Archive for the ‘Dialects’ Category

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MS Office embraces Australianisms

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

If you’re Australian and using MS Word or other MS Office products, you’ll soon get fewer words marked as spelling errors. After a recent online word-survey with over 24,000 voters, Microsoft Office 2007 will include more Australianisms like sickie and trackies (“sick day” and “track suit”).

It’s nice to see Microsoft trying to make its products less America-centric. It’s silly to have an “English (Australian)” version that doesn’t recognize (or recognise) common words for that language variety.

The Australian expression chuck a sickie is certainly shorter than “play hooky from work by calling in sick” or “take a sick day when you’re not sick.” Does it have a shorter form in Australia because it’s a much more common practice there? (I kid.)

I remember watching a TV show in Japan and hearing the word 仮病 kebyou. My Japanese-English dictionary said “sham illness.” I thought, it’s so common that you have a word for this? I don’t think “sham illness” gets tossed around too much by us English speakers. We’d more likely say “he’s pretending to be sick” or “she’s feigning illness.”

See also: Australian Slang Dictionary

Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | 1 Comment »

Modern celebs in Cockney rhyming slang (book)

Friday, November 10th, 2006

If you saw the 1992 movie Chaplin, you heard Charlie Chaplin (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) refer to his suit as a “whistle” and explain that whistle and flute rhymes with suit. That’s (old-time) Cockney rhyming slang, a slang style originally limited to the Cockney English dialect of working-class people in London’s East End. (The character Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady was a Cockney speaker, but I don’t know if she used rhyming slang.)

Celebrities are also used in rhyming slang and the new book Shame about the Boat Race: Guide to Rhyming Slang from Collins (ISBN 0007241135) gives examples of modern celebrities finding their way into the lingo. The title refers to “Nice legs shame about the face” (metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=23975&in_page_id=34) [EDIT (5/30/10): dead link] turned into rhyming slang.

Assuming the expressions are common enough to be shortened, some people might drink too many Britneys (Britney Spears rhymes with beer) and then Wallace (Wallace and Gromit rhymes with vomit).

We’ll have to see if any of these become ordinary words like giving someone a “raspberry” (making a derisive breaking-wind noise with your mouth on your hand, also called a Bronx cheer). Raspberry tart rhymes with fart.

See also: Web’s Greatest Dick’n'arry of Cockney Rhyming Slang

Posted in Dialects, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »

‘The Queen’s Hinglish’ (Hindi English) book

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

There’s a new book out about the mixed English and Hindi (and other Indian languages) spoken by Indians in India and England.

The book is The Queen’s Hinglish by B. K. Mahal (ISBN 0007241127).

It’s mini-quiz time. Match the Hinglish terms with their Standard English equivalents:

1. airdash

2. badmash

3. chuddies

4. glassy

5. timepass

a. hooligan

b. thirsty

c. traveling by air

d. underpants

e. uninteresting diversion

Answers in BBC article and in Comments below

Those words don’t seem to fill any gaps in Standard English, but Hinglish’s prepone would be a welcome addition. We already have postpone, so why not?

Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Newer Englishes, Words / Dictionaries | 1 Comment »

The Four Essential Travel Phrases

Friday, October 20th, 2006

The Four Essential Travel Phrases Web site is an amusing site that translates the following questions into hundreds of languages and dialects.

1) Where is my room?
2) Where is the beach?
3) Where is the bar?
4) Don’t touch me there!

It even has pop-culture versions and English transliterated into other languages’ writing systems.

I must point out, though, that the English as transliterated into the Japanese katakana syllabary has errors. I’ll use doubled vowels for long vowels:

1) Where is my room?

ヱルイスマイルーム？ to ウェアイズマイルーム？

Weru isu mai ruumu? to Wea izu mai ruumu?

2) Where is the beach?

ヱルイスザービーチ？ to ウェアイズザビーチ？

Weru isu zaa biichi? to Wea izu za biichi?

3) Where is the bar?

ヱルイスザーバール？ to ウェアイズザバー？

Weru isu zaa baaru? to Wea izu za baa?

4) Don’t touch me there!

ドーントタッチミーゼル！ to ドントタッチミーゼア！

Doonto tatchi mii zeru! [katakana says "Donto"] to Donto tatchi mii zea!

  1. You can’t use katakana ヱ (we). The Japanese language lost that sound centuries ago when the sound we merged with エ (e). The spellings, however, weren’t modernized until just after World War II. More recently, for foreign words with we, Japanese has ウェ (u with a small e).
  2. Japanese tends to use British “r-lessness” after vowels (where, there, bar).
  3. The word is has a voiced /z/.
  4. The word the has a short vowel (ザ za). (Before a vowel in English (the artist), the is pronounced “thee” instead of “thuh.” In Japanese this is ジ (ji) because z- becomes j- before -i, but it is still written zi in some romanization systems.)

See also Omniglot’s:

Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, HUMOR, Humor-Sites, LANGUAGE, Language-Sites | No Comments »

Shanghai Daily newspaper combats ‘Chinglish’

Sunday, October 15th, 2006

The Shanghai Daily newspaper (上海日报 Shang4hai3 Ri4bao4) of Shanghai, China, has put up a Web site (202.101.38.80/art/2006/10/16/294376/New_Website_offers_English_fun.htm) [EDIT (5/29/10): dead link] to help university students improve their English, especially in preparation for the Shanghai World Exposition in 2010 (Expo 2010 official site).

The site includes the “Chinglish to English Public Campaign.” The Chinese name is rather different: 飞利浦杯上海日报公共标志纠错行动 Fei1li4pu3-bei1 Shang4hai3 Ri4bao4 Gong1gong4 Biao1zhi4 Jiu1cuo4 Xing2dong4, Philips Cup Shanghai Daily Public-Sign Correct-Errors Operation. People can submit photos of poor Chinese-to-English translations (Chinglish) from signs, plus possible corrections.

That’s a wonderful idea, but a few of the corrections could use a little improvement. For example, they’ve changed the first one on the first page from the un-English “Emergency For Use” to “For Emergency.” “For Emergency Use” would be better. However, that still seems too terse given that the Chinese reads “When it’s urgent to open the door, please use this switch” (紧急开门时请使用此开关 Jin3ji2 kai1men2 shi2, qing3 shi3yong4 ci3 kai1guan1). I think comparable American signs read something like “In Emergency, Push Lever to Open Door.” Good job, though, on changing “Clinie” to “First Aid” instead of the presumed “Clinic.” If space permits, “First Aid Station” for the 医疗点 (yi1liao2-dian3, medical-treatment place) would be better.

On the second page, they should have left “Pleasure Boat Wharf” alone (“Yacht Dock” doesn’t sound as nice) instead of changing it to “the (fun) boat wharf.” Pleasure boat (for 游船 you2chuan2) is a real term. Down the page, changing “Shanghai International Forum Healthy City” to “Shanghai International Health Forum” loses the “city.” I think they mean “Shanghai Healthy City International Forum” for the 上海健康城市国际论坛 (Shanghai Jian4kang1 Cheng2shi4 Guo2ji4 Lun4tan2). Clearer would be “Shanghai Healthy City’s International Plaza,” unless they mean “International Plaza of Shanghai – The City of Health.”

On the third page, they’ve changed “Caution the Step” and “Watch Head” (and “Be Careful Head”) to correct British English “mind your step” and “mind your head.” In American English those would be “Watch Your Step” and “Watch Your Head.” Further down they changed “Parkong Stereo Garage” to “Parking Garage.” That could be enough, but the literal “stereo (three-dimensional) parking garage” (立体停车库 li4ti3 ting2che1ku4) is Mandarin’s “multistory parking garage.” That might be important for some drivers.

Overall, this is an excellent endeavor.

In related news, back in August (2006), during the Shanghai Book Fair, Shanghai had Thomson Learning’s World Link (site) video English lessons on some buses. I had forgotten about this when I posted Language buses and more for EU last month.

Posted in Dialects, English as a Second / Foreign Language, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language-Sites | No Comments »

Arrr! Talk Like a Pirate Day 2006

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

‘Tis still September 19th here. That be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys. A fun little “holiday” invented by Americans John Baur and Mark Summers a bunch a voyages round t’sun ago.

Official Site, with

Baur and Summers’ Pirate “Five A’s” Instructional Video (ahoy, avast, aye, aye-aye, arrr)

Link to video

2002 article by American humor columnist Dave Barry that popularized it

The conventional wisdom is that “arrr” and other stereotyped pirate talk come from one or more dialects of the seafaring West Country area of England, such as Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. There’s some discussion on that on Language Log from last year’s TLAPD, plus the Corsair Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates.

Remember t’talk as if you be a pirate ’til your friends tell you to “avast” (“stop” just won’t do today).

Posted in Dialects, HUMOR, LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | 2 Comments »

Free book on Chinese, other Asian languages

Monday, September 4th, 2006

Mark Swofford of Pinyin News has announced that the 1991 Schriftfestschrift: Essays in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday (Sino-Platonic Papers) is now available as a free PDF in honor of the 95th birthday of Professor DeFrancis. The print edition was US$35.

Download the free 260-page PDF if you’re interested in Chinese, other Asian languages, linguistics, language policy, or writing systems. It’s 14.7 MB and took me an hour and forty minutes on dial-up to download.

You aren’t allowed to sell the book or make dervative works of it.

Swofford also kindly provided the table of contents:

  • Tabula Gratulatoria
  • Introduction, by Victor H. Mair
  • Publications of John DeFrancis
  • Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi, by Zhang Liqing
  • Typology of Writing Systems, by Zhou Youguang
  • Dui Hanzi de Jizhong Wujie, by Yin Binyong
  • The Information Society and Terminology, by Liu Yongquan
  • A Bilingual Mosaic, by Einar Haugen
  • The Polysemy of the Term Kokugo, by S. Robert Ramsey
  • Memorizing Kanji: Lessons from a Pro, by J. Marshall Unger
  • Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, by David Moser
  • Ethnolinguistic Notes on the Dungan, by Lisa E. Husmann and William S-Y. Wang
  • Korean Views on Writing Reform, by Wm. C. Hannas
  • Language Policies and Linguistic Divergence in the Two Koreas, by Ho-min Sohn
  • Okinawan Writing Systems, Past, Present, and Future, by Leon A. Serafim
  • Proposal of a Comparative Study of Language Policies and Their Implementation in Singapore, Taiwan, and China (PRC), by Robert L. Cheng
  • The Topical Function of Preverbal Locatives and Temporals in Chinese, by Feng-fu Tsao
  • Yes-No Questions in Taipei and Peking Mandarin, by Robert M. Sanders
  • Patronizing Uses of the Particle ma: Bureaucratic Chinese Bids for Dominance in Personal Interactions, by Beverly Hong Fincher
  • Gender and Sexism in Chinese Language and Literature, by Angela Jung-Palandri
  • A zhezi Anagram Poem of the Song Dynasty, by John Marney
  • Some Remarks on Differing Correspondences in Old Chinese Assumed to Represent Different Chinese Dialects, by Nicholas C. Bodman
  • Can Taiwanese Recognize Simplified Characters?, by John S. Rohsenow
  • Simplified Characters and Their (Un)relatedness, by Chauncey C. Chu
  • The Teaching of Culture and the Culture of Teaching: Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities in Language Instruction, by Eugene Eoyang
  • The Culture Component of Language Teaching, by Kyoko Hijirida
  • Thinking About Prof. John DeFrancis, by Apollo Wu
  • Wo suo Renshi de De Xiansheng, by Chih-yu Ho
  • Two Poems for Professor John DeFrancis, by Richard F. S. Yang
  • Announcement, by Stephen Fleming

DeFrancis, Emeritus Professor of Chinese at the University of Hawaii, is the author and editor of a number of books on Chinese. I own ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, and Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. They are great works. Happy belated birthday.

You can read free sample chapters of

on Swofford’s site: Pinyin.info: A guide to the writing of Mandarin Chinese in romanization.

Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language-Sites, Linguistics | No Comments »

Chambers Dictionary update

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

I posted two months ago about America’s Merriam-Webster dictionary update (New dictionary words (first post)). Now Britain’s Chambers Dictionary has announced new words for the tenth edition, due out around October 2006.

Chambers is known for having some offbeat definitions, the most famous being: an eclair is “a cake long in shape but short in duration.” Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, the first major English dictionary, also had some amusing definitions, like pension: “An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.” I like Chambers’ pun for combover: “a vain attempt to make the most of one’s dwindling resources of hair.” The Japanese cleverly call a sparse combover “bar code hair” (バーコードヘア baakoodohea).

I’m not a fan of this word taikonaut (from Mandarin Chinese 太空 taikong, “outer space” + the -naut, “sailor,” of astronaut), just as I don’t like cosmonaut. They can use any term they want in Mandarin or Russian, but the English word should be astronaut regardless of the person’s nationality. It’s the same job.

British-only terms?

  • Alcolock [US: ignition interlock]: “A breath-testing device fitted in a car that locks the ignition if the driver’s breath contains more than the permitted amount of alcohol”
  • Chav: “A boorish, uneducated person who appears to have access to money but not to taste”
  • Munter: “An unattractive person, especially a woman”
  • Stooze: “To borrow money offered at zero or very low interest and invest it to make a profit”

Why weren’t these in 2003′s ninth edition?

  • CGI (computer-generated imagery)
  • Mockumentary
  • Zone out

See also:
Chambers Reference Online: Chambers 21st Century Dictionary [2001], The Chambers Thesaurus (1996), and Chambers Biographical Dictionary (1997 edition with amendments)

Posted in Dialects, LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »

Cattle herd speaking with accent

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

Cows in Somerset, England, seem to have picked up the local accent of their human caretakers. Their moos have a strong West Country “-r” (the coastal region’s accent is thought to be the origin of stereotyped pirate talk “Arr!”). The cows sound like “oo-arr!”

I wonder if Cockney cows use Cockney back-slang: “oom.”

Posted in Dialects, HUMOR, LANGUAGE, Linguistics | 1 Comment »

Council(l)ors may need counsel(l)ing

Friday, August 11th, 2006

City council members in Boston, Massachusetts, can’t agree if they’re “councilors” or “councillors.”

The traditionalists are retaining older and British-style councillor; younger members and followers of Microsoft Word U.S.-English spell check are going for councilor.

I can see the case for an American historical city like Boston using what has become an old-fashioned spelling (in America) for their government business. However, they might wish to change with the times.

Council member and double-L advocate John Tobin is quoted as saying “I will not be part of the dumbing down of the English language.” He seems to be ignorant of the issue. Does he write the less common (in America) “travelling” instead of “traveling” as well?

The necessity for doubling some consonants comes from the way vowel sounds changed in English. There was a time when English spelling was a bit less complicated. Then the word endings went silent and the vowels changed in the Great Vowel Shift (among other processes). Whenever the main vowel is a single letter (written a/e/i/o/u, not ai/au/ea/ee/ei/ew/ie/oa/oo/ou/ow/ua/ui), it can represent a different vowel sound, called “long” in English, when the word ends in -e.

For example, pine ceased to have the vowel sound of pin, even when the final -e is dropped for the suffixes -ed or -ing. Now if you were to write pin+ing as “pining,” people would pronounce it like pine+ing. Therefore, with pin+ing you double the consonant and write “pinning” to show the vowel of pin.

That doubling is necessary for one-syllable words and for words that are stressed on the last syllable. If the word is stressed on an earlier syllable, it’s not necessary to double the consonant. Why? It’s impossible for single-letter vowels to be “long” in unstressed syllables. Thus, Americans as well as Brits write rePEL+ing as “repelling” because “repeling” would be pronounced “rePEELing.” Brits as well as Americans write Open+ing as “opening” not “openning” because “Opeening” is impossible. There’s no confusion in pronunciation.

  • British English writers usually double L’s regardless of the word stress, as with travel+ing becoming travelling.
  • American English writers usually write travel+ing as “traveling” because the pronunciation “TRAveeling” isn’t possible.

For an American, council+or written as “councillor” looks like the words should be pronounced “counCIL” and “counCILlor.” They’re not, though. The better American spelling is thus: “councilor.”

The print Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the Associated Press’s official dictionary) has “councilor” with “councillor as a “Chiefly British” variant. The American Heritage Dictionary has “councilor” with “councillor” as a variant. However, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (the original “Webster’s”) has “councillor” with “councilor” as a variant. All three have “counseling” with “counselling” as the second-choice spelling.

See also:

Posted in Dialects, LANGUAGE | No Comments »

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