Cross-talk

After spending years mastering the sounds, grammar and vocabulary of a language, we expect to be able to communicate successfully. But communication depends not only on recognising words, but on understanding the various meanings that speakers attach to them. It can even depend on silence.

If a man’s wife simply tells him “Tomorrow’s Tuesday,” for instance, it may be enough for him to understand she is reminding him to put out the rubbish. But if speakers don’t know each other very well, they may require more specific communication.

Interestingly, communication is sometimes easier between non-native speakers because they tend to avoid ambiguous or culturally-specific expressions. Conversely, people sharing the same first language may think they understand each other when in fact they don’t. If a Briton makes a joke, a Californian may think he is serious (or boring, or strange); black and white Americans can listen to the same politician’s speech but hear different messages. This kind of misunderstanding is cross-talk: speakers talk across each other rather than to each other.

In general, however, the risk of cross-talk is higher when speakers have different language backgrounds because of cultural differences. For example, many East Asians avoid direct refusals when speaking to strangers. I once interpreted for an American friend trying to sell artwork in Japan. If someone said Kentou shimasu or Ocha wa ikaga deshou ka”, it didn’t help him if I simply translated this as “We’ll look into this” and “How about some tea?” I had to explain that they were probably saying “No thank you”.

There is plenty of advice available for people visiting and

doing business in Asian countries. But it tends to contain
sweeping generalisations, such as ‘Politeness is very
important to Thais ” or ‘Chinese people hate to lose face.
As American Rachel DeWoskin found when she starred in a
Chinese TV drama (Foreign Babes in Beijing, 2005.),
no one, in China or elsewhere, likes to lose face.

Language classes generally include some kind of cultural information. But people can be very vague about what they mean by culture. It covers superficial and obvious differences such as how people greet each other and what they eat, but also differences about how people see the world that may be deep-seated and hard to change. US psychologist Richard Nisbett even claims that the different educational practices of Asia and the West produce different ways of reasoning (The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... and Why, 2003). Moreover, teachers of English find it especially difficult to teach culture because the language is used by people from so many different countries.

We can’t learn the cultural norms of everyone who uses English. But we can increase our awareness of the causes of communication. Even before opening our mouths, for example, we should think about body language. Do we maintain eye contact? Is it okay to touch someone? When on the phone should we listen quietly or continually make noises so that the other person knows we are still there? If we talk loudly will people think we are confident, or rude? Li Yang, a popular English educator in China, tells learners to speak foreign languages as loudly and quickly as possible in order to lose their shyness. But for some people, his Crazy English may sound …well… crazy.

And what about the conversational topic? A Korean magazine recently warned against discussing marriage, relationships, health, age, religion or money with Americans, even though these are acceptable topics in Korea. So what areas are safe? The weather? Family? Most Asians love to discuss food, but whereas Singaporeans never tire of this subject, Pakistanis may find you superficial if you don’t soon move on to something deeper.

Conferring and conferencing

While there are obvious connections linking the Muslim societies of the west of Asia, or those in the east that have Buddhist and Confucian traditions, there are few strong links across the whole continent. While pan-Asian identity remains weak, new Asian networks are gradually evolving through the work of international bodies based in Asian cities. Many of these function largely in English. UNESCAP (the Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), for example, requires staff to be fluent in English. SAARC (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) holds all its meetings in English.

As well as helping to construct Asian identity, English also plays an important role in conflict resolution between Asian countries. Israeli leaders usually speak to their Arab counterparts in English since fewer and fewer of them study Arabic and almost no Arabs speak Hebrew. Indian and Pakistani army generals hold their discussions in English, even though their respective national languages (Hindi and Urdu) are very similar.


ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) is one of Asia’s most active organisations. When it was formed in 1967, there was a proposal to make Malay its working language since it is spoken in four of its founder states (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei). 30 years later there was an attempt to make Malay its second language. Neither succeeded. In practice the organisation has always conducted business in English.

ASEAN is starting to develop its own style of English, rich in bureaucratic acronyms such as HOGs (Heads of Government), HOSs (Heads of State) and IMT-TG (Indonesian Malaysian-Thai Growth Triangle). However, if we search through ASEAN speeches and literature we can find very few uniquely ‘Asian’ words or expressions.

Leaders of several Asian countries, including Malaysia, the Philippines and the Subcontinent, have traditionally known English as well as or even better than their own national language. Sri Lanka’s S.L. Bandaranaike, Pakistan’s General Zia and Malaysia’s Dr Mahathir, for example, became famous for promoting Sinhala, Urdu and Malay respectively, yet in private mostly used English. Singapore’s first leader, Lee Kuan Yew, was educated in English and didn’t learn Chinese until he was an adult. Many of Israel’s leaders, including the late Golda Meir and the current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were educated mostly in the USA. Thailand’s current leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, went to Oxford University.

Other Asian leaders have tried to learn English later in life. Jiang Zemin
was too old to become fluent, but his efforts encouraged younger Chinese
leaders to study the language. Even Iran’s Mahmood Ahmedinejad, a fierce critic of American culture and politics, has an English blog www. Ahmadinejad.ir/) for people from all over the world to exchange messages about politics. Not surprisingly, most of these messages say what a wonderful leader Ahmedinejad is and what a terrible country the USA is.

But not every Asian leader makes effective use of English The poor English of Korea’s Kim Young Sam was the source of many jokes. And few of Japan’s leaders have been able to conduct conversations in English. When Japanese premier Yoshiro Mori met US President Bill Clinton, he managed to say "Who are you?" instead of "How are you?". Thinking this must be a joke, Clinton joked back "I'm Hillary's husband". Mori replied “Me too.”

Asian Englishes

In the last topic we saw that there is evidence that Asians often understand each other's English better than that of Americans or Britons. I find this quite interesting, given that there are so many different kinds of English spoken in Asia.

Even as a non-Asian, I can easily tell whether someone is from the Philippines or Thailand or the Indian Subcontinent when they talk English. Locals can do much better than me, of course. Most Malaysians and Singaporeans can tell each other's English apart. Malaysians can tell whether someone is from the East or West of their country and whether they have a Malay, Chinese or Indian background.

Since 1998, the Tokyo-based journal Asian Englishes (http://www.alc.co.jp/asian-e/) has published many articles about the rich and well-established Englishes of Southeast and South Asia (but fewer about northeast Asia, where English tends to be used as a foreign rather than a first or second language). It is not surprising that Asia's great linguistic and cultural diversity is reflected in its English. But I wonder if there is anything distinctly 'Asian' that links Asian Englishes? Is it possible that Korean and Pakistani English have more in common with each other than with Russian English, for instance?

As far as pronunciation is concerned, many Asians avoid clusters of consonants since these are rare in Asian languages. So they add vowels (Sri Lankan children attend 'ischool') or drop consonants (when Cantonese say they feel 'so cold' the two words rhyme). However, similar features are also found in many non-Asian Englishes.

What about grammar? As mentioned before, Indians tend to favour the progressive aspect of verbs ('I am not understanding you') , and this tendency can also be found among some Malaysians and Filipinos. Tags like 'will you?' and 'didn't they?' are simplified all over Asia, with Singaporeans preferring 'isn't it?' or even 'ah?', and Sri Lankans using 'no?'. The verb 'to be' and many pronouns are often omitted ('He so lazy', 'Can afford?'). And the active voice is frequently used instead of the passive ('Vitamin A can find in carrots'). But again, similar practices can be found outside Asia.

As for vocabulary, it is more likely to divide than unite Asian English speakers. Words originating in Britain or America get new local meanings, so in Sri Lanka an abbot is a maid and a basketwoman is a talkative one. Some words are borrowed from local languages, especially for food (balut in the Philippines) and clothing (sari and dhoti in India). Others are taken from the languages of the various Europeans who once colonised Asia: thus Philippines English is littered with Spanish words like barrio (neighbourhood), merrienda (afternoon tea) and estafa (corruption).

Many Asian English words and expressions are entirely new. Hence Malaysians call their badminton players shuttlers. A project about to be implemented in India is said to be 'on the anvil' (in the UK it would be 'on the cards'). Sri Lankans describe the increasing participation of monks in politics as saffronisation (because of the colour of Buddhist robes).

In fact there are some words that appear in many Asian Englishes, such as Malay terms like amok and arrack that have travelled to India and beyond, and expressions used by British-trained administrators such as to gazette (to publish a new regulation) that are hardly used in Britain itself. Muslims across the continent include Arabic expressions such as syolat (prayer) in their English, much as Buddhists include Sanskrit words. But in general, the main thing Asian Englishes have in common is their sheer diversity.

International intelligibility

What kind of English is most widely intelligible? Research by the University of Hawaii's Larry Smith suggests that Asians tend to understand each other's English pronunciation more easily than that of native speakers from America or Britain. Jean-Paul Nerriere found something similar when observing Koreans and Japanese during his time as vice-president of IBM. As well as pronunciation he thought the key to increasing intelligibility was to simplify grammar and vocabulary, and now recommends that people all over the world be taught a simplified English that he has labelled 'Globish'.

While students all over the world continue to aim at sounding like native speakers (especially Americans), British linguist Jenny Jenkins suggests they should simply concentrate on a common 'international' pronunciation of certain sounds that frequently lead to misunderstanding. British-Thai educator Christopher Wright believes his students should differentiate sounds such as 'l' and 'r', but other teachers advise learners to stop worrying too much about individual sounds and instead to concentrate on distinguishing whole words. Thus it should not matter how you say 'butter', 'batter' and 'better' as long as you say each of them differently.

Unfortunately, even native speakers disagree about which words should be distinguished. Most Scots pronounce 'cot' and 'caught' the same, whereas Australians distinguish them. Most English people pronounce 'caught' and 'court' the same while most Americans differentiate them.

Working with fellow American linguist Cecil Nelson, Smith identified three key elements in successful communication: intelligibility (recognising familiar words) ; comprehensibility (knowing their possible meanings); and interpretability (understanding what speakers mean). Thus we need knowledge of various pronunciations, the various meanings that words may have, and the way speakers from different cultures vary.

So are Indians wrong to describe their favourite film to Canadian friends as deadly? Should Filipinos take more care when warning Australians they are going to tell a green joke (which in Sydney would be called a blue one)? The problem is that native speakers also differ among themselves when it comes to vocabulary: an American man is likely to get an amused reaction if he goes into a shop in London asking for 'suspenders', for example.

And what about grammar? Many Asians understand each other perfectly well despite dropping the third-person 's' and sticking to the present tense. Indeed they might ask why it is considered wrong to say 'She write' but okay to say 'She can' or 'She may', and why we are not supposed to say 'I go to the bank yesterday' when 'I shut my account last week' is all right.

As has been argued in this blog before, there isn't really a standard form of English, just some forms that are better understood (or admired) by certain people. What is important is to increase our knowledge of linguistic and cultural differences and adjust accordingly. As Smith has argued, we do not need to make ourselves intelligible to everyone, just to those we want to communicate with.

Engrish

On my very first visit to Japan I stayed at a small hotel in central Tokyo with a sign on the door warning: Swindlers dangling with our guests around our hotel at night have no relations with us. Beware and do not be cheated by their skillful enticement. This made me quite nervous when I ventured outside into the night. Especially when a group of noisy drunken men started shouting and waving.

I woke the next morning with a terrible hangover after spending half the night drinking with these guys. Perhaps Japan was not such a dangerous place after all. That warning sign now seemed funny rather frightening, giving advice about grime prevention rather than crime prevention. I wasn't worried in the least about the batter toast with harm that the breakfast menu offered me. I realised I had entered a world of Engrish – language that kind of looks like English but somehow is not.

Over the years I've often wondered if it is acceptable to make fun of the strange English I see all over Asia, from Burmese signs warning me against umbrellaring to Malaysian foodstalls selling bugger. After all, many English speakers don't even try to use another language. And should I tell my female student the meaning of the Boyaholic shirt that she wears? Before the Olympics, Beijing launched a campaign to correct mistakes on English signs. Several foreigners volunteered to help so that tourists wouldn't make fun of China's English. But some foreign residents of the city resented these attempts to spoil their amusement at advertisements for immorality pills or signs in restaurants warning of landslide areas.

Whether or not we think it is OK to laugh at Engrish, it can be instructive to work out how it occurs. Sometimes it is the result of a spelling error, such as fruits shoot ('fruit short cake', which is quite popular in Japan, though very different from what the Americans and British call 'shortcake').

Some Engrish needs a little more time to work out. The cream pain I see at my local bakery is not an instrument of torture but a kind of bread ('pain' in French, which sounds similar to the Japanese word pan).

One tyre-shop in Beijing invites customers to use a pick foetus machine. This seems completely bizarre until we realise that the Chinese character above "foetus" is 胎, which is used in combination with some characters to mean 'foetus' but with others to mean 'tyre'.

I was also puzzled by the sign on the side of a shuttle bus run by Ritsumeikan, a prestigious university in Kyoto, which said Univemeikan Ritsurisity. Until I realised that the sign-painter, who presumably did not speak any English, must have had four strips of print – Ritsu, meikan, Unive and rsity – and managed to paste them in the wrong order. Sometimes a simple error is all the more striking for being surrounded by overly formal or poetical language, such as a label on a box at Tabei Airport that says Unforceful discard box for dangerous items ('unforceful' usually means 'weak' or 'feeble', not 'voluntary') or a Tokyo boutique sign that raises our expectations about gifts that transcend man and woman only to let us down with basic grammatical errors.

Some people actually make money out of Engrish. The website www.engrish.com, for example, not only collects pictures of Engrish from around Asia, but sells T-shirts with it printed on them. But Asians may be starting to get their own back now that so many English-speakers get themselves tattooed with 'Chinese' or 'Japanese' words that turn out to mean things like Girl Vegetable. Meanwhyile the fashion company Ichikoo (www.ichikoo.com) has started selling shirts asking お電気ですか。 (Are you electricity?) and declaring自由の洗濯!　(Freedom of washing!).

The killer language

Finnish linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas describes languages that spread at the expense of others as killer languages. She calls English "the biggest killer of them all". Languages by themselves cannot kill, but the people who learn and teach them can (usually unintentionally) kill off the culture and ideas of people who speak other languages.

According to UNESCO, one third of the world's 7000 languages are in danger. British linguist David Crystal estimates that one dies every two weeks. By the end of this century perhaps half of our current languages will have disappeared. While many languages are dying, English is growing. Another British linguist, David Graddol, claims that nearly a third of Asians already use it on a daily basis. But how strong is the link between the growth of English and the death of other languages?

On the one hand we have the example of the United States, where 53 local languages have disappeared since 1950. Another example is Australia, where hundreds of Aboriginal languages have been lost and many Aborigines speak only English. On the other hand, languages are disappearing in non-English-speaking countries too. Thousands of people are abandoning their traditional languages in Indonesia and India in favour of Indonesian and Hindi. In Japan, almost everyone speaks Japanese now and very few speak Ainu or Okinawan any longer. Nashi in southwest China, and Lisu in northern Thailand, are in danger from the spread of Chinese and Thai.

Another reason to question the idea of English as a killer language is the prevalence of bilingualism. If someone starts speaking English it does not mean they stop speaking other languages. However, while most of the world's people are indeed bilingual, in practice it is very difficult for small languages to compete with big ones.

Take Bidayuh. Spoken by 200,000 people in East Malaysia, where 140 primary schools have Bidayuh-speaking teachers, the language should not be in danger. But it is. It is neither a medium of instruction nor a school subject – partly because there are hardly any books in Bidayuh and there is no standard form that all its speakers understand. Children grow up studying in Malay and English. They may use Bidayuh in their village but have little need for it after moving to towns for work. When their grandparents die they often stop using it altogether.

For linguists, language death is tragic. Different languages give us different ways of describing the world. But most people are less interested in preserving their grandparents' language than in teaching their children languages that help them get jobs. History shows us that languages grow, change, recede and finally die. Few have lasted for more than a thousand years. Some dying languages undergo a process of revival, such as Israel's national language, Hebrew. But Bidayuh has no nation or religion behind it and is not used in newspapers or on television.

English may not be a cold-blooded killer, but it is not completely innocent. The main reason for the disappearance of so many languages nowadays is economic globalisation, and the main language of globalisation is English. Many English speakers themselves are monolingual and fail to understand the problems of people who speak small languages. Sri Lankans call English kadda (sword) because it is a useful and powerful weapon. But like many swords, it is double-edged.

Asian Languages in English

The many Asian loanwords in English can tell us a lot about economic and cultural links between English speakers and Asians. Mathematicians at Oxford University were studying the algebra developed by the Arabs hundreds of years before British technology had any impact on Asia. Oranges and lemons were bought from Persian and Turkish traders long before the latter were interested in buying British manufactures. But the journey of such loanwords has often been indirect or unclear.

Coffee comes from an Arabic name for a place in Africa but entered English via Turkish.

Tea comes not from Mandarin (although its own term, cha, is also used by some English people) but from the Amoy dialect of southern China. Rice comes from a Tamil word but probably entered English via Arabic. Coolie might be from Chinese or Gujarati. Ketchup might be Chinese or Malay. Some words go back and forth, such as anime, which was borrowed and shortened by the Japanese and then returned to English to describe a particular genre of animation.

Most Asian loanwords, such as sari and sushi, are closely associated with Asian culture. However, the association can fade away. When Americans describe remote areas of their country as boondocks, they don't think of the Philippines. Australians describing people who have gone crazy as running amok are not referring to Malays. Britons live in bungalows, use shampoo and complain about thugs without knowing anything about India.

As well as lending words to the English language, Asians have also invented new 'English-like' words. Walkman and discman were coined by Sony. Karaoke combines Japanese 'empty' with the first part of English 'orchestra'.

English speakers everywhere use Asian words, often unknowingly. But it is English speakers within Asia who use them most. Macquarie University's corpus of Asian English (Asiacorp) contains over four million words. The International Corpus of English (ICE) includes several Asian varieties of English, including Indian, Malaysian, Philippine and Singaporean. Asian Englishes include many words adopted from local languages, such as appa (a type of pancake in Sri Lanka and an 'elder sister' in Pakistan). They also use translations of local concepts, such as wet kitchen – an area for preparing raw food in Malaysian homes. Often, existing English words get new meanings: Singaporeans eat steamboat (a kind of stew) with their powerful (cool) friends before sending (driving) them home.

Asians born in America and Britain are yet another important influence on English. Kiss my chuddies! (kiss my underpants) became a popular (and mostly friendly) insult in the UK when Britons of Indian origin started saying it. And people all over Britain enjoy balti – a kind of cooking named after a Panjabi word for 'pot', but invented quite recently in the city of Birmingham.