Wired Magazine is a must read! That and The Economist and YOU rule!! :P

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand

By Michael Erard 06.23.08

Photo: Mauricio Alejo

The targeted offenses: if you are stolen, call the police at once. please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can. deformed man lavatory. For the past 18 months, teams of language police have been scouring Beijing on a mission to wipe out all such traces of bad English signage before the Olympics come to town in August. They're the type of goofy transgressions that we in the English homelands love to poke fun at, devoting entire Web sites to so-called Chinglish. (By the way, that last phrase means "handicapped bathroom.")

But what if these sentences aren't really bad English? What if they are evidence that the English language is happily leading an alternative lifestyle without us?

Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it's escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca.

In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.

It's not merely that English will be salted with Chinese vocabulary for local cuisine, bon mots, and curses or that speakers will peel off words from local dialects. The Chinese and other Asians already pronounce English differently — in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. For example, in various parts of the region they tend not to turn vowels in unstressed syllables into neutral vowels. Instead of "har-muh-nee," it's "har-moh-nee." And the sounds that begin words like this and thing are often enunciated as the letters f, v, t, or d. In Singaporean English (known as Singlish), think is pronounced "tink," and theories is "tee-oh-rees."

English will become more like Chinese in other ways, too. Some grammatical appendages unique to English (such as adding do or did to questions) will drop away, and our practice of not turning certain nouns into plurals will be ignored. Expect to be asked: "How many informations can your flash drive hold?" In Mandarin, Cantonese, and other tongues, sentences don't require subjects, which leads to phrases like this: "Our goalie not here yet, so give chance, can or not?"

One noted feature of Singlish is the use of words like ah, lah, or wah at the end of a sentence to indicate a question or get a listener to agree with you. They're each pronounced with tone — the linguistic feature that gives spoken Mandarin its musical quality — adding a specific pitch to words to alter their meaning. (If you say "xin" with an even tone, it means "heart"; with a descending tone it means "honest.") According to linguists, such words may introduce tone into other Asian-English hybrids.

Given the number of people involved, Chinglish is destined to take on a life of its own. Advertisers will play with it, as they already do in Taiwan. It will be celebrated as a form of cultural identity, as the Hong Kong Museum of Art did in a Chinglish exhibition last year. It will be used widely online and in movies, music, games, and books, as it is in Singapore. Someday, it may even be taught in schools. Ultimately, it's not that speakers will slide along a continuum, with "proper" language at one end and local English dialects on the other, as in countries where creoles are spoken. Nor will Chinglish replace native languages, as creoles sometimes do. It's that Chinglish will be just as proper as any other English on the planet.

And it's possible Chinglish will be more efficient than our version, doing away with word endings and the articles a, an, and the. After all, if you can figure out "Environmental sanitation needs your conserve," maybe conservation isn't so necessary.

Any language is constantly evolving, so it's not surprising that English, transplanted to new soil, is bearing unusual fruit. Nor is it unique that a language, spread so far from its homelands, would begin to fracture. The obvious comparison is to Latin, which broke into mutually distinct languages over hundreds of years — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. A less familiar example is Arabic: The speakers of its myriad dialects are connected through the written language of the Koran and, more recently, through the homogenized Arabic of Al Jazeera. But what's happening to English may be its own thing: It's mingling with so many more local languages than Latin ever did, that it's on a path toward a global tongue — what's coming to be known as Panglish. Soon, when Americans travel abroad, one of the languages they'll have to learn may be their own.

Michael Erard (author@umthebook.com) wrote about the spread of the Chinese language in issue 14.04.

Love this song so much! Thank you Morningberryz!! :)

Minna Hitori

Matsu Takako

Matsu Takako's "minna hitori" pv.

http://morningberryz.vox.com/library/...

"Minna hitori" was written and produced by Takeuchi Mariya. The other 2 tracks "shiawase no jumon" and "now and then" were both written by Matsu Takako (lyrics and music!). All 3 songs are great but "minna hitori" and 'shiawase no jumon" are outstanding songs. As a first press bonus a dvd containing...

Lyrics
荒んだ世界に　あなたのような人が　いることに感謝
夢が遠く見えて　肩落とす夜は　電話をさせてよ
恋人ともちがう　大切な心友　代わりのきかない私の相棒
みんなひとりぼっち　探し続けるのは　確かな絆とその証
誰かのひとことで　明日もがんばると　思えるなんてすてきさ

わけもなくふさぎ　プチうつな自分が　嫌いになる日も
あなたの笑顔の　大きな力に　励まされるんだ
どんな強い人も　弱さを隠してる　外には出せない傷抱えながら
みんなひとりぼっち　それを知るからなお　あなたの大事さがわかるよ
心の片すみで　気にかけてくれてる　恋よりも強い味方

Ah　たまには私を　Ah　頼ってもいいよ

生まれる時ひとり　最期もまたひとり
だから生きてるあいだだけは
小さなぬくもりや　ふとした　優しさを
求めずにはいられない

Everybody needs to be needed
Everybody wants to be wanted
‘Cause everybody knows that we are all alone
Let me give my gratitude to you
For always being there and smile for me
Many many thanks to you, the best friend of mine
Many many thanks to you, the best friend of mine
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Romaji
Verse
susanda sekai ni  anata no you na hito ga
  iru koto ni kansha
yume ga tooku miete  kata otosu yoru wa
  denwa wo sasete yo

Pre-chorus
koibito to mo chigau  taisetsu na (tomodachi)
kawari no kikanai watashi no aibou

Chorus
minna hitoribocchi  sagashitsudzukeru no wa
  tashika na kizuna to sono akashi
dareka no hitokoto de  ashita mo ganbaru to
  omoeru nante suteki sa

Verse
wake mo naku fusagi  buchiutsu na jibun ga
  kirai ni naru hi mo
anata no egao no  ookina chikara ni
  hagemasareru n’ da

Pre-chorus
donna tsuyoi hito mo  yowasa wo kakushiteru
  soto ni wa dasenai kizu kakaenagara

Chorus
minna hitoribocchi  sore wo shiru kara nao
 anata no daiji sa ga wakaru yo
kokoro no katasumi de  ki ni kakete kureteru
  koi yori mo tsuyoi mikata

Bridge
Ah, tama ni wa watashi wo  Ah, tayottemo ii yo

Chorus
umareru toki hitori  saigo mo mata hitori
dakara ikiteru aida dake wa
chiisana nukumori ya  futoshita  yasashisa wo
motomezu ni wa irarenai

Everybody needs to be needed
Everybody wants to be wanted
‘Cause everybody knows that we are all alone
Let me give my gratitude to you
For always being there and smile for me
Many many thanks to you, the best friend of mine
Many many thanks to you, the best friend of mine

Taken from http://www.corichan.com/lyrics/singles/takakomsingles06.html#minna

———————————————————————————————————————————–
Chinese translation
在這荒蕪的世界中　你出現了　這是我最感謝的事
你讓我看得到遠大的夢想　讓我在沮喪的夜晚　有人可以打電話
我們並非戀人　而是最重要的朋友　你是無可取代的伙伴
大家生來都是孤獨一人　我們一直在找尋的是　確實連繫著我們的那個證明
只要有人說了一句　明天也要好好努力啊　不知為何一想起來就覺得太美好了

當憂鬱沒來由　又很厭惡自己因為一些小事就受打擊的日子
你的笑容是我最大的力量與鼓勵
無論再怎麼堅強的人　也會有想隱藏軟弱　不想顯露傷口的時候
大家都是孤獨一個人　正是因為我們都知道這件事　才覺得你是如此重要
在心裡的一個角落　還會關心著我　真是比戀人還要重要的伙伴啊

我啊　有的時候也是可以依賴的唷

生來是孤單一人　最後也是孤單一人
所以在有生的日子裏
一定要好好尋求　小小的溫暖和偶爾的溫柔

Japanese lyrics & Chinese translation taken from http://josekwok.mysinablog.com/index.php

Very interesting article in the Wikipedia I found about the people of Malaysia that are ethnic Chinese... like Peggy, Frances, Jane, The Muse and the singer Karen Kong. Maybe some of them would like to talk about their ethnicity and what languages they speak and Provence they are from?

from wikipedia:

A Malaysian Chinese is an overseas Chinese who is a citizen or long-term resident of Malaysia. Most are descendants of Chinese who arrived between the fifteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Within Malaysia, they are usually simply referred to as "Chinese" in all languages. The term Chinese Malaysian is rarely (if ever) used in Malaysia.

Early Chinese settlers (from the fifteenth century in Malacca; eighteenth century in Penang) form to a sub-group called Peranakan or Straits Chinese, who adopted many Malay customs and to varying extents (limited in Penang, almost complete in Malacca) the Malay language, but retained Chinese religious practices. In contrast, the newer arrivals (nineteenth century and later) who retained Chinese customs were known as sinkheh (新客 - literally "new guests").

The Chinese in Malaysia maintain a distinct communal identity and rarely intermarry with native Malays for religious and cultural reasons. This is because most Malays are Muslim. Under Malaysian law, such a marriage requires the non-Muslim party to convert. Most Malaysian Chinese consider their being "Chinese" at once an ethnic, cultural and political identity.

The Malaysian Chinese have traditionally dominated the Malaysian economy, but with the advent of affirmative action policies by the Malaysian government to protect the interests of ethnic Malays, their share has eroded somewhat. On most counts, however, they still make up the majority of the middle and upper income classes of Malaysia. As of 2007, they constitute about a quarter of the Malaysian population.

More Here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Malaysian

Very Interesting... basically he's saying that English is the dominant language in world culture, but that Chinese is catching up on The Internet especially. Interesting article!

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/commentary/imomus/2007/04/imomus0410

At UNESCO's glamorous Cold War spy-thriller headquarters in Paris, Koïchiro Matsuura, the Japanese diplomat running the organization, is pushing to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions.

Yep, he's trying to keep English from muting out every other language, and that's certainly nothing new. But unlike others, Matsuura comes off like an airline executive talking about routes, planes, hubs, spokes and flow. That's because culture flows.

There are two basic route models in the aviation business. Airlines either fly point to point or hub and spoke. Point-to-point flights move from one city to another, while hub-and-spoke transit goes through connections via the airline's base city. Now, let's contemplate that in relation to cultural flows. With books, films and the internet, which kind of world do we live in, point to point or hub and spoke? If culture were an airline model, in other words, would Poles be able to fly to Tokyo without having to transfer at LAX?

One of the articles to emerge from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization conference was, "Cultural Diversity? A Pipe Dream." In it, Rüdiger Wischenbart noted some shocking facts about the current realities behind book translation.

Worldwide, he said, between 50 percent and 60 percent of all translations of books originate from English originals. It's sometimes higher: 70 percent of all books translated into Serbian, for instance, have English originals. In return, only 3 percent to 6 percent of all worldwide book translations are from foreign languages into English. English speakers, it seems, are talking a lot but listening very little. If this were the airline industry, we'd be talking about the kind of world where you can't fly from Moscow to Berlin without changing in London.

Non-Anglo cultures are also listening less and less to each other, more and more to us. "In 2005," Wischenbart reported, "a mere 9.4 percent of all translations into German came from French originals.... Yet, this still brings French comfortably to second place in the overall translation statistics in Germany, as compared to 2.7 percent for Italian (number 3), or Dutch (2.5 percent, number 4) or Spanish (2.3 percent, number 5). Sixty-two percent of all translations were of English originals. All other languages and cultural in-roads seem like peanuts in comparison, and no politically well-intentioned process will ever mend this imbalance.... Centrifugal forces are working against globalization, resulting in culturally fragmented islands and regions, with few cohesive lines in between."

The "pipe dream" that Wischenbart describes is UNESCO's point-to-point vision of global cultural flow from any point to any other. The world we live in today, though, is still a hub-and-spoke world.

If it's clear in the book world, it's even clearer in the film world. The U.S. studios' share of the box office in Europe grew from 30 percent in 1950 to more than 80 percent by 1990, with 70 percent of that dominated by just six companies -- Disney, Viacom, Sony, Fox, AOL Time Warner and Universal. European movies, in contrast, can't achieve more than 5 percent of U.S. market share. American studios remake the most successful European movies for the U.S. market.

An interesting table shows the box-office share of domestic films in various countries around the world. Only in the United States and India do a significant number of people go to movies made in their own countries. (Granted, last year Japanese moviegoers pulled off a surprise coup -- Japanese films achieved a majority box office share, 53.2 percent, for the first time in two decades.)

What about the internet? Well, English is unsurprisingly the dominant language, with 29.5 percent of all users communicating in it. Chinese is next, with about half the number of English users (159 million Chinese to 329 million English users). But Chinese is coming up fast, with more than twice the growth rate of English online. If it overtakes, does that make English a point-to-point language, or does Chinese just become the new hub, with all the spokes (at least the Asian ones) leading toward it?

Earlier this month, UNESCO's International Programme for the Development of Communication approved a grant of $15,000 for the reinforcement of a community multimedia center serving the marginalized weavers of Madhya Pradesh, India. You'd have to be a grinch to begrudge this kind of corrective gesture, no matter how small.

But perhaps economic vitality -- consider the examples of Bollywood, Japan's film industry and the booming Chinese internet -- is ultimately what will usher in a point-to-point world. Oh, and machine translation that really works. Maybe UNESCO could give $15,000 -- or even more! -- to the marginalized and struggling translation weavers at Google.

Momus, aka Nick Currie, is a Scots musician and writer who lives in Berlin. His blog is Click opera.

OK, so I'm a little late! ^^

Posted by MikeyMike at 03:59 pm on February 19th, 2007 in Geographica, Congrats!.

Year of the pig, they say... and a special once-in-sixty years year it is too... Lots of babies this year then! ^^

Here's a cool website with lots of Chinese New Years facts...

What's your opinion on this?? I don't even have a hangbag! ;)