Anglicisation Anxiety

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Des croissants, confiture et jus d'orange.

Recently in a discussion with a friend, I got into an argument as to the correct pronunciation of “prima facie”. Having tentatively dipped my toe in the Italian language, I assumed that a Latin expression would follow Italian pronunciation, hence: “pri-ma fah-chi”. But no, apparently everyone says “preemer face-ee” as in the word “face”. Wikipedia’s IPA spelling suggested the unhappy compromise of “prima fay-shee”. I decided in the end, that however the phrase is properly pronounced in Latin, it’s best to go with the common pronunciation. But this question frequently vexes me, how much should one anglicise foreign loan words when using them in everyday sentences?

Take “croissant” for example. Is there any other word for which I exercise so much anxiety when I’m called upon to use it in conversation? Where do you draw the line when it comes to pronouncing the word properly? Do I cough-up a great big ball of phlegm when pronouncing the “r” in “cr-” and do I, like “un vrai français” pronounce the “-oi-” as “wah”? Of course I’m not going to pronounce the final “t” but should I also properly nasalize “-ssant” and thus produce a passionate and fully rounded “kr-wasson”?

No, that would sound ridiculous.

Should I instead, like every other Aussie, refer to a croissant the same way I would refer to my auntie when she’s angry about something?

Oh, if only I could just ask my whole question in French and remove any ambiguity:

“Deux croissant s’il vous plaît.”

But I’m not sure the pimply apprentice at Baker’s Delight would understand what I was talking about. Looks like I’ll just have to say:

“May I have two cross aunts please.” (Although really I’d prefer it if my aunts remained their cheerful old selves).

But this is the dilemma. On the one hand, I can sound like an uneducated bogan, on the other a pretentious merchant banker. Where is the happy middle-ground?

Of course the French have no such anxiety. The resolve the question rather bluntly by simply Francifying all foreign loan words. I don’t think anyone in France would get any sort of higher esteem or caché for pronouncing “le showbiz” like some marketing executive straight off the plane from Los Angeles. Rather, my pocket Larousse’s IPA guide suggested something much more like “le chobiznès”. While it is generally a mark of intellect being able to pronounce foreign loan words correctly in English, the French have no such hang-ups. “Naples”, “Genoa”, “Moscou”; if you ever wondered why we call Florence “Florence” when the actual denizens of that city call it Firenze you can thank the French. Yes the English assiduously tried to copy the names properly - but the English copied them from the wrong language!

“Facts”, “deeds” and that which has been “done”.

Image via Wikipedia

Old English Epic Poem Beowulf

I’m a great fan of Melvyn Bragg’s “The Adventure of English”, but there is one part in his series when he is waxing lyrical about the uniqueness of English and it’s large vocabulary and extensive loan-words and I can’t help thinking that he’s making a virtue out of a necessity (or at least a virtue out of an indifferent fact). Because, really, is the English language’s much-vaunted big vocabulary actually as good as all that? I know it’s good in a social setting when you want to show off your … you know show off your... not lexicalness... logicalness? no.... Oh what’s that word?! Loquaciousness! Loquaciousness that’s it!

But how are you to impress upon your fellow human any sense your incredible wit and verbal acuity when you’re umm-ing and ah-ing? Everyone else gets impatient for you to “just spit it out” as you try to remember that really apt word; so eventually you just settle for a less appropriate but still workable word. And that’s the big problem with English: there are just too many words and I (for one) can never remember the one that I really want to use!

I was thinking the other day about the word “fact” - because it sounds a lot like the French equivalent “fait” and I guessed that that was where the English word came from. Actually according to the “Australian Oxford Dictionary” it comes from the Latin word “factum” which just like in French is the past tense form of the verb “facere” (“fait” and “faire” in French) “to do”. Which is to say that really a fact is simply a done - something that has been done. The etymology is easy to follow in French and Latin, but in English it’s not at all readily apparent that the word “fact” is related to the word “done”.

Of course English had its own word for “that which has been done” before it developed its preference for fancy Latin and French words over humble old Anglo-Saxon ones. That is, “deed”. Which if I refer again to the Australian Oxford Dictionary, has an “Old English” origin, “from Germanic: related to DO”. But, you might protest, “deed” doesn’t mean the same thing as “fact” and this is the source of Melvyn Bragg’s effusive paean to “English’s extraordinary ability to absorb [new words]”. Bragg finds that when English absorbs words from another language where a word with the same meaning already exists in English, both words take on a slightly different meaning. Thus “where old English said craft old Norse said skill... in Old English you were sick, in Norse you were ill”. Bragg lauds this habit of adding words to the English “word horde”, describing it as “adding to the richness and flexibility of the vocabulary” as each word takes on a new, more specific meaning, with nuanced distinctions between words, allowing for the expression of more complex and specific ideas.

Image via Wikipedia

Influences in English vocabulary

But to suggest that English has any particular advantage in expressing complex ideas is ridiculous (for one thing it would mean it couldn’t be translated into other languages!). And of course, whilst Stephen Fry might be happy to make outrageous claims on behalf of his beloved language, linguists will have more difficulty in justifying them. The reality, as I investigate my “Larousse de Poche” is that the French word “fait” in fact encapsulates all of the above listed meanings of fact, deed and done - varying according to context.

So, what about the big vocabulary? Is it a bane or boon? Well, for my part, I find it jolly annoying! I can never think of the word with that specific meaning that I’m after. And words with related meanings like “fact” and “deed” don’t in any way hint as to the other’s existence through sounding similar because they have completely alien etymologies. But if you were to ask me which ones I wanted to cull, I could never choose any, because I can’t help but be infatuated with all of the English vocabulary’s richness of connotations. Each word has its own adventure to tell as to how it found itself in our language. Whether it be from the marauding vikings of the Danelaw who gave us “sky” and “knife”. Or if they came from William’s conquering armée who taught the English the hard way about the role of the “state”, “traitors”, “arrest”, “justice”, to “accuse” and “acquit” and to “sentence”, “condemn” and “gaol”. Or the honest “pukka” words from working people under English dominion all over the world whether they be the unsentimental references to pompous “Lord Muck-a-Muck” from those suffering under the thumb of the British Empire, or just the tomfoolery of some “hooligans” in Ireland...

Back to School

Image via Wikipedia

Summer holidays have finally come to an end and I am teaching again. The difference in atmosphere between Australian schools and English schools hit me straight away. First of all was the lax dress standards. On my first day teaching in England I wanted to make a good impression on the new school and therefore came in a collared shirt - so much for my standards of looking presentable, I was “busted” for wearing jeans. Dress standards at my Hertfordshire school were strictly slacks and collared shirt, on top of that I noticed ties were more or less obligatory as well, judging by what all other male teachers were wearing.

I told a this story of my surprise to other members of staff when in England. Explaining that the only time I ever felt out of place for wearing jeans in an Australian school was when every other male member of staff were lounging around in t-shirts and shorts. Of course, I got the impression that English teachers just considered this a wild exaggeration of the notorious “she’ll be right”, “no worries” attitude of Australians. In fact, by the end of my year in Hertfordshire, I’d even begun to doubt the veracity of the story myself.

But sure enough, walking into the staffroom this morning, on a 36 degree day, what sight do you imagine met my eyes? Yes, shorts and t-shirts!

“Mate, you’re gonna have to lose the tie.”

Was the reception I got entering the staffroom. On the other hand, female members of staff complimented me on the collared shirt and tie and took jabs at the other men to follow suit. But the banter was playful and self deprecating throughout. I’m not sure whether to continue trying to maintain a good standard of dress code or to just cave in and go back to jeans and a polo (I was never really t-shirt and shorts material).

French is our heritage too!

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Château de Langeais in France, once the home of King
Richard the Lion Heart, destroyed by the English in the
Hundred Years' War and rebuilt by Louis XI in 1465.

Last week I commented on why Australians flock to London in droves and about the cultural heritage that brings so many Australians to the British Isles. But, whilst Australians seem well able to appreciate the cultural significance of Britain, I feel that they don’t share the same enthusiasm for the country on the other side of the channel, which I think is equally as significant. My own contention as an English teacher, is that all speakers of English who actually take an interest in the language or have a love for the language should try to acquaint themselves with French. Because French makes up an important part of our heritage too - I think far more so than Latin or Greek - Samuel Johnson in the preface to his, the original English dictionary, explains that he preferred French spellings to Latin ones where the etymology was uncertain because as he put it “the French generally supplied us.” And when more than half of the words in the English language have either French or Latin origins that makes a big deal.

One thing that I noticed whilst travelling about in Europe is the line that you can draw across the continent dividing the two biggest cultural influences on almost every country, that is, the line between the Latin, and the Teutonic, and there exist a heap of cultural stereotypes and attitudes that seem to accompany the divide. (In terms of language Finland, Greece, Ireland and the Slavic countries all have very different languages, but if only in cultural stereotypes if in nothing else, they still seem to conform to their side of the dividing line). In Switzerland this line actually has a name: the Röstigraben or Rosti ditch after a popular form of mashed potatoes eaten in the German half of Switzerland. Maybe in other parts of Europe the demarcation isn’t so clear as in Switzerland, but you’ll know on which side you’re on when you sample the food in the North (or when you’re in Oslo and you have to barter one of your own limbs just to pay for the meal!). Or, likewise, you’ll know you’re in a Latin country when notwithstanding the tasty food your holiday experience is somewhat lessened when you have to learn to use your elbows to queue-up for a bus in Nîmes after your train has been inexplicably cancelled.

But I can’t help feeling that England and subsequently the United Kingdom occupy a bit of grey area. No-one would ever say that the UK is a Latin country - but at the same time, it’s not quite one-hundred-percent Northern either. The language itself is an odd mix, Germanic origins and an underlying Germanic grammar but with Latin words making-up more than half the vocabulary.

English stereotypes are likewise mixed: the English have somehow managed to acquire the dour puritan work ethic of Northern Europe without the famous German efficiency or Scandinavian inventiveness. Don’t think I’m just knocking the Brits either - Australians have a “she’ll be right” attitude to not doing a job properly without the joie de vivre or work-life balance of the Latin countries.

Hmmm, best of both worlds really.

But, actually these are just facile national stereotypes. The point that I really want to make is that too often the French heritage in English is forgotten. Whilst 20th century English writers like Thomas Hardy and J.R.R. Tolkien rejoiced in digging-up old English and Anglo-Saxon words, with their homely and honest connotations (consider Thomas Hardy’s “Hap”), only advertising executives and the worst types of academia have taken an interest in the French and Latin words in English.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Bordeaux, capital of Aquitaine,  was ruled by the King
of England for 300 years, or was it that for 300 years the
Kings of England were from Anjou or Aquitaine?

But there are fantastic words derived from French too. As well as almost all the words relating gouvernance and justice, also the words that have connotations that are Royal and Grand, there are Anglo-Saxon equivalents for these words but Kingly and Great take-on a whole new level of meaning when said in French. French gives us glorious words - like Glory, as well as the pompous like importune and impostor (and yes - pompous also came to Middle English via the Old French pompeux).

But I might leave you with a favourite for rich connotations and a lovely etymology: consider “journey” from journée as in bonne journée, it originally only meant a day’s travel or a day’s work but in English the word seems to have exemplified Bilbo’s attitude to a going out for the day - which says a lot about the English:

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

The Problem with English

Image via Wikipedia

Medieval illustration of a scribe writing

Or “Why I Wish I Were a Maths Teacher”

The problem with teaching English, as a subject, not as a second language, is that ability in English is nearly impossible to quantify and grade.

Take this example of “Assessment Focuses” that English teachers should use in assessing pupil’s progress in writing ability in the UK: “Assessment Focus 5: vary sentences for clarity, purpose and effect”, a level 8 (quite a high level) is:

“Across a range of writing... variety of sentences deployed judiciously across the text to achieve purpose and overall effect”.

A level 7 in the same Assessment Focus:

“Across a range of writing... sentence structure is imaginative, precise and accurate, matched to writer’s purpose and intended effect on the reader...”

Do these focuses mean anything? How do you measure “sentences deployed judiciously”? If anything I would have imagined sentence structure that is “imaginative, precise and accurate” to beat sentences that are just “deployed judiciously” whatever the hell that means.To be fair though, I didn’t quote the entirety of the level 7 “descriptor” - tacked on to the end of the descriptor, as if with a Post-It note, is the qualifying condition “with rare loss of control”. But to my mind this last caveat exists solely to differentiate level 7 as a lower level than level 8 - when your sentences aren’t being “deployed judiciously” they’re being deployed [obviously] with “rare loss of control”

As an aside, how do you lose control of a sentence anyway? It’s not like it’s a tiger or snake or some sort of sentient being that wants to take control of your words and force you to do horrible things with them! Whilst admittedly my teaching career is only just taking-off, I’m yet to hear the excuse, “sorry Sir, I just lost control of my sentence there”.

But the question that ought to be asked is: are those people who create “education-ese”, that horrible pseudo language known only to pedagogues, to be trusted with dictating how English should be taught? I say “those people” but in reality I haven’t the foggiest who they actually are - academics? politicians? bureaucrats? teachers? or more specifically careerist teachers? who knows? Some combination of all of the above most likely. Whoever they are, can they really be trusted with the language in general when they blight the teaching profession with ugly words like “descriptors” and “focusses” and acronyms like AfL, APP and PPA.

The rule of thumb that the creators of education-speak follow when mangling English into their bastard jargon seems to be: “Express simple ideas as awkwardly as possible in order to obscure their meaning”. Because of course an idea which is hard to understand must obviously be an intelligent one. How else can you explain school libraries’ transformation into “Learning Resource Centres” and then transforming again into LRCs? An honest English word with a distinguished Latin pedigree, which everyone understands and has pleasant connotations becomes the bland acronym LRC which no-one but those “in the know” understand. Following this rule of obfuscation, verbs are replaced with phrases and sentences are padded-out with redundant adjectives and adverbs that don’t really add anything to their meaning.

For example Assessment Focus 1 in reading: “use a range of strategies, including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning”. Is “accurate decoding of text” not the same thing as reading. And if you’re not “reading for meaning” then what the hell are you reading for? In fact, we get a long-winded “descriptor” which sounds vaguely technical but really just means “uses a range of strategies for reading”. If you were expecting the strategies such as use of context clues or use of semantic cues for example to be described or outlined somehow in the level descriptors then you’d be wrong - level descriptors are far too abstract to provide anything so useful as that.

I could of course indulge myself picking apart the whole English framework document for similar examples, but the real point is how do you quantify something as subjective as “good writing”? At the moment there exists a framework which gives the illusion of rigourous assessment and standards that are applied across the board. However, as the example quoted above illustrates, the different levels amount to little more than a subjective opinion of the degree of hyperbole appropriate in describing any given piece of writing (for example “judicious” vs “precise and accurate”).

My own feeling is that the key to this question has something to do with the practical applications of writing and less to do with subjective definitions. My own rough guesses on student ability is usually more based on concepts to do with clarity and understanding. How well a student understands the difference between “quoting” and paraphrasing and how carefully a student uses the two with an eye to exactness of meaning. Or how well a student understands the fundamental difference between factual statements which can be checked for veracity and subjective statements which can be neither proved nor disproved.

I would one day like to see a set of assessment criteria for English that were focussed above all on clarity and made no attempt to pass a grade on subjective or abstract notions such as how “imaginative”, “thoughtful” or “judiciously chosen” words might be. To this end we could do a lot worse than to follow Orwell’s instruction for the “defence of the English language” as prescribed in his essay “Politics and the English Language”

“The defence of the English language ... is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear ... or with having what is called a "good prose style." ... [It] is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.”

The Notting Hill Carnival

Image via WikipediaNotting Hill Carnival 2009

Today Esther and I attended the Notting Hill Carnival. A Caribbean themed-festival in London’s famous Notting Hill region. It was a good deal more, how shall I put it? impromptu? than we had expected. Especially after the incredibly polished Carnaval de Nice that we witnessed in February. A cold wind along with grey English skies and dirty London streets made it almost a depressing sight to begin with, as we exited Westbourne tube station and wandered amongst home-made stalls billowing smoke from Jerk Chicken and others selling Jamaican flags. But eventually the late-summer sun rose and shone through the morning gloom.

Plus, we soon realised that this was a very different carnival from that we had been to in Nice. The heavy bass of amateur DJs on every corner and the scantilly clad women grinding next to strangers told us that this probably wasn’t the kind of carnival where annoying French petits Nicolas et copains were given free reign to squirt anyone and everyone with aerosol string while ignoring the elaborately created and colourful floats that passed them by. The floats were more or less rudimentary, in fact trucks with people on them would be a better description, but the outfits on the dancers were a lot more elaborate. However, to be fair, the web-site had advertised that the carnival, which was to be held over two days, was to be composed of Sunday’s “children’s carnival” and today’s “adult carnival”.

But amongst the Caribbean girls in colourful, imaginative and also quite revealing outfits; dancing with their bums out and occasionally a strange man walking, um quite close, behind them; there were occasionally to be spotted the odd Anglo-Saxon girl as well. Which brought the incredibly juvenile question to mind: “why is it that pasty and pink-hued English women, notwithstanding that they might otherwise be very attractive, so rarely seem able to pull-off any sort of ethnic costume?” Be it saris, African prints or as in this case skimpy-and-wingéd numbers of a Carnivale theme. Is it that, accustomed as the English are to the frumpy outpourings of Topshop, English women find themselves awkward and uncomfortable in such overtly sexy clothing. Hmmm, I hardly think so. Although maybe Topshop has some answering to do in regards to why the word “frumpy” occurs with such regularity in regards to British fashion. Perhaps then it’s that peculiarly English class-snobbishness which abhors curves as so aptly described in the 1930s by Stevie Smith's poem "This Englishwoman":

“This English woman is so refined, she has no bosom and no behind”?

As funny as I find Stevie Smith’s little ditty, I don’t think that’s quite it either. Maybe it’s just about finding the correct colours and costumes that work with pale skin and having to make that extra effort when trying to fit in to another culture...?

Or maybe the question has more to do with the ease with which, gawping, camera in hand, a male at a street parade is able to cast judgement on the fat girls and the old girls and the frumpy and out-of-place girls who have made the effort to dress up in a costume and are obviously enjoying themselves [Touché].

Avenue Q - a review

A great show I was laughing from beginning to end - well except for that one bit.

From the opening sequence in Avenue Q where a man walks onto the stage carrying a muppet-like puppet in his hands I began laughing. "Princeton" has just graduated from college and is flung out into the world wondering "what do you do with a BA in English?", I couldn't but empathise as he opined "Four years of college and plenty of knowledge / Have earned me this useless degree" how else do you imagine I found myself an English teacher (in England of all places)?

The show delights in being able to be negative - the chorus of the opening song is "it sucks to be me" and all of the characters in the fictional New York neighbourhood that the story is set in compete with each other over whose life is worse. Former child superstar Gary Coleman of "Different Strokes" fame takes the cake with his life over before he even reached puberty. During a conversation about acheiving your "purpose" in life, Gary admits that his greatest fear is that he's already achieved his purpose in life.

The one song that I didn't care for was titled "Everyone's a little bit racist" and seemed to try to conflate the more or less harmless national stereotypes that people keep about different cultures and especially neighbouring cultures with "racism". I can't help feeling that racism is rightly reviled by most working people as an ideology that justifies cruelty, violence and exploitation towards certain ethnic or racial backgrounds based upon their supposed inferiority. To then try to conflate racism with the much more benign national stereotypes about French people and the German word "schadenfreude" for example is somewhat disturbing and certainly not amusing. This whole song jumps from false preachiness to shock-value humour from line to line and I couldn't help but feel awkward as I sat through it. After an awkward sermon where Princeton sings that people who are a "little bit racist" don't go around committing hate crimes, an attempt at livening the mood is made through the outrageous "Mexican busboys should learn to speak goddamn English!", afterwards the preaching is taken up again when Princeton continues that "uncouth" ethnic jokes are "based on truth".

Happily that particular song came to end. And thanks to the hilariously cute "bad idea bears" it was all but forgotten by the time Trekkie Monster began his own song "The Internet is for Porn."

It was in fact, a clever and entertaining show. Taking a light-hearted look at the angst of growing old and the desire to accomplish things in life. It is therefore such a shame that it was ruined by the bitter aftertaste of one poorly conceived song. 3 and a half stars.

Image courtesy: Michael Schamis (Creative Commons License via Flickr)