Speak with Authority

Poet and English teacher, Taylor Mali, taught us to speak with authority, something that has been lost in the "totally like whatever"s of the modern English language. And all along, I thought those are the cool words that I, as a non-native speaker, should be inserting to my sentences to make them sound, you know, more American-like?

Introducing Taylor Mali, doing poetry slam:




Totally Like Whatever
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Who Else Has Time To Study English?

I dug out a piece of an old news, reported by the official China Daily. It shows that the zealous drive to study English for the Beijing's Olympics Games goes way beyond overworked taxi drivers in the capital city. As a further proof of the host city's hospitality to foreigners, an even more strategic important service profession is affected too. Here is an excerpt:

"China's capital Beijing plans to require attendants at its public toilets to speak basic English in a bid to improve the services provided to foreign visitors, state media said.

It is part of an ambitious campaign to raise the standards of public loos in the city of 13 million as it gets ready to welcome thousands of tourists for the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

The paper did not specify the level of English toilet staff need to possess, but said they must in future also be proficient in sign language."

--China Daily, December 11, 2004.

No shit, I thought to myself. (My friend Bob always says "No shit" whenever I tell him something he never heard of.) Public toilet attendant? Sounds a lot less prestigious job than flight attendant. And what services do they provide exactly?

Okay. Never mind. I don't want to know anyway.

But I can't help think what lessons should be covered in their English training. I came up with a short list that's barely minimum:

Hello.

Welcome to Beijing.

Do you enjoy today's game?

May I help you?

No thanks. We don't take tips in China.

The next public toilet is five Hu Tong's away from this one.

Excuse me, sir (madam). Your fly is still open.

Hope you enjoy staying in Beijing. Goodbye.

Who Has Time To Study English?

Who works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and still has energy and time to study English?

Meet the superman:

He doesn't look like a nerd, does he? He is not. He is a taxi driver who makes a living in the streets of Beijing, according to this BBC report:

Mr Mu, like other Beijing taxi drivers, is currently studying English so he will be able to better understand visitors at next year's games.

Taxi firms provide each driver with one free English lesson a fortnight, and give them a free textbook.

"The book is really thick," says the 33-year-old, who works 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ever since China won the bid to host 2008 Olympics Games, the western media has never tired of putting out the stories like this, which, along with another frequent topic--public toilet, always makes a good headline.

However, when a foreigner hops a cab in Forbidden City a year from now, I seriously doubt he will be greeted anything more than a Hello. Not that taxi driver can't learn English and speak it well--anyone can; it is just I don't believe any one of them gives it a damn about doing it. After a 12-hour shift with no day off, the first thing they most likely do is go to bed straight.

They don't need a English book to put them asleep.

Is Baby Talk The Universal Language?

Every time I read something from a legitimate media outlet that starts with "A new study suggests that...", I knew I would have some fun. Half of the cases, the "new" study only tells something old and plain common sense, like obesity is not good to your health; another half are simply silly. It's called junk science, churned out by, well, junk scientists (I wish I had their job).

Here is the latest I read that has to do with language, reported by CBS News. It asks a rhetoric question: Is baby talk the universal language? and it starts with, what else, "A new study suggests...".

Baby is a little creepy genius in language, regardless his or her race or any other background.

That's what it suggests, not so subtly. Want a proof, here is a few words from the scientists:

"Researchers Greg Bryant and Clark Barrett, of University of California, Los Angeles, say the findings show that the relationship between sounds and intentions is universal because much of the meaning of language is communicated through nonverbal cues, such as pitch, loudness, and rate of speech."

After reading this, I was elated; the day has finally come, that we human can talk to a bird directly. Or at least our baby can.

Great Leap Forward: English For Everyone in China

The latest Newsweek issue (Aug. 20-27, 2007) did a special report on global education. One of the stories was about the English fever in China and other Southeast Asia countries. According to the report, some 170 million people are studying English in China alone. That's more than half of the U.S. population. In comparison, 40 million people worldwide are studying Mandarin.

Here is an excerpt:

"And the consulting group McKinsey warned China in 2005 that fewer than 10 percent of its college graduates were suitable for employment at multinationals—primarily because they couldn't speak English. "Any nation that ignores English learning does so at its peril," says James Oladejo, an expert in language acquisition at Taiwan's National Kaohsiung Normal University."

For the full article, click the link: English For Everyone.

(Note: "Any one who ignores this Newsweek report does so at his peril," says Lingual Bee, an expert in language exaggeration at Mainland's National Abnormal University.)

Russell Peters Again: "Are Wee Goool?"

Watching Russell Peters's mocking of Indian accent brought me back a fond memory.

Freshly minted at the graduate school years ago, I was pondering which courses to take at the beginning of the semester. A fellow Chinese student, who was half way through his Ph.D. program, offered his advice. The way he delivered it, however, sounded more like a stern warning: "Whatever you take, just keep one thing in mind: skip the course taught by any professor whose last name is Singh or longer than 12 letters".

He was dead serious. But, what a hell, I was young and full of myself then. A week later, I was sitting at the back row in a class called Fluid Dynamics, taught by Associate Prof. Singh, who, at the first glance, seemed amicable and smart.

The problem was, he spoke in a rapid fire, as if he's always in a hurry; on top of that, his accent was so thick that I wondered whether he was speaking Hindi with an English accent. By the end of the class, I was sure that some sort of fluid had flooded my ears dynamically; almost nothing the professor lectured came across.

I should have heeded warning.

But I stuck out. It turned out Prof. Singh was indeed amicable and very smart. That's how I recall him now. Otherwise, I can't explain why I didn't drop his class. I also remember, somehow along the way, the dynamic fluid receded, and my ears started to tune into his English, to the degree that I was quite fond of his unique accent.

I got A in the end. I thought Prof. Singh was very "goool".

The Talent That Makes You Laugh

If only his name, not his face, be seen first, then he would be thought as a white; if the other way around, then he would be taken as an Indian. Truth to be told, Russell Peters is a Canadian, born to an Indian immigrant family.

Not your average Canadian.

Had he become a first-rate computer scientist or medical doctor, Russel would be a fairly standard success story of a second-generation immigrant, making his parents proud, but unlikely turning any head in a street. Yet, against all odds, he becomes one of the most recognized persons in Canada. He's achieved the celebrity status not by his brain power, but his talent to make people laugh.

Russell is a brilliant stand-up comedian.

His brilliance, however, doesn't rest solely on telling jokes smoothly--that's given for any stand-up comedian; his brilliance shines through his great motor skill. Name any ethnic group, Russell can mimic a typical accented English that's associated with that group.

No surprise, Russell's Indian accent is authentic and non-mistaken, as he loves to make fun of his parents. But my favorite is his take on a Chinese accent. Here is his performance:



Based on my observation, the store owner's accent that Russell has a great fun of is more like from someone whose native language is Cantonese.

A Mandarin speaker, usually from the northern China, has a distinctive accent from that of a Cantonese speaker. That aside, he wouldn't be so adept in bargaining as that store owner, either.

The Bee Has an Accent Too

I hate all the TV commercials by big phama. It just ain't fun. Even animation can't do the trick. Such as Nasonex, an allergy medicine, which features a suave bee in its commercials. How suck are they? I would rather suffer the allergy for one day than watch the Nasonex's ads for 30 seconds. Take your turn:



Only one thing in it stirs my curiosity. The bee talks in an accented English in the ads, as the Gecko's lizard does. As far as I can tell, it sounds nowhere near East End London.

A few keywords later in Google, I uncovered the bee's origin; it's about a thousand mile south of London.

Hola! That's Spain.

It turned out, the voice-over was done by Antonio Banderas, an Spanish actor. No wonder it sounds familiar. He did the voice of Shrek II's Puss too.

The Lizard Has an Accent

These days, I seem to be the only person who doesn't have TiVo. The 20-dollar a month saving has a trade off: live with TV commercials each time the tube is on. Luckily, many ads are not half bad, except those churned out by the big phama. They always urge me to "call you doctor today".

In general, the TV ads with an animal as its central character are more fun to watch. Budweiser's frog and Aflac's duck always make me laugh, which not the case with a lot of prime-time comedies. Most of the time, the animal in the ads talks funny, just as the way it usually does in a Disney cartoon.

Gecko, the big insurance, tried to do it a bit differently with its rival's duck in mind. It featured a lizard in a series commercials. That little creature is cute and cocky, and walks like a duck. But it doesn't talk in a typical exaggerated tone in a cartoon, but instead with a serious, distinctive man's accent. It sounds like this:



For a while, I couldn't figure out what exactly the accent is. Until I came to the Gecko's blog:

"A lot of people are writing to me asking, "What's up with your accent?" Some people say I sound like an Aussie from "down under." (After all, geckos are found all over the world.) Others say it sounds like an East End London, or Cockney, accent. Cockneys are considered working-class inhabitants of London. According to tradition, the strict definition is limited to those born within earshot of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow, a historic church in the City of London. I think I'd agree that my voice does sound a bit like an East End London accent."

So, the cocky lizard has an Cockney accent.

Don't Tell Him

I once read a joke while eating. It nearly choked me. The joke goes something like this:

A guy went to a fancy restaurant in New York to see his Jewish friend, who owns the place. After the meal, his friend proudly showed him around. In the back kitchen, the guy keenly observed the celebrity chef, who's leading a crew of 20 something staffs. He acted like a general--barking orders, giving instructions, and occasionally cursing someone. This was all done in Yiddish, since the whole crew seems to be Jews.

Except for one guy.

His look tells he is Asian for sure, maybe Chinese. But he was talking to the chef and others back and forth in Yiddish with an ease. The visitor turned to his friend and said: "Wow, he speaks perfect Yiddish. How did he learn it?"

"Shih..." his friend lowered his voice, "don't tell him. He’s been with us for many years; he always thought he speaks English."