English language from Borneo Post

desiderata.english CCR:)
WARNING: some DDC hear/here!

TEAser Challenj: First THREE emailers wit' an answer to "CCR" above get a kopi of YLChong's "Midnight Voices" as "long" as I can reach you and not at that graveyard near Shah Alam where some C4 sexpert took aMore than wan life -- 4 in Kantonis sounds like "Sei", and oft is followed by liau LIAU!

For Malysians including Desi knot wellnursed in
Canton, get in touch with Yan-ny or Helen or Sabrina, yes all myGOoDfriend in the plural -- to explain why the blardy health Desi aweways has been reprising Sei-loh! LOL! and the lust is "laughing Out Loud" allowed on Blogosphere, but get my AP Okay! Along the way, buy them tehtari' and they may even, without my permission, oblige wit' a thesis clarification on DDC!

A quick benefit Desi reaped from Blogging was that within 1-1/2months of flagging off My Blue Heaven, I was privileged to be invited to run a column called Desiderata.English in an East Malaysian newspaper named THE BORNEO POST. As an act of gratitude to mGf Yan who was the "enabler" -- a combo meaning encourager and able -- to my using that platform based nigh Catsville, today I highlight a subject close tomy hear -- THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

I have always taken pride in my mastery of Shakespeare's languange -- thanks to the colonial masters, and if the BN YOuth wings want to take umbrage with my paying high regard to this heritage, go ahead, jump into the fire and burn, just like you might follow on ShiHuangTi in China making a bornfire of books -- welcome to make my day. More of some people resisting to use any language for that matter to advance themselves, I say Syabas, remain in the well. That makes my class and fellowmembers more valuablein the marketplace.

Meanwhile, here's Cut&Paste from two Sundaes:):), part of serving for CON BF six hours from now should you find thy way to join Desi at Men Kee!Even ladies likeAnak Merdeka are welcome -- but bring your own kopi as I only serve tehtari'>>>>>>> TwistedHeels, Sabrina Tan&Tan sisters, care to bring some WitstakerChoc?

Sunday, June 15th, 2008


The wonders of English
By Kaypo Anak Kuching


Part 1

NOWADAYS, the letters section of our major national daily newspapers is still flooded with complaints bemoaning the decline in the standard and scope of English usage in Malaysia. Certainly, most fresh university graduates find themselves quite unemployable in the private sector because their proficiency in the English language is often found wanting.

Again, the debate on whether the teaching of math and science in English should be discontinued rages on. On both sides of the coin, people talk incessantly about the need to acquire this linguistic skill as a ‘universal tool of communication’.

Indeed, English is not an easy language to master for non-native speakers. There are numerous rules in grammar, pronunciation, and spelling, and there are numerous exceptions to each rule. For instance, there are 20 ways of making a plural.

Then, there is the problem of acquiring a comfortable vocabulary for the communication to be powerful and elegant even. Exactly how many English words there are is still a matter of debate. The estimates among expert range from 750,000 words and 1.5 million words, depending how you define a ‘word’.

Do you count ‘set’ and ‘setting’ as two different words? The Oxford English Dictionary, the most authoritative lexicon of the English language, a complete set of which has probably yet to be found in Sarawak, has given 200 separate meanings to the word set. Are they considered different words? How about verbal phrases such as set to, set upon, and set off? Are they different words as well?

The vast and rich complexity of the English language owes a great deal to its evolution through the long passage of time. So the natural question to ask is: where did it all begin?

In his celebrated book The Adventure of English — The Biography of a Language (2003), Melvyn Bragg has this observation to report:

“In 1786, Sir William Jones, a British judge and amateur linguist on service in India, after a close study of Sanskrit, which had been in existence since at least 2000 BC in the Vedic hymn, wrote: ‘Both the Gorthik and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, have the same origin with Sanskrit.’”

“He was right; Proto-Indo-European is the mother of us (Europeans) all and Sanskrit is certainly one of the older attested members of the family of languages out of which came all the languages of Europe (save Basque, Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian) and many in Asia.”

One of the numerous tributaries of this Proto Indo-European linguistic river emerged around 15 hundred years ago as a tribal dialect in Germanic lands for about 150,000 natives collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, comprising mainly the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes.

The Anglo-Saxons and their descendents have been known to be a restless lot, always on the move across vast expanse of water in search of new land and perhaps a better life. In the first phase of adventure in England, the success of their military prowess was equalled only by their linguistic dexterity in exiling the native languages on the British Isles, the Celtic and the Gaelic tongues in particular.

Their earliest recognisable version of the English language is known as Old English, and we would find it incomprehensible today. The poem Beowulf first written down in Old English about 1000 years ago would have a line like this: ‘Da weason burgum Beowulf scyldinga…’

Nevertheless, according to Bragg, our modern day English is still founded on and funded by words from the Old English. The following words are Old English words: is, you, man, son, daughter, friend, house, drink. Here, there, the, in, on, into, from, come, go, sheep, shepherd, ox, earth, home, horse, ground, plough, swine, mouse, dog, wood, field, etc.

Over the next few centuries, the English tongue slowly changed into the vaguely comprehensible Middle English. The most representative literary work of Middle English is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales written in the 14th century, a book that I had to study when doing English Literature in a university overseas. Two lines from the book will give you an idea of Middle English:

“Whan that the knight had thus his tale ytoold, In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold.”

By the 16th century, modern English was already taking shape, and most of us would have no problem enjoying the genius of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) today, especially if we are forced to study his plays for passing examinations, often against our will.

“It is Othello’s pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived, the mere prediction of the Turkish fleet, everyman put himself in triumph.”

By and large, the English people would cherish Shakespeare as their foremost national treasure. This is what Richard Watson Todd has to report about the Bard in his very entertaining book entitled Much Ado About English (2006):

“With 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and a few other assorted poems to his name, the prodigiously productive playwright had a massive influence on the theatre and English literature in general.”

“What is less well known is Shakespeare’s influence in the English language. His entire work contains over 20,000 different words, and some authorities reckon that one in twelve of these was an invented word or gave a fresh meaning to a current term.”

“Shakespeare made up words, added prefixes and suffixes to existing words, combined words, and change nouns into verbs.”

“When we say something is fashionable, marketable, obscene, or flawed, when we say someone is critical, generous, lonely, or useless, and when we talk of accommodation or a bump, we are using words that Shakespeare originated. His influence is unparalleled.”

The growth of the English language over the past millennium has been very much propelled by great works of art in English literature. Poets and writers are constantly trying to explore the limits of the language, seeking new ways of saying things, and inventing new words.

While Shakespeare employed 20,000 words for his plays, most writers would use less the 10,000 words for a modern novel. After all, the book would not be overtly popular if every new page would send the reader to the dictionary. Some would argue that simplicity is elegance, and Hemmingway’s prose is even childlike!

Contrast them with James Joyce, arguably the most profound writer of English Literature in the 20th century, though he was an Irishman who preferred to live in France in the later part of his life. He is reputed to have used 50,000 different words in the novel Finnegan’s Wake, albeit most of these words he made up. I have tried to read this particular book many times, but it is hard to proceed beyond the first few pages.

My point is this: the English language, or any language for that matter, cannot be treated as a mere tool, as is advocated by our politicians and our educators. You cannot learn to be proficient in English as you learn to use the computer.

You have to appreciate the beauty and the complexity of the language, through daily usage, total immersion by daily reading and writing if possible, and above all think in the language.

Above all, the best way to learn English through appreciating its beauty is by teaching English literature, especially poetry, though there ought also to be regular English classes for the teaching of grammar and rules.

I remember my great delight in the music of the spoken words when my English teacher taught us about alliteration in the poems of William Wordsworth on the first day of English class in Form One:

And sing a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

Then we were asked to say out loud the following lines:

She sells seashells on the seashore.

And

The sixth sick Sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick.

That kind of English lesson you would remember for life! The trouble with teachers teaching math and science in our schools to day is that they are probably not proficient in the language themselves. They have also probably been corrupted by the mangled Manglish so endemic nowadays. I shudder to think of the disaster of using our school children as mere guinea pigs by teaching math and science to them in English.

(To be continued next week)

__________________________________


Sunday, June 22nd, 2008


The wonders of English


Part 2

FROM its distant roots as a mixed-bag of local dialects spoken by about 150,000 tribesmen in Germanic lands some 1,500 years ago, English has evolved into the closest thing we have to a universal language today.

This long journey in the historical evolution of the English language has been nothing less than both tortuous and perilous. Twice in the early stage of its life, English was threatened with extinction.

More than a thousand years ago, the Anglo-Saxons had already invaded and settled down in England. The language that they had brought with them had done well in competition with the native Celtic and Gaelic tongues.

But they had to face their first crisis when the Vikings started to raid their island homes. These northern Nordic people spoke the Old Norse, and among the invaders, the Danes were the fiercest, driving the English monarch King Alfred into hiding in the marshes.

The Danes were ‘heathens’ who had no respect for books and learning. If they had succeeded in decimating the English people and the English tongue that they spoke, the English language would perhaps have perished forever.

Fortunately, King Alfred was able to marshal a loyal army of 4,000 men in the spring of 878 AD, and challenged the invading army of 5,000 Danes at the Western edge of the Salisbury Plain. What happened next was a rout, a massacre of the Danes against all odds. King Alfred had saved England and the English language. He is the only English monarch to have earned the title King Alfred ‘the Great’!

The second crisis came in 1066 when the Norman King William the Conqueror and his army crossed the English Channel from their Normandy homes and landed at Hastings on the English shore. There, they defeated the army of the English monarch King Harold and claimed sovereignty over England.

The Norman conquerors were French, and so French and Latin were used in the court and the church as the official languages of England. Fortunately for the English language, the Normans were a minority, and so the English tongue continued to be spoken and used by the masses, limiting French and Latin to the small circle of the ruling elite.

In subsequent centuries, the Norman kings had to fight against the French in France. Sometimes, power struggle also drove them to fight among themselves in a contest for the throne. In order to mobilise the local English masses for their cause, they had to resort to the use of the English language.

In 1399, Henry, the Duke of Lancaster, overthrew King Richard II, and ascended to the throne as King Henry IV. In a great symbolic moment, he made his inaugural royal speech in neither the Latin language of state business, nor in the French language of the royal household, but in what the official history calls ‘His Mother Tongue’: English. English was once again a royal language in England.

Another element of the élan vital of the English language to survive and grow to immense size and complexity is its seemingly limitless capacity to absorb other languages, to convert others, certainly to take on board others without yielding the ground on its own basic meaning and vocabulary.

For instance, the ‘sk’ sound is a characteristic of the Old Norse, and to-day, we have English words borrowed from the Vikings like ‘skin’, ‘sky’, and ‘score’. Other Old Norse loan words include ‘birth’, ‘cake’, ‘call’, ‘dreg’, ‘eggs’, ‘guess’, ‘happy’, ‘law’, ‘leg’, ‘ransack’, ‘scare’, ‘sister’, ‘skill’, and ‘smile’.

During those three centuries of Norman rule, under the linguistic hegemony of the occupying forces, it is estimated that some 15,000 Old English words were lost. But French flooded the English vocabulary with numerous new words. About 10,000 French words were thus integrated into the English language during this period.

In the language of war, the French words absorbed are ‘army’ (from armee), ‘archer’ (from archer), ‘soldier’ (from soudier), and ‘guard’ (from garde). French also spelled out the new language of the social order, as in ‘crown’ (from corune), ‘throne’ (from trone), ‘court’ (from curt), ‘duke’ (from duc), ‘nobility’ (from nobilite), ‘peasant’ from ‘paisant’, and ‘traitor’ (from traitre.)

After the start of the Industrial Revolution in England a couple of centuries ago, the need for raw materials and new market drove the English overseas in search of colonies. The British Empire emerged as the most successful imperialist superpower of the world, with the Union Jack flying high wherever there was sea water.

Wherever they went, the British colonial government imposed their own brand of linguistic hegemony on the local population, much as the Normans have done to the English people during the early part of the second millennium. That has had much to do with the almost universal usage of English nowadays throughout the world.

All over their colonies, the English language was enriched by the words and expressions it absorbed and made its own. In his book Much Ado About English, author Richard Watson Todd quoted Booker T. Washington as saying:

“We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

The notorious and much feared word tsunami is Japanese in origin. The word tornado comes from Spanish, curry from Tamil, mosque from Arabic, bog from Gaelic, and wombats from the Australian Aborigines. Our Malay words like kampong and amok have certainly been long accepted as legitimate entries in any English dictionary. Even Gweilo, the Hong Kong Chinese’ term for all Caucasians, meaning ‘foreign devil’, is now used by more and more English writers.

What make English such a difficult language to master are precisely the varied sources from which it derives its vocabulary as well as its hoard of borrowed expressions and idioms. By knowing from where the word or expression has originated, you can get a rough idea of how to spell and pronounce them.

When I choose a dictionary, I always pick one that gives you the etymological background of the word. In this, the Oxford English Dictionary is peerless: it gives you the entire long history in the evolution of the meaning and usage of the word or expression back to the occasion when it was first encountered!

For instance, the word condom was likely derived from the Italian for glove, guanto. And the word jazz originated from the Creole word jass, meaning strenuous sexual activity.

Richard Watson Todd tells us that many idioms have very ancient root indeed. Both hair of the dog and living in cloud cuckoo land date back to 400 BC and the Greek poet Aristophanes. Let sleeping dogs lie is derived from Chaucer in 1374, and a needle in a haystack comes from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605.

The growth of American English has since increased the prowess and influence of the English language in no small measure. As Sir Winston Churchill was reputed to have observed, American and England are two countries divided by a common tongue. The emergence of the United States as the new superpower of the 20th century has also contributed to the prestige and the power of English in international relations and foreign affairs.

Last but certainly not least is the new language of Internet English in cyberspace. Any old-timers and linguistic purists who like their ‘i’ dotted and their‘t’ crossed will certainly cringe at the corruption of the English language in chat rooms and interactive websites. Some of the conversations going on there are really incomprehensible!

Finally, we have the many patois that have been born through a strange marriage of English with the local native tongues. One of these is our very own Manglish, the mangled English spoken mostly by Malaysians in West Malaysians. Fortunately, Manglish has not invaded Sarawak in a big way, and we should keep it that way.

For many decades now, the question of language has been the most contentious political issue in Malaysia. Nationalists have for too long regarded English as the remnant of our shameful colonial past. Official policies on education has led to a decline of the standard of English, much to the detriment of the country.

To me, English is just another language, a common heritage of the world. If we can speak and write in English, we might as well do it as best we can.


DESIDERATA: I may just be inclined to get away from the madding crowd and egain my literary worlde on Sundae having garden tea partee whiling away the dime wit' companions like Ancient Mariner recity his "long" rime, and mindful mariner song-ing Irish folks songs plus dronking Irish cafe!