Language usage: slang

 

Old friend Valerio posted a photo of something he saw at Heathrow (en route to Rome) which says "Chat to us via WhatsApp", wanting to know if "chat to" was correct English. He says only "chat with" is used in American English.

    This reminds me of my time in Taipei working for Conoco Taiwan.

    A radio operator colleague's friend, Mr Yang, was a manager at a hotel who decided to run a little business on the side, training tourist guides.

    There was a national exam for it, comprising the obvious elements related to tourism: the geography and history of Taiwan, especially the popular tourist sites, and English.

    The English test was in two parts: a multiple-choice Q&A test (for the Listening element), and a one-to-one interview (for the Oral element).

    Mr Yang asked me to design a batch of sample multiple-choice papers for his course, then record them (with me and a male voice to distinguish between the Q role and the A role).

    Rather than just let the students listen to the recordings (which was all they had to do for the test), Mr Yang decided to invite me along for the feedback once their answer sheets had been marked (by one of his staff). This would give the students extra Listening and Oral practice and interaction, which was all good preparation for the interview element, and of course for real life listening and speaking (which they didn't get much of in those days). Most forward-thinking indeed, to give his business that extra pull factor.

    When the would-be students found out at enrolment that the teacher was to be someone from Singapore, a lot of them objected, saying they wanted an American. One of them, a Singaporean studying at the National University of Taiwan, said, "I'm from Singapore. I know what the standard of English is like there. I don't want to learn English from a Singaporean."

    Mr Yang said they could attend a couple of lessons to find out for themselves what the quality of my English was before deciding to register and pay. At the end of my first lesson, all the Doubting Thomases paid up for the whole course without testing me for the rest of the two lessons that they were allowed to sit through before paying up. (A lot of them said, in case you're interested, that, in their experience, not all native-speakers knew how to explain to them how the language works or why.)

    Their multiple-choice test exercises could be, and were, marked (during the break before I stepped in for the feedback) by Mr Yang's staff using the answer sheets provided by me (the setter). My presence, therefore, had to have a value-added element to it, so:

* Rather than just let them have their marked answer scripts back, I asked them to explain why their right/wrong answers were right/wrong. This gave them some practice in speaking, as well as some training in being what I now call in my teaching of Mandarin "Sherlock Holmes" (one of his skills being deductive reasoning) -- a skill they'd have to apply in real life, without the teacher being there to give them the nod (or otherwise).

* I threw in as much extra information and insights as I could into things related to the English language that they might not know. One example: names used in real life / informal reference / as nicknames, especially by Americans*, don't always match their official versions -- Bill for William is not so far out, but Chuck for Charles is not such an obvious link, nor Dick for Richard, nor Bob for Robert. When I saw them scribbling furiously in their notebooks, I knew I was on the right track. (Taiwan was an ally of America at the time, so they were mostly exposed to Americans, e.g., the soldiers based there. In fact, all white-looking foreigners would be "American" to them, even those who speak with a very strong non-English accent, e.g., French, German, Italian, Spanish, because Taiwanese people didn't know enough English, nor enough about the outside world, to be able to tell the difference. The Western equivalent would be that "all Chinese people look alike" -- in my case, "all Africans" when I first went to SOAS / School of Oriental and African Studies.)

* I taught them as much tourist-scenario-based English as possible, which also served as preparation for the one-to-one interview element of their test. One obvious scenario was shopping, so I went for role-playing, e.g., how to ask about prices / ask for other options in colour or size, etc. To one of the phrases I taught them, "That's too expensive," a student raised his hand and said, "I thought the way to say it is, [complete with an American twang] 'It's a rip-off!'" Hahahahaha, I still laugh now as I'm writing this. I had to issue the warning (and still do, now, more than half a century later) that it would be safer to steer clear of slang.

(Taiwan, 1975)

The brain works in wondrous ways: 05 (Hugh the ex-classmate) (London)

One of my three A-level subjects was Mandarin Chinese.  I’d only got up to O-level Chinese in Singapore, because I then went to do pre-Med(ical) for my A-levels at Raffles Institution (RI) — Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, and English.

    The day college in London wouldn’t let me do three A-level subjects in one year.  So, I went to do Chinese in the evening at the Polytechnic of Central London, having been advised to do three subjects instead of the minimal two for university entrance.

    There were two English chaps in my class who were friends and very good to me: Steve and Hugh.  

    They were the ones who were instrumental in getting me into SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) — by nagging me almost every day, phoning and telling me to apply.

    I’d originally been reluctant to, because the Polytechnic of Central London’s degree course was a Joint Honours [two languages] with a Year Abroad in Year 3.  My choice of Spanish and Chinese would take me to Mexico for six months and China for the other six, which both greatly appealed to me because I like being a member of the local society, even if only for half a year, rather than being a tourist who stays in hotel rooms and eats in restaurants.  I want to be a local, even if only for six months.

    That was 1977–78.  I saw Hugh again occasionally at Steve’s when I went over to cook a Chinese meal a number of times up to the mid-80s.  (Steve, now deceased, had mobility problems — both hands and legs, having had polio when he was 16 — so eating out was not so convenient.  Hence my going over to his to cook — complete with my own wok and all.)

    Fast forward to the early Noughties.  

    Again, I happened to be in the back room at the Oriental bookshop when I heard someone’s voice in the front room.  “Hugh!”  

    Yep, it was Hugh from some 30-odd years back.

(London, 1977–78 & early Noughties)

Matter over mind (China/Japan)

My beloved and inspirational tutor and supervisor at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), Dr. Paul Mulligan Thompson*, was born in China (of Irish missionary parents) and brought up there until the age of 16.  He spoke fluent Chinese and taught classical Chinese, just to name one of the long list of things he was able to do. 

    One day, he was in Beijing and asked a local chap, in Mandarin, how to get to Tian’anmen Square.  The chap took a quick look at him and turned his face away.  Paul Thompson repeated the question, and again the man wouldn’t respond.   

    After a third time of this, Paul Thompson thought, “Maybe the man can’t even understand Mandarin.  There are so many people in Beijing who are from other regions, after all.”  He decided to check with the man, in Mandarin: “Can you understand Mandarin?”  In answer, the man pointed in a particular direction without any hesitation and said, in Mandarin: “Tian’anmen Square is that way!” 

    So he did understand in the first place, but his eyes saw a Westerner, so his ears and brain couldn’t process the sounds he was hearing, even though it was his own language, until the last question made him register belatedly the fact that the Westerner had been speaking in Mandarin after all.

    I’d heard about a Japanese journalist, back in the late 70s or early 80s, who went out into the streets of Tokyo with a blond wig and blue contact lenses, and raised the bridge of his nose.  When he stopped people in the street and asked them questions in perfect Japanese, nobody understood him.

    Then about a BBC journalist who was fluent in Chinese and went to a village to interview some locals.  The old woman she approached in Chinese, asking if she could answer some questions, kept saying, “I don’t speak a foreign language.”  The BBC reporter said, still in Chinese, “But I’m speaking in Chinese.”  Old woman:  “No, no, no, I can’t speak a foreign language.”

* https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/27/guardianobituaries.obituaries