Is it “wrong”? If so, why?

A few days ago my class was doing a activity based on prompts like “I like …”, “ I spend time …” and “I am good …”, with various variations. There is a small number of ways in which each of these can be completed, so I started by eliciting some of the most common.

One student completed the prompt “I’m quite good …” with “at nothing”. This flummoxed me. I can’t think of any reason why “I’m quite good at nothing” (and “I’m very good at nothing”) aren’t possible, but no-one has ever said or written them where Google can find them. It is possible to say “I’m good at nothing”, though “I’m not good at anything” has overtaken it in the last 90 years. “I’m not quite good at anything” is also non-existent, while “I’m not very good at anything” has a different meaning – “I’m good at many things, but not very good at anything”.

It was impossible for me to explain why “I’m very good at nothing” was ‘wrong’ (if indeed it was). I tried to accentuate the positive and find something – anything – she is good at, but her English is limited. I eventually said “Are you good at [her language]”. She brightened and said “Yes”.

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ough

While I was researching the spelling ough for the previous batch of Grammarbites, I saw in the Wikipedia article on that spelling a list of four poems highlighting the inconsistencies. I easily found them on the internet and gather them here for your convenience. Two of them are written in the voice of an English language learner, the second one possibly the writer’s own experience.

Arrr, me hearties!

A few days ago at the gym I saw on one of the televisions a quiz show which gives the question and a choice of four answers. One question and answers was (approximately): “Which one of these is a pirate in the 1883 novel Treasure Island? A) Long John Silver B) Chips O’Hoy C) Polly Wanda Cracker D) Buck Kinnear”. The contestant didn’t know. The contestant didn’t even guess.

Quite apart from whether any random quiz show contestant might be expected to know the answer directly or indirectly, possible thought process: “John is a real given name, Silver is a real surname and I’ve heard that name somewhere. Chips is a nickname, but doesn’t sound very 1880s [the novel is set in the mid-1700s], O’Hoy might be a real surname [it is, but Hoy is more common], but ‘Chips O’Hoy’ sounds like a joke name. Polly and Wanda are real given names, but Cracker isn’t a real surname and ‘Polly Wanda Cracker’ sounds like a joke name. Buck could be a real nickname and Kinnear is a real surname, but ‘Buck Kinnear’ sounds like a joke name. Hmmm … I’ll go for ‘Long John Silver’.” It’s possible to think all that in the time allowed to answer.

I’m not sure that I could have kept a straight face if I was the quizmaster, either at the names or the contestant’s inability to even guess.

Country names ending with two consonants

One of the blogs I regularly read is English Language Thoughts, by Niall O’Donnell, an ESL teacher in Ireland. Two days ago, he posted about a BBC quiz show which asked contestants to name countries ending with two consonants. He didn’t discuss the actual answers, but rather the fact that the show officially categorises y as a consonant, regardless of context.

The most obvious set of answers are the countries which end with -land, namely Fin, Ice, Ire, New Zea, Pol, Swazi, Switzer and Thai. (I thought of most of those on the train on the way home.) There is also the Netherlands and four sets of Islands, namely the Cook, (Faroe), Marshall and Solomon, but it might be argued that these do not end with two consonants. (I put Faroe in brackets – although it was on the list of ‘sovereign states’ I consulted, it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.)

C’mon, it’s only 16 years ago!

Oh now I feel old! The topic in the textbook was science, and as a filler I showed the students some science-related movie trailers, starting with the ‘based on a true story’ movies Hidden figures, The theory of everything and The right stuff. Then I showed some science fiction, starting with 2001: A space odyssey. I said ‘How many of you remember 2001’? I was expecting a few hands. I don’t know how old my students are, but I would guess late 20s or even early 30s for some of them. (Others are much younger, possibly late teens or early 20s.) No-one (but me) remembers 2001???? At least they could have said ‘Oh, that was the year I started school’ (as indeed one of my nieces said when I posted on Facebook about this later.)

Then I showed them Back to the future 1 & 2, and 1989’s imagining of 2015 made much more sense to them than 1968’s imagining of 2001. (In general, BttF got more right than 2001.) Along the way I found 10 Things Back to the Future 2 Got Right, 10 Things Back to the Future 2 Got Wrong and a parody by CollegeHumor made in 2015 with the benefit of nowsight. I also tried to find the American talk/comedy show which snared Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd as guests on 21 October 2015, but I couldn’t find it and couldn’t remember whose show it was on. A Facebook friend later told me it was Jimmy Kimmel.

My Fair Lady

My wife and I are looking at going to a performance of My Fair Lady, currently playing in Sydney. One website says that it stars ‘Downton Abbey‘s Charles Edwards and Anna O’Byrne‘. Don’t recognise those names. Quick interweb search. Charles Edwards played Michael Gregson (a minor character) and Anna O’Byrne … wasn’t in Downton Abbey. Oh, that’s ‘(Downton Abbey‘s Charles Edwards) and Anna O’Byrne’.

2 ____ Girls

I previously mentioned that a student said his favourite movie was The Fast and the Fabulous. Yesterday another student said her favourite tv show was

farnarkeling

Speaking of language users’ ability to create sentences which have never before been spoken or written in that language, not everyone can do it with style of John Clarke, the New Zealand-born, Australian-based writer, actor and satirist, who died on Sunday. As part of a regular segment on The Gillies Report, a satirical tv program broadcast in 1984-85), he created the fictional sport of farnarkeling.

Farnarkeling is a sport which began in Mesopotamia, which literally means ‘between the rivers’. This would put it somewhere in Victoria or New South Wales between the Murray and the Darling. The word Farnarkeling is Icelandic in structure, Urdu in metre and Celtic in the intimacy of its relationship between meaning and tone.

Farnarkeling is engaged in by two teams whose purpose is to arkle, and to prevent the other team from arkeling, using a flukem to propel a gonad through sets of posts situated at random around the periphery of a grommet. Arkeling is not permissible, however, from any position adjacent to the phlange (or leiderkrantz) or from within 15 yards of the wiffenwacker at the point where the shifting tube abuts the centre-line on either side of the 34 metre mark, measured from the valve at the back of the defending side’s transom-housing.

On the program he would deliver passages like this in the style of a sports commentator – rapid-fire, deadpan, without hesitation and seemingly in one breath.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s headline on Monday was ‘Gone to the great farnarkeling grommet in the sky’.

saeng-il chuk-ha ham-ni-da v Happy birthday to you

This morning my wife was watching a Korean tv reality program about a young man (possibly a K-pop star) travelling around with his grandmother. During the episode, she celebrates her birthday. He sings happy birthday to her in Korean (slowly), then English (up-tempo). Koreans use the standard tune but alter the rhythm to 3/4 + 4/4 by adding a beat to the equivalent of ‘you’. (I get caught out every time.)

The Korean words are: saeng-il chuk-ha ham-ni*-da (extra beat), saeng-il chuk-ha ham-ni-da (extra beat), sa-rang-ha-neun (name) (pause), saeng-il chuk-ha ham-ni-da – approximately: birthday congratulations (to you) we do, loving (name). [*The Korean has an extra syllable here and in the second and fourth lines. These two syllables fit into one beat (dotted quaver – semiquaver).] He made two changes: he sang shin (the formal word for ‘day’) instead of il and hal-meo-ni (grandmother/grandma) instead of ‘(name)’. Korean names traditionally have two syllables, so usually fit those two notes better than English-speaking names (with a greater range in the number of syllables) do. Except that he sang hal-meo-ni, which required two small notes (dotted quaver – semiquaver) in that beat (compare ‘Jennifer’ or a similar name). (hal-a-beo-ji (grandfather) has four syllables: compare ‘Olivia’.)

When he sang it in English, he changed the whole rhythm to 4/4, with an extra beat on ‘day’ as well as ‘you’. Instead of ‘dear grandmother/grandma’, he sang hal-meo-ni, which really messed up the rhythm.

(I’ve been meaning to write about the Korean version of Happy birthday. The tv program was a convenient prompt.)

tv and movie titles, translation, loan words and nativisation

Last week I saw references in a Korean magazine to the tv show 왕좌의 게임 (wang-jwa-e ge-im, throne-of game) and the movie 스타 워즈: 깨어난 포스 (s-ta weo-jeu: ggae-eo-nan po-seu, star wars: wakening force). 왕좌의 and 깨어난 are Korean words and grammar, while 게임 (game), 스타 (star), 워즈 (wars) and 포스 (force) exist somewhere on the spectrum between being totally foreign words transliterated into hangeul at one end, and being ‘Koreanised’ or even ‘Korean’ at the other.

게임 is the most often used. A Google search returns ‘About 642,000,000 results’, often in compounds such as 컴퓨터  게임 (computer game), 비디오 게임 (video game), PC 게임 and RPG 게임 (the last suffering from RAS syndrome). It co-exists with the Korean 놀이, which is used for traditional games such as 윷 놀이 (yut nori, yunnori or yut) or for general play.

스타 returns ‘About 66,200,000 results’, in combinations such as 스타 크래프트 (StarCraft), 스타 킹 (Star King; the same spelling is also used for stockings) and 스타벅스 (Starbucks).  The Sino-Korean word 항성 (hang-seong) seems to be used only for astronomy and the Korean 별 (byeol) only for astronomy and geometry.

워즈 returns ‘About 5,630,000 results’, almost all related to Star Wars. The Korean word 전쟁 (jeon-saeng) appears not to be used in the main title of Star Wars, but is used in the sub-title of 스타 워즈: 클론 전쟁 (Star Wars: The Clone Wars).

포스 returns ‘About 5,180,000 results’, mostly about POSCO (kr; en), the post office and point-of-sale equipment, but a few related to Star Wars. The Korean word 힘 is a multi-purpose word encompassing ‘strength, energy, power’.

Undoubtedly ‘game’ and ‘star’ are more ‘Koreanised’ than ‘wars’ or ‘force’, but can we call them ‘Korean’ yet? If not, then when?