Language Trainers Blog

Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is starting this week. The biggest celebration of the Chinese calendar, it is a time for families to get together and ring in a prosperous new year. Many of the traditions associated with the festival have grown up around words that sound like each other. The Chinese are big on wordplay, which is totally fine by me. For example, it is common to eat fish and leave some for the new year, because the Chinese word for fish, 鱼 (yu2),has the same pronunciation as the word for surplus, 余. So if you say the phrase 年年有余兔 (nian2 nian2 you3 yu2), meaning ‘may there be surpluses every year’, it sounds exactly like 年年有鱼, ‘may there be fish every year’.

There’s also been a really interesting crossover of these double meanings using English and Chinese. A couple of years ago it was the year of the ox, or 牛 (niu2, which sounds a lot like the English word ‘new’). Greetings of ‘Happy 牛 Year’ abounded. Now that it is almost the year of the rabbit (兔, or tu2), I’ve seen ‘Happy New Year 兔 you’. I think it’s very creative and linguistically interesting. I wonder what people will come up with for the other zodiac animals!

Google’s NGram Viewer allows anybody to create quick graphs showing word and phrase frequencies in books going back to 1800. The tool searches a database of words from over 5 million  books, and you can filter for American English, British English, English fiction, Chinese, French, German, and Russian.

Although it has its restrictions, such as not giving us accurate information about spoken usage, it’s a great analysis tool. One of the Wall Street Journal’s blogs did a Christmas analysis to see whether the PC phrase ‘Happy Holidays’ has infiltrated the world of books. A quick graph generation later, and it seems that ‘Merry Christmas’ is still way out in front. It also seems that around 1900, people started capitalising the ‘merry’.

When I filtered for British English only, it seems that ‘Happy Holidays’ is almost never used. The tool is case sensitive, though, so there has been some use of ‘happy holidays’, but these could have been in more general sentences, rather than as a greeting. In British English, ‘h/Happy Christmas’ is much more common than in American English, and ‘happy Christmas’ was almost as popular as ‘Merry Christmas’ at a few points in time. It seems that the use of ‘happy Christmas’ is on the decline recently, though.

In other Christmas-related news, while Father Christmas and Santa Claus are about equally popular in British literature (and both much more popular than the Easter Bunny), American literature uses Santa Claus almost exclusively (with Father Christmas being about as common as the Easter Bunny).

A few days ago I stumbled across a Christmas-themed quiz about misheard Christmas carol lyrics. I usually start listening to Christmas music (everything from choral to Mariah Carey to Run DMC) as soon as December starts, so I thought I’d give the quiz a go.

Some of the Christmas mondegreens were pretty entertaining, but I got stalled on one which I didn’t actually know the answer to: Troll the agents you’ll tie Carol…

After realising I didn’t know the first word to the line (the rest being ‘the ancient yuletide carol’), I guessed at toll (bells are quite Christmassy after all).

It turns out that the word is actually troll. Not the ugly guys who live under fairytale bridges, or the flourescent-haired naked ’80s toys, or a pesky internet lurker, of course. Back in times of yore, to troll meant ‘to sing or utter in a full, rolling voice’ and also ‘to sing in the manner of a round or catch’. Makes sense. There’s even another blog post about it (including some more explanation about Deck the Halls).

Since a lot of Christmas carols are traditional (meaning old), I guess we don’t think too hard about their meanings these days. I do find it fun to learn new (old) words, though, and am quite pleased to say that I knew what all the other correct lyrics were. Also, Dawn we now our day of peril is my new favourite mondegreen.

I recently read a great article from the Boston Globe about the demise of the simple you’re welcome. Granted, the author possibly has even higher expectations of people than I do, but she brings up a good point.  When did it become the norm for people to reply to a genuine thank you with a flippant no problem, or an equally dismissive no worries (or the Scottish nae bother)?

Etiquette is changing faster than I’d like these days, but I suppose I will admit that you’re welcome seems a bit formal for things passing someone a coffee cup.  In business dealings and customer service sectors, though, I think it’s getting bad.  I don’t want to be served by a waiter who says ‘no prob‘ when I thank him for his service.  Nor do I want to do business with someone who behaves as if we are close friends.

I think the worst for me though is that I communicate with people a lot over IM (instant messaging) channels, and instead of you’re welcome, or even no problem, I get the short form np.  Oh, that was np, but it’s clearly a big p for me to write out full words.  But anyway, that’s an entirely different rant.

Do you feel the same way about the decline of good manners?  Or is it a natural progression towards general casualness in human interactions?

My humblest apologies for choosing such a whiny topic for my last post of the year! My genuine thanks for reading; I hope it wasn’t too much of a problem!

Full article: Boston Globe.
Image: Marlie Kanoi.

Speaking of swearing, a study published last month has shown that it might actually be good for us.

Although swearing is looked down upon in polite company, researchers have begun to investigate why it’s such a common response to hurting ourselves.  A study that asked college students to hold their hands in icy cold water found that those who were told to repeat an expletive of their choice could withstand the pain longer than those who chanted a neutral word.

One suggested reason for this is that swearing is related to a ‘fight or flight‘ reflex triggered deep in the brain, and may be associated with startling or attempting to intimidate an attacker.

But cursing is more than just aggression, explains Timothy Jay, a psychologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who has studied our use of profanities for the past 35 years. “It allows us to vent or express anger, joy, surprise, happiness,” he remarks. “It’s like the horn on your car, you can do a lot of things with that, it’s built into you.”

In extreme cases, the hotline to the brain’s emotional system can make swearing harmful, as when road rage escalates into physical violence. But when the hammer slips, some well-chosen swearwords might help dull the pain.

I am quite fond of the car horn analogy.  A personal theory, too, is that we need to get attention when we’re injured.  At the very least, letting people know you’ve just stubbed your toe might get a sympathetic ‘awww’, which always makes you feel a little better.

A caveat mentioned in the article is that the more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone’s pain.

Full article from Scientific American.

Besides the most basic terms in a language (greetings, numbers, how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no), swear words seem to be some of the most readily-learned phrases in foreign languages.  Just the other night, I met a Mandarin speaker whose Cantonese lexicon contained the words for ‘hello’, the numbers 1 to 10, and various ways to insult other people.  He was in the army in a Cantonese-speaking province, so this isn’t entirely unsurprising.

Why is there such a need to learn these words?  Perhaps it’s because learning other languages is sometimes so frustrating that learners want to express this.  I think it’s more that, especially in groups of younger people, swearing in a casual way is a way to connect with others, show that you are comfortable with them, and have a bit of a laugh.  As long as you choose your audience well, and don’t have conversations consisting entirely of swear words and rude gestures, I think it’s acceptable.

I’ve also found that people sometimes swear in other languages when it is inappropriate to swear in their own.  Even though many people know what the words mean, they seem to lose their potency in other languages.  For example, I’ve heard quite a few people say the German word Scheiße (scheisse) instead of the English counterpart, shit.  This has happened in social situations as well as in the workplace.

For a user-generated list of foreign swear words and phrases, have a look at YouSwear.com.  They have phrases in languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and they even have a Swear Phrase of the Day.

Do you have any other examples of people’s fantastic swearing abilities in foreign languages?

Image from Sianuska at Etsy.com.  ‘Old Lady’ is a foreign language sometimes, surely?

I found an article on Examiner.com giving some great advice for would-be travellers to non-English speaking countries.  It is obviously aimed at American natives, but pretty much all of the advice can be transferred to English speakers from other places, or speakers of any language going to a country where they speak a different one.  It even works for people who speak the same language, but different regional variations.  For example, I don’t use the term red eye to talk about a late-night flight, either.

If you are travelling in the near future, a lot of this advice would be useful to bear in mind:

* Make every attempt to at least acknowledge the mother language. Learning to say even a few words will indicate that you respect the native tongue.

* Do not use expressions or words that have recently come into the vernacular in the United States. For instance, saying you are “out of the loop” will probably put you there if you use that expression with a colleague in Colombia and letting someone know you are giving him or her a “head’s up” will probably just cause confusion in Korea.

* Watch your references. Certain words Americans say every day in conversation may be too abstract for a foreign audience. Almost all of us who were raised stateside are familiar with taking “a red eye” but there probably isn’t a single soul in Saigon who knows that expression to mean that he or she will be flying during the night.

* Repeat yourself. Being redundant may be the only way to ensure you are getting your message across so keep in mind that restating a concept by choosing other words to offer the same information twice is not only OK, it is almost always a good idea.

* Avoid speaking in a monotone. By raising or lowering your voice to make a point you may be helping to make yourself understood to someone whose command of English isn’t the same as your own.

* Watch your audience for any indication that you have lost them. For instance, if you are confronted by a glazed expression or two, you may want to back up and then slow down to keep communication flowing.

* Don’t continue talking, wondering if you have made yourself perfectly clear. Instead, ask directly if you sense you have lost your thread of communication and don’t take yes for an answer. Instead, dig deep by asking pertinent questions relating to the topic to make sure you are being understood.

+ Don’t be fooled by nods or smiles; these may not be signs that what you are saying has been understood, but rather that you are talking to a polite, if very confused, audience.

The original post also has links to advice for behaving acceptably in specific countries.  Check it out.

I’ve always found it interesting that some words and phrases, even when they have almost identical dictionary definitions, are interpreted differently by different groups of people, and even different individuals.  Sometimes I am sure that a word means a certain thing (because it’s always been used that way amongst people I associate with), and am very surprised to hear that it has different or alternative definitions in the dictionary.

Before I get carried away, I’d like to talk about an interesting Linguaphiles discussion I saw on LiveJournal yesterday.  The original poster asked people what they thought the difference was between a first language, a mother tongue, and being a native speaker.  According to narcissus1, and the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary:

… mother tongue and first language both refer to the language you acquire as a child and are most fluent in. When we use these words in everyday speech, do they include any connotations of race, culture and background? For example, if a person is Japanese does it necessarily mean that their mother tongue is Japanese? What about second and third (etc) generation immigrants who have lost the language of their parents?

Another question is, who do you call a ‘native speaker’? Again, OAL says that a native speaker is one who speaks a language as a first language. I’ve always considered English as my first language simply because it’s the language I’m most fluent in. But in my country English functions as a second language, and as a result I’ve never considered myself a native speaker of English.

A lot of the commenters seem to think that mother tongue is different from the other two, in that it carries the idea of culture and ethnicity.  I tend to agree with this, and I think that’s why it’s not commonly used as an official term any more.

I consider myself a native speaker of English, and wouldn’t hesitate to say that it was my first language.  I would say that Cantonese was my mother tongue, as my parents speak it, and I spoke it when I was very young.  My Cantonese is not very good nowadays, but should I then consider it a second language?  Was Cantonese equally my first language?

Read the full discussion for more interesting interpretations.  I’d also be interested to hear about other people’s views and experiences.

In just the last week, I’ve been involved in two separate mix-ups using the words food and foot.

In the first instance, my friend and I were heading to a bar she recommended. On the list of positives about the place was what I heard as baby food. When I obviously had no idea what she was talking about, or why you would want baby food in a bar, we discussed it further, which included some amusing miming. It turns out that baby-foot is what they call table football, or foosball, in France (and other places). I learned something new.

In the second instance, I taught a Business English class where I introduced the phrase to eat your own dog food. This is predominantly used in the IT industry, and is used when a company uses its own product in-house, before the latest version is released to the public. The practice of dogfooding has its benefits and drawbacks. Anyway, after the class, which told the story of the dog food company whose advertising campaign led to the phrase, I received some homework which repeatedly used the term dogfooting. I can’t work out what she thinks eating your own dog foot involves, but it doesn’t sound fun. Maybe it’s putting your foot in your mouth, but even worse?

I’m not sure whether the problem is with the interchangeable /d/ and /t/ sounds, the long and short versions of oo, or some combination of the two. I know with the first example, it was probably a combination of mispronunciation and my trying to hear a phrase that sounded familiar (but didn’t make sense). Just looking at the two words, you would think they would rhyme, but they don’t. It’s no wonder non-native speakers get confused.

I’m not really a fan of acronyms like LOL (laugh[ing] out loud), so I tend to stick with the written representations of laughing sounds, and the ones I usually use are hahaha (that’s funny!), hehehe (that’s kind of mean!), and hee (cute! squee!).

I’ve always thought the Spanish versions - jajaja, jejeje, jijiji - were really cute, but I have a tendency to read jajaja in a German accent, so it says ‘yes yes yes’.

Here are a few more ways* to show your humour in other languages:

Chinese
哈哈 / ha ha
嘿嘿 / hei hei
呵呵 / he he

Russian
ха-ха-ха (hahaha)
хи-хи (heehee)

Malaysian
kahkahkah (hahaha from comic books)

Turkish

eki eki (used in comics, as the older way of laughing)
muhaha (evil laughter)
nihaha (evil laughter)
puhaha, uhaha, zuhaha (used if something’s really funny)

German
hnhnhn, hmhmhm, chrchrchr (giggle)

My favourite at the moment is a Chinese coworker’s use of hohoho.  I don’t think she really means to sound like Santa Claus, but it brightens my day.

*Many of these examples are from WordReference Forums.