Saturday, 10 March 2007
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.
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
whispers of the night
Speaking is forbidden!
I remember this phrase, one that was Not in the English language, But in one of my most hated — yet dearest — tongues of my heart.
haikraskh maugk aik [skau] !
(there be no talking [amongst yourselves] !)
The philosophy was simple. Restrict the use of langauge, Restrict collaboration, Restrict thought, Exert greater control. That old Safir-Whorf hypothesis. Orwell writes in 1984 —
Until they become conscious They will never rebel, And until after they have rebelled They cannot become conscious.
Perhaps Such a linguistic view is true somewhat. Culture feeds into language and shapes it, But language passes on culture and shapes it in the other direction too. It is somewhat like a cycle.
But if a language regime were to enforce their own elements onto the cycle, and prevent the previous generation from Passing on their culture, They could engineer their own culture as They wished. It only requires breaking the ties between parent and child ....
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
It was a hated tongue, a constructed tongue. It was a tongue between slave and master. I am still uncertain about its origins. Perhaps They borrowed elements from somewhere, or hired linguists. It obviously has strong Romance links, You say. But Those come in only later.
It was a language Taught for the purposes of giving orders, work and indoctrination. They seemed to make some words Sound hateful by pronunciation alone, or At least sound as cacophonic as It could be for them.
haikraskh maugk aik skau!
How unpleasant was the word haikraskh! We found it as horrible as They hoped We would have found it. It was a word as cacophonic to the ear as Hearing the feedback that Comes from an ill-set microphone. They wished to discourage us from Speaking amongst ourselves. We had to speak and report to our superiors of course — it was seen as a necessary evil — but it was absolutely Forbidden in the sleeping quarters, the hraml. The language was constructed for the relationship between superior and inferior, not between peers. The power of the collective was organised under overseers who Directed our labours without Us ever needing communicating with each other.
Why did they feel the need Prohibiting speaking if They had already taken the appropriate steps to prevent us from collaborating with each other? It only requires Disabling the dangerous words, and Sowing the seeds of isolation. Frederick Douglass was forbidden from Reading and Writing, and the slaves of history have always been forbidden from Assembling in large groups, Even just for Speaking casually amongst themselves, but here We were being refused the right to language!
But perhaps It was something they recognised. If you leave children alone, They will spontaneously form their own language and create their own words. I believe They realised this danger. This prohibition was not to merely prevent Us from Collaborating, but a precaution to prevent Us from ever even Forming such a language, so that We would never have been able to form a framework to even understand each other.
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
It was a dear tongue. I remember the whispers of the night, the passed on tidbits of information, and the accompanying giggles that Struggled to be suppressed for fear of discovery. The hand signals, the burst of sounds, the realisations, the resonance of silent laughs. Invented words that caught on like wildfire in the night. These are children's talents, and For good reason. I realise now, that This is what ensures the resiliency of culture.
That hated word, haikraskh, eventually became shortened, caricatured and made fun of, in a manner somewhat of the dimunitives — diapies, bobo, zizou, ti-di — That are formed by children for their own reasons. At first It was a joke word — haikrasi — But it caught on as the normal word amongst ourselves Because I guess It was more pleasant to pronounce. The word went through several more cycles — haikasi, aikasi, ikasi. To talk about talking itself came up often in our conversations of the night, Precisely because talking itself was forbidden. But the original cacophonic intent of the original word had been all but neutralised.
The new affectionate ending -i even eventually became a part of our new noun-declension system, Where none had been designated before by our superiors. Haikraskh took another direction and This version became haikraskhi, a word That eventually acquired a meaning of "slanderous gossip" and "meaningless talk", Aided by its harsh sound and our superiors' unwitting stigma. Negative particle maulk "corrected" itself to myok. The original forbidding command would now say in our new dialect:
ikasi myok aik skau!
Not that You would need to say this new version, of course. I learned that it was only much later that They wisened up to our argot, And by that time It was already too rampant to suppress. For the time being You had to use the constructed speech They had assigned to you whenever You spoke to them, and as We found more and more oppurtunities to use our new speech, The original speech only became used in limited contexts, Acquiring a stuffy air and associations with work. Our superiors had their own even stuffier language — the English language — That became elite to us, and that We envied, hated, coveted, held in contempt, admired, and detested, all at once. But you see, I write in it now.
Yet, there were times where We had to tell each other Not to speak now — The time was not right, or It was too dangerous. They punished whisperers violently, though They might not have deciphered a dialect yet. Then it would have been prudent to say:
mi ikasai yok ska!
Where ikasi had been turned into a sort of a verb form, and it was friendlier to break up myok into two parts before and after the word. Why? We were speaking as equals, not from superior to inferior. They had only assigned the word skau to speak to us, whether we were one or many, (And we had to use ovi to address them from inferior to superior), But ska eventually developed — Perhaps due to the whims of someone — as a singular pronoun. But even that too, would be replaced completely.
I will say that I was not the part of the first pioneering generation. Many of these developments were related to me second-hand. They theorised that Once they had suppressed the language ability of the original children, They could kidnap additional children with existing language skills and assimilate them. They would too lose their ability, or at least unable to use them, Because no one else would understand them. If they spoke a language, It would be different from all the others.
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
I was part of this successive generation. I too, had my original native language, a creole of Esperanto That has become another prestige language in this day and age, And it was ironically (Compared to the original goals of the parent language) not understood by many others outside my original community, an immigrant community in itself. But you see, Once we had a base language, It was easy to get things going, And it became a matter of acquisition of langauge by immersion.
Our superiors would brief us on our new language in the day. Ma — work — was the simplest word to acquire (perhaps intentionally) And we learned that very quickly under the threat of discipline that made many meanings seem self-evident.
But in the whispers of the night, our peers would vigourously interrogate each other. Somehow it caught on that The new arrivals had their own different words for things. Even the first generation, Who might have not remembered their original country, seemed to have an instinct about the outside world. First, it was necessary to pick up the interrogatives and the demonstratives, and their meanings soon became clear.
Hwa aik a, ska?
"What is this?" would we ask each other with wide eyes, signifying interrogation. We soon stepped it up regularly to mean, What call you this? What call you your ikasi? Kqhosa, huayu, al-arabiyyah, español ...
The phrases themselves started to use borrowed words. The huayu demonstrative na was more convenient to use than finger-pointing and the make-do grunt of an a. The !qc clicks of khoekhoe became popular, especially as oft-used interrogative pronouns, Because it was easier to mistake the clicks as capricious childish toyings of the tongue rather than forbidden speech.
We fell in love with the concept of liaison. I do not know where exactly we got it from. We loved the feeling of our consonants rolling off from one word to the next, while We began to abhor two connecting vowels, filling the space with liaison consonants that corresponded with the last consonant uttered, even If they were clicks.
A large bulk of of us spoke some form of Romance, And they became popular as a unified set of loanwords despite the highly significant differences. We were children deprived of language, and to rectify this We borrowed everything we could, We made our speech one of the richest languages possible.
Many of the Romance pronouns even replaced the originals, Though still used by our superiors, because of the unpleasant stigma associated with the old ones. Hateful skau became replaced by vo, And ska became replaced by tiw. Ovi only remained because of its prestige aspect. Ove, Which had been purely exclusive as a plural first person used by superiors to refer to themselves, Was replaced by noee and noa for inclusive and exclusive we respectively. Hak by mwi, yit by el, zit by loe. The inferior pronoun class system had been effectively replaced by words of Romance origin, while The superior pronoun class system remained as names to call other people That were either insulting and exalting based on the context and type of pronoun. Effectively, Our interrogative phrases became based on:
!qca !k'aik na, twi?
I remember the whispers of the night. I remember the tongue I hated, the tongue I loved. I remember How our superiors became amused at us children, Who would accidentally (more and more often) use liaison and the dialectical -i declension while speaking to them (wowa y'ovi egawi?, want milord water?) , Thinking it was a linguistic fault on our part due to inability of pronunciation, rather than a slip That revealed our existing dialect. I remember How we were children Who would not yield So easily to those Who would rob us of language. I remember how we ignored Haikraskh maugk aik! And found out that
Ikasi z'iyet liw, aik.
For speaking will make you Free.
I remember this phrase, one that was Not in the English language, But in one of my most hated — yet dearest — tongues of my heart.
haikraskh maugk aik [skau] !
(there be no talking [amongst yourselves] !)
The philosophy was simple. Restrict the use of langauge, Restrict collaboration, Restrict thought, Exert greater control. That old Safir-Whorf hypothesis. Orwell writes in 1984 —
Until they become conscious They will never rebel, And until after they have rebelled They cannot become conscious.
Perhaps Such a linguistic view is true somewhat. Culture feeds into language and shapes it, But language passes on culture and shapes it in the other direction too. It is somewhat like a cycle.
But if a language regime were to enforce their own elements onto the cycle, and prevent the previous generation from Passing on their culture, They could engineer their own culture as They wished. It only requires breaking the ties between parent and child ....
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
It was a hated tongue, a constructed tongue. It was a tongue between slave and master. I am still uncertain about its origins. Perhaps They borrowed elements from somewhere, or hired linguists. It obviously has strong Romance links, You say. But Those come in only later.
It was a language Taught for the purposes of giving orders, work and indoctrination. They seemed to make some words Sound hateful by pronunciation alone, or At least sound as cacophonic as It could be for them.
haikraskh maugk aik skau!
How unpleasant was the word haikraskh! We found it as horrible as They hoped We would have found it. It was a word as cacophonic to the ear as Hearing the feedback that Comes from an ill-set microphone. They wished to discourage us from Speaking amongst ourselves. We had to speak and report to our superiors of course — it was seen as a necessary evil — but it was absolutely Forbidden in the sleeping quarters, the hraml. The language was constructed for the relationship between superior and inferior, not between peers. The power of the collective was organised under overseers who Directed our labours without Us ever needing communicating with each other.
Why did they feel the need Prohibiting speaking if They had already taken the appropriate steps to prevent us from collaborating with each other? It only requires Disabling the dangerous words, and Sowing the seeds of isolation. Frederick Douglass was forbidden from Reading and Writing, and the slaves of history have always been forbidden from Assembling in large groups, Even just for Speaking casually amongst themselves, but here We were being refused the right to language!
But perhaps It was something they recognised. If you leave children alone, They will spontaneously form their own language and create their own words. I believe They realised this danger. This prohibition was not to merely prevent Us from Collaborating, but a precaution to prevent Us from ever even Forming such a language, so that We would never have been able to form a framework to even understand each other.
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
It was a dear tongue. I remember the whispers of the night, the passed on tidbits of information, and the accompanying giggles that Struggled to be suppressed for fear of discovery. The hand signals, the burst of sounds, the realisations, the resonance of silent laughs. Invented words that caught on like wildfire in the night. These are children's talents, and For good reason. I realise now, that This is what ensures the resiliency of culture.
That hated word, haikraskh, eventually became shortened, caricatured and made fun of, in a manner somewhat of the dimunitives — diapies, bobo, zizou, ti-di — That are formed by children for their own reasons. At first It was a joke word — haikrasi — But it caught on as the normal word amongst ourselves Because I guess It was more pleasant to pronounce. The word went through several more cycles — haikasi, aikasi, ikasi. To talk about talking itself came up often in our conversations of the night, Precisely because talking itself was forbidden. But the original cacophonic intent of the original word had been all but neutralised.
The new affectionate ending -i even eventually became a part of our new noun-declension system, Where none had been designated before by our superiors. Haikraskh took another direction and This version became haikraskhi, a word That eventually acquired a meaning of "slanderous gossip" and "meaningless talk", Aided by its harsh sound and our superiors' unwitting stigma. Negative particle maulk "corrected" itself to myok. The original forbidding command would now say in our new dialect:
ikasi myok aik skau!
Not that You would need to say this new version, of course. I learned that it was only much later that They wisened up to our argot, And by that time It was already too rampant to suppress. For the time being You had to use the constructed speech They had assigned to you whenever You spoke to them, and as We found more and more oppurtunities to use our new speech, The original speech only became used in limited contexts, Acquiring a stuffy air and associations with work. Our superiors had their own even stuffier language — the English language — That became elite to us, and that We envied, hated, coveted, held in contempt, admired, and detested, all at once. But you see, I write in it now.
Yet, there were times where We had to tell each other Not to speak now — The time was not right, or It was too dangerous. They punished whisperers violently, though They might not have deciphered a dialect yet. Then it would have been prudent to say:
mi ikasai yok ska!
Where ikasi had been turned into a sort of a verb form, and it was friendlier to break up myok into two parts before and after the word. Why? We were speaking as equals, not from superior to inferior. They had only assigned the word skau to speak to us, whether we were one or many, (And we had to use ovi to address them from inferior to superior), But ska eventually developed — Perhaps due to the whims of someone — as a singular pronoun. But even that too, would be replaced completely.
I will say that I was not the part of the first pioneering generation. Many of these developments were related to me second-hand. They theorised that Once they had suppressed the language ability of the original children, They could kidnap additional children with existing language skills and assimilate them. They would too lose their ability, or at least unable to use them, Because no one else would understand them. If they spoke a language, It would be different from all the others.
But we were children, and We would not yield So easily.
I was part of this successive generation. I too, had my original native language, a creole of Esperanto That has become another prestige language in this day and age, And it was ironically (Compared to the original goals of the parent language) not understood by many others outside my original community, an immigrant community in itself. But you see, Once we had a base language, It was easy to get things going, And it became a matter of acquisition of langauge by immersion.
Our superiors would brief us on our new language in the day. Ma — work — was the simplest word to acquire (perhaps intentionally) And we learned that very quickly under the threat of discipline that made many meanings seem self-evident.
But in the whispers of the night, our peers would vigourously interrogate each other. Somehow it caught on that The new arrivals had their own different words for things. Even the first generation, Who might have not remembered their original country, seemed to have an instinct about the outside world. First, it was necessary to pick up the interrogatives and the demonstratives, and their meanings soon became clear.
Hwa aik a, ska?
"What is this?" would we ask each other with wide eyes, signifying interrogation. We soon stepped it up regularly to mean, What call you this? What call you your ikasi? Kqhosa, huayu, al-arabiyyah, español ...
The phrases themselves started to use borrowed words. The huayu demonstrative na was more convenient to use than finger-pointing and the make-do grunt of an a. The !qc clicks of khoekhoe became popular, especially as oft-used interrogative pronouns, Because it was easier to mistake the clicks as capricious childish toyings of the tongue rather than forbidden speech.
We fell in love with the concept of liaison. I do not know where exactly we got it from. We loved the feeling of our consonants rolling off from one word to the next, while We began to abhor two connecting vowels, filling the space with liaison consonants that corresponded with the last consonant uttered, even If they were clicks.
A large bulk of of us spoke some form of Romance, And they became popular as a unified set of loanwords despite the highly significant differences. We were children deprived of language, and to rectify this We borrowed everything we could, We made our speech one of the richest languages possible.
Many of the Romance pronouns even replaced the originals, Though still used by our superiors, because of the unpleasant stigma associated with the old ones. Hateful skau became replaced by vo, And ska became replaced by tiw. Ovi only remained because of its prestige aspect. Ove, Which had been purely exclusive as a plural first person used by superiors to refer to themselves, Was replaced by noee and noa for inclusive and exclusive we respectively. Hak by mwi, yit by el, zit by loe. The inferior pronoun class system had been effectively replaced by words of Romance origin, while The superior pronoun class system remained as names to call other people That were either insulting and exalting based on the context and type of pronoun. Effectively, Our interrogative phrases became based on:
!qca !k'aik na, twi?
I remember the whispers of the night. I remember the tongue I hated, the tongue I loved. I remember How our superiors became amused at us children, Who would accidentally (more and more often) use liaison and the dialectical -i declension while speaking to them (wowa y'ovi egawi?, want milord water?) , Thinking it was a linguistic fault on our part due to inability of pronunciation, rather than a slip That revealed our existing dialect. I remember How we were children Who would not yield So easily to those Who would rob us of language. I remember how we ignored Haikraskh maugk aik! And found out that
Ikasi z'iyet liw, aik.
For speaking will make you Free.
Monday, 5 February 2007
about this blog
o syuijai de zse blok-na ...
au sujet de ce blog ...
I suppose I should give an explanation for this blog. I set this up so I could experiment with language and linguistics separate from my personal blogging, and will accomodate a large variety of posts as they deal with culture and language.
I should also clarify that Isrekas is a character separate from myself. My native language is English - his isn't. ;-) Rather, he is in fact part of a story set indefinitely into the future, where several changes have occurred in regard to what and how people speak.
As one may have already suspected, the strange language occasionally written in has been constructed for the story. As a hint - which too may also have been suspected - it is a creole fictionally based off a Romance language, several in fact, with changes to the sound and writing systems, with strong influences from non-European languages.
That's enough background. I plan to publish non-English essays here, in order not to clutter things in my other blogs where people would rather not do linguistic detective work. I am passionately interested in linguistics, and one of the other purposes of this blog is to discuss linguistics and languages and get people, especially Singaporeans, interested in these fields. Awareness of language is closely linked with awareness of culture. Please, leave comments!
au sujet de ce blog ...
I suppose I should give an explanation for this blog. I set this up so I could experiment with language and linguistics separate from my personal blogging, and will accomodate a large variety of posts as they deal with culture and language.
I should also clarify that Isrekas is a character separate from myself. My native language is English - his isn't. ;-) Rather, he is in fact part of a story set indefinitely into the future, where several changes have occurred in regard to what and how people speak.
As one may have already suspected, the strange language occasionally written in has been constructed for the story. As a hint - which too may also have been suspected - it is a creole fictionally based off a Romance language, several in fact, with changes to the sound and writing systems, with strong influences from non-European languages.
That's enough background. I plan to publish non-English essays here, in order not to clutter things in my other blogs where people would rather not do linguistic detective work. I am passionately interested in linguistics, and one of the other purposes of this blog is to discuss linguistics and languages and get people, especially Singaporeans, interested in these fields. Awareness of language is closely linked with awareness of culture. Please, leave comments!
Sunday, 21 January 2007
scratching the surface
aikriti t'aikwi , mai m'aikriti t'aisripsi !qklo ...
Écrire c'est être; mais écrire c'est également griffoner ...
It seems that Every great inspection must be initiated by an inquiry. I do not like being bounded by ritual, But on the other hand there be some peoples who do them and fail realising their true value. Let us proceed to asking, What is writing?
What is the intention of asking such a question? How is this not a meaningless, clichaied, pedantic question? But such a question becomes inevitable, For the nature of writing has changed radically over the two or three centuries or so, breaking away from ancient tradition, If not the last few decades. We in this day and age often neglect remembering the humble origins of writing: Scratching in stone; in wet clay; on wood; It is only after that that We come to the prestigious papersheet.
It is necessary to inquire Because some people are saying that The current writing of the modern world is not writing at all. The people of the current generation these days are not used to true writing, Allege the pedants and the old conpreservatists. It is a simple matter of convenience Of eyescrolling the iwer, assertively boasting into the voiskrip, and handtyping into the keybot for solidarity. The schoolchildren complain of the tediousness and the pointlessness Of actually manually handwriting anything more than a 200 word functional composition. A handwritten poem, never mind a draft of a novel, short story or even an argument, is a rarefind these days.
There is some partial concern from my perspective, Because handwriting lends a great deal of rote, association and feel to one's sense of language. Handwriting is tedious and ritualistic, repeating curves, strokes and characters over and over again. It is precisely Because handwriting brings one pain, tedium, dolour and calloused palms that One has a strong grasp of the concepts of a language's graphemes, phonemes and lexemes; A strong command in general. Each of these emics holds a special (painful) place in our hearts. Every time we recall a word or a sense, we remember our pain and passion associated with each one, or at least its constituent emics. Our internal yearnings then transfer to words very easily.
But perhaps i think It is possible that We have identified the wrong process. Dolour may be necessary, But perhaps it is handwriting is not the only thing that is responsible for such dolour.
The origins of this very prestigious Latin alphabet That this very writing is being written in are derived from heiroglyphs, where The graphemes were the morphemes and also the phonemes, where one symbol represented an entire concept. The philosophy of the writing system would be very much different, and Yet their command of language should not seem to suffer. Can one attach the semantic feel of "-ism", "-ed" or "yearn" to a single consonant, or While drawing a bird? Other scripts have similar histories. And Of the Chinese scripts? Or Of its fluid prehistoric form where Each character had not yet been tied down in tradition to a particular specific meaning?
The most obvious rebuttal of course, is How did our ancestors tie down their command of their language without writing if writing is so crucial to mastery of a language? It has been noted as a general trend that The less modern the language, The more complex and highly inflected it is, If not polysynthetic. Surely a highly inflected language requires skillful command.
I should offer the caveat that I do not mean "less modern" being derogatory, But rather that Truely new languages, Such as one spontaneously formed by children with mute parents for example, tend to be highly inflected, and that They tend to lose their inflection as They age. Much of this process has been lost to the ages so I concede that This cannot be verified concretely via any comperative method, But this is a suspicion that I hold. New creoles are indeed new languages in the general sense, But they draw their grammars from older languages and hence do not begin the process all over again.
Many of the world's supposedly oldest written languages may be in fact relatively new to the highly inflected languages That never had a writing system Until linguists decided to romanise their speech for study. After all, The written record of history is very limited, and The origins of each language do not simply disappear Because the comparative method proves insufficient to discover their secrets. Furthermore, many influences, new devices and advances do not necessarily pass along genetically, But get transmitted areally. The rapid breakup of dialect continuums in history followed by a long period of stablisation may be explained by the languages that were spoken in the area Before the dialect's superparent extended influence over the area. In the process of assimilation and colonisation, The native population's original native language may become extinct, But it does not simply disappear, and often it bears influence on the new language that arrives in the area; But often this aspect is overlooked.
Now that This is dealt with, let us return to the question, What indeed, is writing? If we restrict it to the sole definition of handwriting, and naively assume the premises of this era's self-appointed language guardians and concerned conservatives, then Writing actually seems like a very trivial art. It cannot possibly be the sole fashion in which One acquires command and mastery of language. How one acquires command and passion, or the fashion in which One expresses oneself often changes with technology. Yet, there must be something That is far more transcendent. Perhaps it is that We cannot acquire our sense of a language again, once we have mastered it. We therefore cannot experience What it is That replaces the dolour yet passion that handwriting gives in the technology of iwers and voiskrips. But i have this suspicion that an analoguous process occurs.
Though we cannot master a language once We have mastered it, Can we not remaster it? Though we cannot learn to speak as a native speaker once We have already spoken as one, Can we not explore what lies behind our reflex sense of command.
Why do i ask, What is writing? For, English is not my native tongue, and I only write this writing in it, not for the prestige as some do, but Because i wish to express in a convenient medium As writing in others would make it hard to distribute. I did not even acquire my sense of language in the normal manner. But in fact i think, Neither does anyone. Arguably i have no native language, But arguably i do. But in fact i think, is that not the case for everyone?
I write to express, and That i think, is what writing is. There is a distinction from mere speaking. Is there not a difference between voicing one's thesis via the voiskip and merely chatting on the phone? But as I see now, There is one characteristic that now becomes apparent to me That defines writing. That is the yearn of building; to construct.
I am isrekas.
Écrire c'est être; mais écrire c'est également griffoner ...
It seems that Every great inspection must be initiated by an inquiry. I do not like being bounded by ritual, But on the other hand there be some peoples who do them and fail realising their true value. Let us proceed to asking, What is writing?
What is the intention of asking such a question? How is this not a meaningless, clichaied, pedantic question? But such a question becomes inevitable, For the nature of writing has changed radically over the two or three centuries or so, breaking away from ancient tradition, If not the last few decades. We in this day and age often neglect remembering the humble origins of writing: Scratching in stone; in wet clay; on wood; It is only after that that We come to the prestigious papersheet.
It is necessary to inquire Because some people are saying that The current writing of the modern world is not writing at all. The people of the current generation these days are not used to true writing, Allege the pedants and the old conpreservatists. It is a simple matter of convenience Of eyescrolling the iwer, assertively boasting into the voiskrip, and handtyping into the keybot for solidarity. The schoolchildren complain of the tediousness and the pointlessness Of actually manually handwriting anything more than a 200 word functional composition. A handwritten poem, never mind a draft of a novel, short story or even an argument, is a rarefind these days.
There is some partial concern from my perspective, Because handwriting lends a great deal of rote, association and feel to one's sense of language. Handwriting is tedious and ritualistic, repeating curves, strokes and characters over and over again. It is precisely Because handwriting brings one pain, tedium, dolour and calloused palms that One has a strong grasp of the concepts of a language's graphemes, phonemes and lexemes; A strong command in general. Each of these emics holds a special (painful) place in our hearts. Every time we recall a word or a sense, we remember our pain and passion associated with each one, or at least its constituent emics. Our internal yearnings then transfer to words very easily.
But perhaps i think It is possible that We have identified the wrong process. Dolour may be necessary, But perhaps it is handwriting is not the only thing that is responsible for such dolour.
The origins of this very prestigious Latin alphabet That this very writing is being written in are derived from heiroglyphs, where The graphemes were the morphemes and also the phonemes, where one symbol represented an entire concept. The philosophy of the writing system would be very much different, and Yet their command of language should not seem to suffer. Can one attach the semantic feel of "-ism", "-ed" or "yearn" to a single consonant, or While drawing a bird? Other scripts have similar histories. And Of the Chinese scripts? Or Of its fluid prehistoric form where Each character had not yet been tied down in tradition to a particular specific meaning?
The most obvious rebuttal of course, is How did our ancestors tie down their command of their language without writing if writing is so crucial to mastery of a language? It has been noted as a general trend that The less modern the language, The more complex and highly inflected it is, If not polysynthetic. Surely a highly inflected language requires skillful command.
I should offer the caveat that I do not mean "less modern" being derogatory, But rather that Truely new languages, Such as one spontaneously formed by children with mute parents for example, tend to be highly inflected, and that They tend to lose their inflection as They age. Much of this process has been lost to the ages so I concede that This cannot be verified concretely via any comperative method, But this is a suspicion that I hold. New creoles are indeed new languages in the general sense, But they draw their grammars from older languages and hence do not begin the process all over again.
Many of the world's supposedly oldest written languages may be in fact relatively new to the highly inflected languages That never had a writing system Until linguists decided to romanise their speech for study. After all, The written record of history is very limited, and The origins of each language do not simply disappear Because the comparative method proves insufficient to discover their secrets. Furthermore, many influences, new devices and advances do not necessarily pass along genetically, But get transmitted areally. The rapid breakup of dialect continuums in history followed by a long period of stablisation may be explained by the languages that were spoken in the area Before the dialect's superparent extended influence over the area. In the process of assimilation and colonisation, The native population's original native language may become extinct, But it does not simply disappear, and often it bears influence on the new language that arrives in the area; But often this aspect is overlooked.
Now that This is dealt with, let us return to the question, What indeed, is writing? If we restrict it to the sole definition of handwriting, and naively assume the premises of this era's self-appointed language guardians and concerned conservatives, then Writing actually seems like a very trivial art. It cannot possibly be the sole fashion in which One acquires command and mastery of language. How one acquires command and passion, or the fashion in which One expresses oneself often changes with technology. Yet, there must be something That is far more transcendent. Perhaps it is that We cannot acquire our sense of a language again, once we have mastered it. We therefore cannot experience What it is That replaces the dolour yet passion that handwriting gives in the technology of iwers and voiskrips. But i have this suspicion that an analoguous process occurs.
Though we cannot master a language once We have mastered it, Can we not remaster it? Though we cannot learn to speak as a native speaker once We have already spoken as one, Can we not explore what lies behind our reflex sense of command.
Why do i ask, What is writing? For, English is not my native tongue, and I only write this writing in it, not for the prestige as some do, but Because i wish to express in a convenient medium As writing in others would make it hard to distribute. I did not even acquire my sense of language in the normal manner. But in fact i think, Neither does anyone. Arguably i have no native language, But arguably i do. But in fact i think, is that not the case for everyone?
I write to express, and That i think, is what writing is. There is a distinction from mere speaking. Is there not a difference between voicing one's thesis via the voiskip and merely chatting on the phone? But as I see now, There is one characteristic that now becomes apparent to me That defines writing. That is the yearn of building; to construct.
I am isrekas.
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