be facing even in the acrolectical dialects of Singaporean society.
Sometimes even Members of Parliament mar the structure. Let's try the p65 blog:
... I personally do not believe even if Crazy Horse were allowed to place advertisements wherever they like, the show would have done much better than it did.
-- "Regulation of Advertisement Standards", Baey Yam Keng
Now, Baey Yam Keng is one of the more progressive and responsive members of the p65 blog, (compared to the arrogant Josephine Teo, whose writing style I cannot stand, and Lateef who doesn't approve comments that make critique over any part of her posts). So this is not a personal dig at them or whatever (even if I do favour the opposition). But there's an "if-clause" structure error here.
As a reminder, this is how hypotheses are structured:
If I receive a million dollars ..... I will be very happy.
If I received a million dollars ..... I would be very happy.
If I had received a million dollars ..... I would have been very happy.
Baey's error is in saying "if Crazy Horse were allowed .... ". This is the past subjunctive, and affects the present condition (crazily enough, crazily ...). One has to say "even if Crazy Horse had been allowed" in order to follow up with "would have been".
Note that for indicative hypotheses like the first example, there is more flexibility depending on context. I can say, "if your rice tastes so hard, it means you didn't cook it enough"; "if it's not very wet outside, that means it hasn't been raining for very long", etc. I can use future perfect or present continuous tenses or whatever. However, if I am talking about personal decisions, my sentences will generally follow the structure outlined above; most exceptions to this will be in places where future plans are idiomatically stated in the present (simple and continuous). Hence, "if it's not raining out, I'm going for a walk" only works because "I'm going for a walk" means "I will take a walk".
However, subjunctive hypotheses definitely do not have any such flexibility and must follow fixed structure. You cannot say, "if water were to boil at zero degrees Celsius, there must be no oceans now", for example. But I can say, "if SPECTRE [supervillain of your choice] has caused all water on this planet to boil at zero degrees Celsius, all the oceans in the world must be disappearing!" The first statement is subjunctive; the second is likely to occur in the context of a fiction film where reality gets defied (should I say, totally, totally, raped) from time to time anyway so it is its plausible to put it in the indicative.
This entire phenomenon regarding Singaporeans' treatment of "would" is interesting as well as annoying. I do note that for example, that I pronounce "would" with an /l/ in it at times. Although the consonant doesn't generally appear audibly (as a lateral approximant in a cluster it tends to get elided most of the time in quick speech), it appears when words are stressed and also when I am talking in a low voice (like in a library). This is mainly because most of my normal vocabulary comes from reading in second, third, fourth and fifth grade, from age 7 to 10: and I tended to apply stress distinctions for words that were homophones for Americans. For example "night" is a fairly stressed vowel, and I attributed this to the "-ight", and "nite" didn't quite seem to carry the same stress. I perceived "would" to have an /l/ in this regard, but I was never corrected, probably because it wasn't noticeable enough in my speech. So you see, even though I have an American accent I do not think like the average American English speaker!
My conclusion? Words that are picked up from reading rather than acquired in speech I consider to be "literary" or "non-native" vocabulary - I encountered "would" in the classroom naturally, but apparently the reading perception with the /l/ superseded the /l/-less classroom pronunciation of "would". (This was also aided by the fact that I first read Green Eggs and Ham by myself silently, as I suspect that's when I first encountered "would" -- would you like them with a goat? would you eat them in a boat? -- rather than having it read to me.) The fact that "would" is thus a "non-native" word for me means that I didn't encounter "would" too much in Singapore, or at least not enough by the age of five, for it to have entered my native vocabulary. My Singlish heritage is interesting: because of it, I can both say that I am both a native speaker and not a native speaker of English.
If it wasn't part of my early childhood linguistic environment in Singapore, I expect it wasn't part of many other Singaporeans' early childhood linguistic environments too. Apparently, "would", with all of its optatives, conditionals and aorists, didn't become part of many Singaporeans' English grammar structures until much later in life: a late acquisition of the concept would undermine fluency and natural grasping of the concept. It is thus not surprising that many Singaporeans end up omitting it in speech.
Grammarians lament that the English subjunctive is facing demise. Despite this, I think the subjunctive survives quite well in the modal auxiliaries would and should as well as in periphrastic constructions. English, is after all, an analytic language: sentences are most oftenly composed of free morphemes - words that are not bound to other words as suffixes or verb endings. It's only natural to move from an inflected form of the subjunctive to one conveyed with modal auxiliary verbs, just like we have done with the future tense.
But to drop "would" entirely, well, it would result in the loss of too many convenient constructions of delicate moods, wants, hypotheses and declarations. So let's not lose it.
Tuesday 6 March 2007
the grammar error series
Now, I am generally a champion of Singlish. I see it as a legitimate dialect and a creole, with its own grammar system that is to be appreciated. I do not like the government's attempts at dismissing it nor the Speak Good English Movement's attitude towards it. It has often at times said that Singlish has "limited vocabulary" and makes up for it by borrowing from other languages. "Hence also the habit of code-mixing," Koh Tai Ann writes, "using words and phrases from Chinese or Malay because they do not know the English equivalent."
Which is just a plain stupid statement really, and quite a poor method for putting down the dialect. I should say, using Koh Tai Ann's amazing logic, that English has a limited vocabulary and makes up for it by heavily borrowing from Latin, French and Greek. English writers from the 11th to the 18th centuries used words and phrases from those languages because they didn't know the Old English equivalent. So we should throw out words like air, colour, idiom, assimilate. These words weren't originally part of English. I don't know, since I can't seem to find Anglo-Saxon equivalents easily, I guess my English must really be poor, huh, since I must borrow from the Romance languages and all.
The logic is rather curious since borrowing from other languages - a multicultural phenomenon that should be cheered on - tends to make a language richer rather than being evidence of its poverty. Not to mention the example of Malay, which has replaced many of its original Austronesian words with Sanskrit equivalents. Because of this Sanskrit connection, the Singlish word "lugi", borrowed from Malay, is in fact, distantly related (separated by about 7000 years) to the English word "lose" (as well as Latin lugubrious).
Another gem is "People who can speak only Singlish will not write blogs. Bloggers must be fairly literate and must have ready access to computers, have a liking for language and have a strong desire to express themselves." She assumes it's as though Singaporeans who do not speak standard English that well but are more fluent in Singlish or their mother tongue will not have a strong liking for language or a desire to express themselves, or cannot be literate. Lao Xin Zhou struggles with his English and is more fluent in Chinese but I admire the tenacity of his views. I should tell you - I too, could once only speak Singlish. But now I keep several blogs and yearn to be a linguist. I can perfectly envision many bloggers who write in Singlish not for creative effect, but as genuine automatic expression, and not intentional creativity on our part. I too, sometimes do this.
There are tons of linguistic fallacies that the SGEM purports. I will eventully try rebut them in other posts.
However, there are features of some Singaporean speech that are decidedly not Singlish, and are grammatically incorrect. How do I make this distinction?
When speakers speak Singlish, they employ grammatical concepts. They do it unconsciously - but they do it nevertheless. "Lah" is the classic example cited most of the time: you can't simply place it anywhere and it serves the role of intensifier. For "how come never do homework one?" (why haven't you done your homework?) - a phrase that can find itself within ACSI - the words "you", "did", and "your"/"the" are all used in Singlish, but they are dropped because those words are implied. When you drop tense conjugation in Singlish, it's not a grammatical error, but it's dropped because it's seen as irrelevant to the context. It's a given based on context what the time, person and homework is. Grammatical inflection (modifying verbs, adjectives and nouns to agree with person, number, gender, tense, case, etc.) places an unnecessary emphasis at times and sometimes becomes more of a burden than an aid (the irrelevance of inflection). I will write about this later.
Anyhow, Singlish practices like these are all grammatical, though not necessarily acceptable in formal situations. A custom is grammatical when it is made intentionally, rather than out of ignorance, even if it's unconscious. For example in standard English, we stress-time our sentences, generally unintentionally (unless you're trying to wayang off your language) but grammatically nonetheless. We have subconcious processes associated with it.
However, whereas I champion Singlish because of its multicultural diversity and because I just love linguistics, I really cringe at grammar errors. What is a grammar error? It's an error that speakers make because they are unaware and ignorant of the cultural and grammatical rules of the language. Or, it could be an error in writing made by a fluent speaker, and happens because he edited part of his post and forgot to correct the other parts to be grammatically consistent with the change. *cough, cough* (This happens to me, all the time.)
You can really tell when something is a grammar error (as opposed to a Singlish construction) because the speaker is speaking within (or is trying to speak within) the register of standard English. Also, Singlish will often use a totally different construction or rephrase it differently anyway. As such, the error can really throw the audience off and mar comprehension , because whenever we are listening to a certain language, we assume a "mindset of concepts and rules" about that language.
Take conjugation, e.g. "he has", "they have". When I speak Singlish for example, I assume a different mindset that allows me not to be disturbed by people dropping conjugation, such as in "No need (to) give him lah. He already have liao." I consider this grammatical. The tonal nature of Singlish immediately alerts my mind about which mindset to use and what to concentrate on. Singlish borrows many tonal aspects from Chinese, with some words, the particles especially, having fixed tones. I use this to keep track of the conversation rather than being attentive to inflection. But if I hear "I don't think he have it" in a standard English context, with no Singlish toning (but perhaps in a Singaporean accent), I will be thrown off. It is not because it is unexpected -- sometimes I switch from standard English to Singlish mid-sentence -- but because it is simply erroneous and not Singlish at all, since Singlish would specify a strong tone for the unconjugated "have" and alert me to switch to a Singlish mindset.
I love Singlish, but I cannot stand errors. Often I have seen errors in advertisements, notices and even in the speech of government ministers. I would love an ad in Singlish (take the TalkingCock in Parliament ad) - because that would use Singlish grammar, and hence, would be grammatical. But all of a sudden, I can be reading things that are obviously written in the standard English register when a gross error occurs. New oxymetabolic-regeneration whatever: we guarantee that it will helps you lose weight, gains energy and feels great.
And so with this long explanation I have created the grammar error series, to discuss such errors because I find them increasingly hard to take in Singaporean speech. Basically I want to introduce the series and define a scope of this blog, and also have something to head my categories with. Yet at the same time I want to say that my harping on Singaporeans' errors is not the same as harping on Singlish. I want to make a distinction between errors in English and customs in Singlish.
P.S. No one should even dare suggest to me that the use of "grammar error" is grammatically incorrect. Bet you grammar nazis (only trying to be show-offs) are saying that it should be "grammatical error", right? This blog is for real linguistics and not pointless grammar nazism, man. They are both interchangeable.
"-al" is an adjectival suffix from Latin; an equivalent native (Anglo-Saxon) English suffix would be "-en", e.g. as in "wooden" and "golden" (and also seen in its role in strong verb participles like taken, forsaken and beholden, as well as the sense of "endow with the properties of", e.g. as in "harden", kind of like -ify and -ise). However, modern English is an analytic language, and has something called the null morpheme which allows nouns to be used as adjectives without the need for derivation markers (such as "-al").
Just so happens that English, due to the Norman invasion, has multiple ways to accomplish the same grammatical function. For example, there are two main ways to show the possessive in English. One can either use the apostrophe-s clitic ('s) or use the word "of"; the first one was inherited from Old English, the second technique was done in imitation of French de.
Which is just a plain stupid statement really, and quite a poor method for putting down the dialect. I should say, using Koh Tai Ann's amazing logic, that English has a limited vocabulary and makes up for it by heavily borrowing from Latin, French and Greek. English writers from the 11th to the 18th centuries used words and phrases from those languages because they didn't know the Old English equivalent. So we should throw out words like air, colour, idiom, assimilate. These words weren't originally part of English. I don't know, since I can't seem to find Anglo-Saxon equivalents easily, I guess my English must really be poor, huh, since I must borrow from the Romance languages and all.
The logic is rather curious since borrowing from other languages - a multicultural phenomenon that should be cheered on - tends to make a language richer rather than being evidence of its poverty. Not to mention the example of Malay, which has replaced many of its original Austronesian words with Sanskrit equivalents. Because of this Sanskrit connection, the Singlish word "lugi", borrowed from Malay, is in fact, distantly related (separated by about 7000 years) to the English word "lose" (as well as Latin lugubrious).
Another gem is "People who can speak only Singlish will not write blogs. Bloggers must be fairly literate and must have ready access to computers, have a liking for language and have a strong desire to express themselves." She assumes it's as though Singaporeans who do not speak standard English that well but are more fluent in Singlish or their mother tongue will not have a strong liking for language or a desire to express themselves, or cannot be literate. Lao Xin Zhou struggles with his English and is more fluent in Chinese but I admire the tenacity of his views. I should tell you - I too, could once only speak Singlish. But now I keep several blogs and yearn to be a linguist. I can perfectly envision many bloggers who write in Singlish not for creative effect, but as genuine automatic expression, and not intentional creativity on our part. I too, sometimes do this.
There are tons of linguistic fallacies that the SGEM purports. I will eventully try rebut them in other posts.
However, there are features of some Singaporean speech that are decidedly not Singlish, and are grammatically incorrect. How do I make this distinction?
When speakers speak Singlish, they employ grammatical concepts. They do it unconsciously - but they do it nevertheless. "Lah" is the classic example cited most of the time: you can't simply place it anywhere and it serves the role of intensifier. For "how come never do homework one?" (why haven't you done your homework?) - a phrase that can find itself within ACSI - the words "you", "did", and "your"/"the" are all used in Singlish, but they are dropped because those words are implied. When you drop tense conjugation in Singlish, it's not a grammatical error, but it's dropped because it's seen as irrelevant to the context. It's a given based on context what the time, person and homework is. Grammatical inflection (modifying verbs, adjectives and nouns to agree with person, number, gender, tense, case, etc.) places an unnecessary emphasis at times and sometimes becomes more of a burden than an aid (the irrelevance of inflection). I will write about this later.
Anyhow, Singlish practices like these are all grammatical, though not necessarily acceptable in formal situations. A custom is grammatical when it is made intentionally, rather than out of ignorance, even if it's unconscious. For example in standard English, we stress-time our sentences, generally unintentionally (unless you're trying to wayang off your language) but grammatically nonetheless. We have subconcious processes associated with it.
However, whereas I champion Singlish because of its multicultural diversity and because I just love linguistics, I really cringe at grammar errors. What is a grammar error? It's an error that speakers make because they are unaware and ignorant of the cultural and grammatical rules of the language. Or, it could be an error in writing made by a fluent speaker, and happens because he edited part of his post and forgot to correct the other parts to be grammatically consistent with the change. *cough, cough* (This happens to me, all the time.)
You can really tell when something is a grammar error (as opposed to a Singlish construction) because the speaker is speaking within (or is trying to speak within) the register of standard English. Also, Singlish will often use a totally different construction or rephrase it differently anyway. As such, the error can really throw the audience off and mar comprehension , because whenever we are listening to a certain language, we assume a "mindset of concepts and rules" about that language.
Take conjugation, e.g. "he has", "they have". When I speak Singlish for example, I assume a different mindset that allows me not to be disturbed by people dropping conjugation, such as in "No need (to) give him lah. He already have liao." I consider this grammatical. The tonal nature of Singlish immediately alerts my mind about which mindset to use and what to concentrate on. Singlish borrows many tonal aspects from Chinese, with some words, the particles especially, having fixed tones. I use this to keep track of the conversation rather than being attentive to inflection. But if I hear "I don't think he have it" in a standard English context, with no Singlish toning (but perhaps in a Singaporean accent), I will be thrown off. It is not because it is unexpected -- sometimes I switch from standard English to Singlish mid-sentence -- but because it is simply erroneous and not Singlish at all, since Singlish would specify a strong tone for the unconjugated "have" and alert me to switch to a Singlish mindset.
I love Singlish, but I cannot stand errors. Often I have seen errors in advertisements, notices and even in the speech of government ministers. I would love an ad in Singlish (take the TalkingCock in Parliament ad) - because that would use Singlish grammar, and hence, would be grammatical. But all of a sudden, I can be reading things that are obviously written in the standard English register when a gross error occurs. New oxymetabolic-regeneration whatever: we guarantee that it will helps you lose weight, gains energy and feels great.
And so with this long explanation I have created the grammar error series, to discuss such errors because I find them increasingly hard to take in Singaporean speech. Basically I want to introduce the series and define a scope of this blog, and also have something to head my categories with. Yet at the same time I want to say that my harping on Singaporeans' errors is not the same as harping on Singlish. I want to make a distinction between errors in English and customs in Singlish.
P.S. No one should even dare suggest to me that the use of "grammar error" is grammatically incorrect. Bet you grammar nazis (only trying to be show-offs) are saying that it should be "grammatical error", right? This blog is for real linguistics and not pointless grammar nazism, man. They are both interchangeable.
"-al" is an adjectival suffix from Latin; an equivalent native (Anglo-Saxon) English suffix would be "-en", e.g. as in "wooden" and "golden" (and also seen in its role in strong verb participles like taken, forsaken and beholden, as well as the sense of "endow with the properties of", e.g. as in "harden", kind of like -ify and -ise). However, modern English is an analytic language, and has something called the null morpheme which allows nouns to be used as adjectives without the need for derivation markers (such as "-al").
Just so happens that English, due to the Norman invasion, has multiple ways to accomplish the same grammatical function. For example, there are two main ways to show the possessive in English. One can either use the apostrophe-s clitic ('s) or use the word "of"; the first one was inherited from Old English, the second technique was done in imitation of French de.
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