Englese

I've just arrived back from a 3-week holiday in Japan (more of which can be read about here). One thing that struck me on my travels was the curious relationship that the country has with the English language. The bookshops have metres and metres of shelves devoted to English-language learning, yet English seems to be an enigma to most of its population. Just some examples of the bizarre use of English I spotted en route were Jolly Pasta (an Italian restaurant); Stationery Life (an office equipment store - good job it wasn't stationary); and Human & Heart (a dating agency). Another oddball phrase I saw on an advertising hoarding was “Now, life is living you”. Grammatically correct, but what’s it supposed to mean?

I spent another day T-shirt spotting and espied various bizarre texts emblazoned across the wearers' fronts. How about Eat More Buck, Never Ending Estate or Keep Frying Sail? My absolute favourite however, was a t-shirt worn by an attractive, well-endowed woman in her twenties with the words Busty Magic (sorry, no photos).

Along the way, I read a highly insightful travelogue of Japan by Will Ferguson, a Canadian writer who is best known for his humorous critique of Canadian history and culture. Before he became a successful writer he spent several years in Japan as an English teacher. In Hokkaido Highway Blues, he details his experiences hitchhiking across Japan, with many amusing asides on Japanese culture and society. One chapter is given over to his observations on Englese - this is the Japanese version of Dunglish - which explains the fascinating love-affair they have with the English language much more succintly than I could ever do:

[In Niigata] the weather was markedly cooler than it had been, and I found that even layering myself in T-shirts was not enough to stave off the creeping dank and cold. In search of warmer garb, I threaded my way into the rabbit hutch of retail shops that spread in tunneled corridors beneath Niigata Station. It took a while just to find something that fit, and even then I had to settle for a hooded pullover with arms that were five inches too short, giving me that long-limbed gorilla look that women find so endearing. Fortunately, as a sort of bonus, the pullover had a bold message across the back, written in Japanese-English, or "Englese" as it is sometimes known. The message had a definite rap-music rhythm to it and over the course of the next few weeks, whenever I was alone in front of a mirror, I took to rappin' it out loudly (with the proper angry, urban-street-gang scowly face and postures of course). It went like this:

Piece by Piece
We Can't be Born Special
by my power present international!
Produce Selection Since 1976
Hit It!

This is one of the most surreal aspects of life in Japan: seeing your language reduced to decoration, removed from any context or meaning, rendered into LSD musings. The Japanese approach to language—and most everything else, now that I think about it—is relentlessly deconstructionist. Everything is reduced to the bare elements and then reconstructed. It is less a form of mimicry and more one of reinterpretation. This works great with cars, cameras, and clocks, but is less effective with something as organic as language.
My students in Japan were determined to reduce English to mathematical dictums that could then be reassembled. One student, who was a diligent pupil but refused to speak English with me in class, said with perfect sincerity, "It's just that I hate to make mistakes. So, first I will become fluent in English and then I will speak it." When I tried to explain to him that learning a language was a process and that making mistakes was a necessary, even desirable aspect of it, he politely dismissed my suggestions as being eccentric. Learn by making mistakes? Ridiculous.
The result is a nation of grammar-sharp, language-shy people. And the primary victim in all of this is the English language itself. When I ran into one of my high school students in a T-shirt that read ENJOY MY BROTHER! I challenged him to explain the phrase. It was a wager, really, because I promised him ten thousand yen if he could do it. This young man was our top student, destined for one of Japan's finest universities, and he took up the challenge with confidence. "Enjoy is the verb," he said, "my is a possessive pronoun and brother is the object. The subject is understood to be you, which makes the sentence a command phrase. The exclamation mark adds urgency." He then held out his hand for the money. "But what does it mean?" I said. He looked at me, utterly baffled, and said "Enjoy is the verb, my is a possessive pronoun, brother is the—" Needless to say, I didn't pay him the ten thousand yen and he is still bitter about it. In his mind, he did explain it and all I did was welsh on a bet.
The idea that a sentence can have a meaning that is greater than the sum of its parts is hard to get across in Japan. My neighbor's wife had a favorite shirt that said LUSTY TOY, which I could never bring myself to explain to her.
(For all I knew it was true. Maybe she was a lusty toy and proud of it. Who knows?)
Corporate Japan, with millions of dollars in resources at its fingertips, still can't come up with brand names that make any sense. English has a definite cachet in Japan, much like French once did in America, hence the irresistible urge to add a sprinkling of English on everything, from pop cans to political posters. Some of the most celebrated examples of Japanese brand names include a sports drinks named Sweat; powdered coffee cream called Creap; round, chocolate plugs labeled, disturbingly, Colon; and a soft drink dubbed Calpis, a name that always suggests bovine urine to me. (I sent a package of Calpis to my friend Calvin Climie, an Ottawa-based animator, along with the note: "What a brilliant move, Call Marketing your own urine! You'll make a fortune. As long as you have access to tap water, the supply will never dry up.")
A lady friend of mine from Britain once showed me the tiny instruction pamphlet that came with a box of Japanese feminine hygiene products. The instructions were in Japanese, but even here the company had thought it necessary to jazz things up a bit with a display of English. At the top of the page was the stirring motto: Let's All Enjoy Tampon Life!
Harder to understand are the bizarre English slogans of American companies operating in Japan: I feel Coke! Speak Lark! (a cigarette company) and I am Slims! (Virginia Slims). I was bothered by this—after all, you'd think that if anyone would get it right it would be American companies—but then, one day, I realized that these slogans were not aimed at me, but at Japanese consumers. And Japanese consumers have all studied basic English and they can remember and recognize beginner phrases such as "I feel______," "I speak______" and "I am______" That the actual slogans used make little sense is not important. They instill a sense of cool cosmopolitan awareness in the consumer and in the product. Once I realized what they were doing, these oddball phrases seemed less like a joke and more like a brilliant marketing ploy. This is also why so many mottoes use the command phrase "Let's all enjoy______" and variations of it. This is not because it is common English (how often do you ever use the phrase "let's all enjoy" in a normal English conversation?), but because it is common textbook English, in much the same way that "This is a pen!" is such a popular English greeting in Japan.
Entire books have been written about Japanese-English. Some of it is bizarre, some of it is almost logical in a nonlinear, Japanese sort of way, and a few are even poetic. I met an American fellow once whose greatest treasure was a small antique tea box. On the back, in English, was a list of the benefits to be gained from a cup. The list was as follows:

The Advantage of Tea
(A)  on auxiliary the memory of writingses-say
(B)  in increasing the prevailness of poetry
(C)  For lossing the fret of mind
(D)  By Assisting the discourse of gentility.
(E)  With refreshing the spirit of heart
(F)  On Digesting the prevention of stomach
(G)  To growing the sperm of body
(H)  In exempting the sadness of lone,
(I)   For Driving the evilness of lone

Naturally, I immediately tried to buy the tea box from the American, but he wouldn't relent, no matter how much yen I waved in his face. It was a beautiful box as well, decorated in dragons and faded gold kanji and elaborate patterns. It still had the faint scent of tea. And who among us, in drinking a cup of Japanese tea, has not felt an increase in the prevailness of poetry? Or the prevention of stomach? And who, in turn, has not sensed the sadness of lone being exempted?

One of the lads

Judging by the unsightly orange flags and bunting that keep appearing round these parts, it's obvious a lot of people are busy gearing up to the Booze-athon that is the World Cup. In the Netherlands there is the small matter of the general election to get out of the way first. Nevertheless, it's quite touching to see the Dutch Prime Minister getting into the spirit of things, taking time out with the lads and enjoying a can of beer.

But of course, it's the T-shirt that catches the eye. If anyone else had been wearing it, nobody in the Netherlands would have given it a second thought, but this is none other than clean-living leader of the Christian Democrats, defender of "normen en waarden", Jan-Peter Balkenende.

Now let's not cast stones, I'm not one to shirk from using industrial language when it's called for. If the situation arises, the odd expletive might be necessary, but it's this gratitious, misplaced use of the F-word that I just can't understand. At the best of times, the Dutch are not averse to the use of foul language. I once tried disciplining secondary school pupils for using abusive language in the classroom and got laughed at - by my fellow teachers. Kids at my son's primary school would never be admonished for using the K-word: their parents would simply shrug it off as if it were some rite of passage. Yes, people grow up with it - it's not confined to adulthood - swearing is part and parcel of mainstream Dutch culture. And if their own swear words won't suffice - and believe me there's enough of them to warrant a dictionary of their own - they have this strange fascination with Anglo-Saxon profanities too. Using English is the mode in the Netherlands and using English swear words is the height of fashion, as Balkenende is clearly demonstrating. It seems a pity that no one quite realises different cultures go about their swearing in different ways. Balkenende might look quite jolly and fashionable here, but if he'd been caught walking down the average high street in England donning such a T-shirt he'd probably be given short shrift and issued with an ASBO.

Update: the video clip is even MORE bizarre. 

Speaking in tongues

In the Netherlands people are used to hearing their national politicians taking press conferences and interviews in English for the benefit of a wider international audience. Whenever they are required to do so, foreign secretaries, finance ministers and the like are generally able to put across their message in English albeit with varying degrees of dexterity. Take Jan Pronk for example, perhaps best known for his time as Dutch Minister of Development Aid. Whilst his command of English is terrific, his crabbed guttural pronunciation lets him down. Begrudgingly, I would also add Geert Wilders – he with the Mozart coiffure and anti-Islamist views – to the list of competent English speakers. There are others too, including Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former secretary-general of NATO, whose main claim to fame, linguistically at least, was that English TV and radio presenters could never pronounce his name correctly.

British politicians who speak a foreign language on the other hand are a rarity, so when you hear them doing so, it makes you sit up and notice. When they do it well, it’s quite extraordinary. Imagine my surprise then when I was alerted to a YouTube clip of Nick Clegg - this week instated as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - being interviewed on the election stumps by a Dutch TV crew. His Dutch is well-nigh impeccable. Of course, it has to be said that Clegg has a Dutch mother and spent several years living in Flanders working as a Eurocrat and MEP. Nevertheless, pretty amazing stuff. The truth is though, if the roles were reversed (i.e. a Dutch politician speaking flawless English), nobody would bat an eyelid.

Not so long ago, the UK had a prime minister who could speak French, but in general, polyglots amongst the Westminster political fraternity are few and far between. Denis MacShane, who was the Minister for Europe under the Blair regime, speaks French, Spanish and German fluently and has a working knowledge of a smattering of other languages. James Purnell, a former Labour cabinet member, speaks fluent French (he grew up in France) and Ben Bradshaw, another former minister who was ousted from government at the 2010 election, studied German at university and worked as an award-winning radio correspondent for the BBC in Berlin when the Wall came down. But that seems to be as far as it gets.     

The reality is that too few British politicians speak a foreign language. Many believe this leads to a blinkered, Anglo-Saxon view of the world. However, even though you can point the finger of blame in their direction, it’s not just the politicians: their lack of foreign-language skills reflects a wider unwillingness on the part of Britons to embrace multilingualism. Despite having joined the Common Market in 1973, time seems to have stood still. When I was studying French and German A-level in the 1970s, language students in the UK were considered somewhat quirky, but today things actually seem worse: language learning, according to experts, is rapidly becoming a “twilight” subject in state schools. In 2004, the Labour government even decided to take compulsory language learning off the GCSE (exam) curriculum. Nowadays, language students are evidently even quirkier. And sooner, rather than later, there will be no teachers left to teach languages. Contrast this with the Netherlands (and other European countries), where language learning is a mainstream element of the curriculum. Of course, it’s a myth that the British lack the genes for it: the British ineptitude to speak foreign languages cannot simply be shrugged off by quoting the old chestnut, “Sorry, we’re just no good at it!”

Yes, English is a global language, but consider where the UK’s trade markets lie. Culturally, the benefits of learning a foreign language would appear to be self-evident, but economically, they should be even more obvious. The EU, collectively, is by far and away the UK’s biggest trading partner, yet native English-speakers only account for 13% of the overall EU population, against 18% who are German-speakers, 13% Italian, 12% French and 9% Spanish. Of course, many people on the continent speak English as a second language, but if UK business hopes to break into these potentially prosperous markets, they will have to learn to communicate more effectively with them, that is, by speaking their own language. 

So, does a multilingual Lib-Dem deputy prime minister offer hope, or does the inherent antipathy towards all things European on the part of his new coalition partners presage a further watering down of language learning in the UK?

What's in a name?

The main character in Alexander McCall Smith’s academic satire, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, is a larger-than-life figure with a larger-than-life name: Prof Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The absurdity of his name lies not in the fact that his name in English means Hedgehog Field (=Igelfeld), but in the use of his ‘double-barrelled’ academic title, for in English it’s just not possible to call yourself Professor and Doctor at the same time…

Surprisingly perhaps, for a society which is allegedly class-ridden, the British are rather timid about using official titles. The only ones we ever use as academic titles are Professor (Prof) and Doctor (Dr) – and NEVER together for the same person! We use these, and other references to academic and business qualifications, almost exclusively for professional purposes. In fact, someone who goes around flashing their academic title in everyday situations is considered slightly pompous. We like to be modest about our achievements. You might put a MSc or a BEd against your name on a business card, but you might risk being mocked as pretentious if you band it around in private circles. In fact, over the last few decades there has been a tendency to dumb down whenever it comes to titles and surnames, even in the business world, with most people slipping into first-name terms on the first meeting – almost to the extent that you are left second guessing their occupational background and qualifications.

On the continent however, non-English persons are often unhappy about relinquishing their academic titles, especially in English-language texts intended for professional purposes - where one might reasonably expect this reluctance - but equally so in everyday situations. Supposedly, it helps them single themselves out from the rest. However, the fact is Dutch titles - at least those of a lower academic standing than Professor or Doctor - such as Drs, Ir, Ing and Mr (a potentially very confusing one!), are completely unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. So far from adding any value to their status, they probably detract, and will actually leave the average English speaker pretty nonplussed.

An English friend of mine who’d just moved to the Netherlands once told me his next door neighbours had a nameplate on the front door with the words “Drs L. Smit-Janssen”. He automatically assumed, of course, that he was living next door to a medical practice run by a Dr Smit and a Dr Janssen…

Word of the month: bully

I, for one, was glad when stories started appearing in the papers last week about Gordon Brown’s alleged bullying. I’m surprised the media made such a big deal of it. After all, you’d think nothing of it if Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher had ever been charged with the same thing. As it happened, my relief was that Brown hadn’t wrongly been accused of mobbing.

The other week I came up against another bully, this time a German one. Now before you start thinking I’m going to make disparaging remarks about my eastern neighbours, I ought to explain that this particular bully is quite a helpful beast. Pistenbully is the German name for a Snocat or snow groomer and it is responsible for moving, manipulating and compacting snow on ski slopes and trails, the latter on which grooves or tracks are laid. Quite useful if you fancy a bit of cross-country skiing.

The PistenBully is the trademark of a make of snow groomer produced by the German-based Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG, but it has become the generic (German) name for anything that pushes around snow on a piste. But why Bully? It was the Volkswagen Bus that was first unofficially dubbed the Bully (or Bulli) when it came out in 1950, though its derivation is unclear. One theory is that it came as a combination of the first syllables of the words Bus and Lieferwagen (van). Another version postulates that workers at the VW factory gave the prototype the nickname from the adjective “bullig” because of its bull-like appearance. Apparently the name Bully never caught on in the UK because, as the German wikipedia site for the VW Bus quite rightly points out, „Bullying“ bedeutet Mobbing.

Pleurisy

My year hasn’t started tremendously auspiciously. After spending two weeks in the UK, on the way back across the North Sea, I must have picked up an ear infection which has rendered me temporarily hearing-impaired. I’ve never worn a diving helmet before, but I’m slowly beginning to realise what it might be like to don one: the voices I hear just seem to reverberate unintelligibly off an invisible shield around my head. So last week, there seemed little point giving my normal English lessons at the Volksuniversiteit and having students’ questions literally fall on deaf ears. The next morning there was an envelope jammed in the letterbox addressed personally to me. The heading on the photocopy it contained said ‘Pleurisy’. Oh dear I thought, not another illness I’d been diagnosed with. But reading on, I found the following:

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese,
You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But a bow if repeated is never called bine,

And the plural of vow is vows, never vine.
If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
 

If the singular’s this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed keese?
Then one may be that and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
 

We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim,
 

So the English, I think, you all will agree,
Is the queerest language you ever did see.

The note had been sent by a concerned colleague, who had signed off with a Get Better Soon. And even though it didn’t manage to clear up my aural orifices, it did cheer me up. A kind gesture indeed!

So, if and when I’m able to doff my imaginary diving helmet, I will at least have something in store for my students next time …

For more information click here

Belgian travel games

To alleviate the boredom of a long car journey in the nineteen-sixties, my brother and I would be encouraged to play games in the back of the car, supposedly to stop us quarrelling. One popular way of passing the time was the inn-sign game, where for each pub the car passed - depending on the number of legs in the name - points could be scored. So, the Red Lion would give you 4 points and the Horse & Jockey 6 points, but the Royal Oak would provide you with none. My brother would take the right-hand side of the road and I the left. The winner at the end of the journey was the one with the highest number of points (or legs). The four-hour journey from home to Scarborough on the Yorkshire Coast, where we sometimes spent our holidays, went through Manchester city-centre, Oldham, Huddersfield, Leeds and York, so it was rewarding territory. Of course, in the intervening years, these towns and cities have all been by-passed by motorways and dual-carriageways and it is unlikely that any pubs will appear along the roadsides these days.

Nowadays, (motorway) travel can be quite mind-numbing and I have to admit that car-driving and I are not natural bedfellows. So I have to think of other ways of breaking the monotony on a long drive. A fortnight ago, I was driving to the port of Zeebrugge on a stretch of road that I quite often travel for North Sea crossings and I was reminded of why travelling in Belgium (even on its motorways) can be such fun. 

You could, for example, try spotting French place-names when circumventing Brussels - one of the largest Francophone metropolises in the world - on the northern section of its outer ring road (R0). Well, guess what? There aren’t any. The R0 doesn’t actually enter bi-lingual Greater Brussels, so if you don’t know the Flemish names for Liège and Mons, you’d better check up on them beforehand.

Jodoigne: now you see it, now you don’t. Driving the Belgian motorways can be a baffling experience. If you travel the E40 from Liège to Brussels, keep your wits about you if you have an appointment in French-speaking Jodoigne. One minute you’re in Wallonia, the next you’re in Flanders, so don’t miss exit 25 for Geldenaken (that’s French for Jodoigne – as if they even look or sound the same!)

When you peel off E40 onto the E314 just west of Leuven and see signs to Aken (followed by the German name Aachen), you might be forgiven for thinking that the French-speaking and Flemish-speaking communities would show some fraternity when it came to providing road signs in two languages, at least on their national routes where place names differ, but – apart from in Brussels and local authorities with so-called language facilities - this is taboo.

However, my favourite game on Belgian motorways, like the inn-sign game, is beer-related and is called Spot-the-Brewery: on my recent drive to the Belgian coast, I passed junctions signposting Hoegaarden, Grimbergen, Affligem and Brugge (and if you take the southern route through Wallonia to Calais, there are motorway exits to Jupille, Floreffe and (possibly) Watou). Now if that doesn’t work up an appetite, I don’t know what will.