haute couture

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.

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.

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.