My Lexical Journal

Furry Furverts!

2010-03-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

While doing some research for this module's group project, this online newsarticle caught my attention because of some of the words used and appropriated in it.

I came across the word "furvert" in the article (if you manage to look closer you'll be able to see it in the screen capture!) I was already quite interested to find out what it meant because my initial understanding of what "furring" meant was already divergent from what the article was referring to as "furring", which was the practice of people dressing up in giant bears or other outfits and venturing into forests or woodlands to meet up for sex. My inkling was that it had something to with "pervert" because of the "suffix" -vert (reason why suffix is in inverted commas is because I doubt -vert is a real suffix), and yes also because the title of the article was "Furring is new sex craze for perverts". Oh, and it seems that furverts and furries are used interchangeably too, referring to the participants who are involved in the act of furring.

I tried to check if furvert or furry have been codified in dictionaries, but as I predicted, nope, not at all. I checked three dictionaries- OED, OALD, Merriam Webster.

I checked google.co.uk and there I found some listings of the word "furvert":

I'll just list some entries I thought were outstanding-

"I like dressing up as a bear during sex" - Times Online

"Furverts - is it porn?" - Asylum.co.uk

"Is your team's mascot a furvert?" - Sport/Guardian.co.uk

Haha. I checked google.com.sg and didn't find anything related to this sense of dressing up as a bear and engaging in intercourse with likeminded furries.

Very obviously, the words related to this main sense have not been codified in dictionaries because perhaps, they are not well-established in English and have only been introduced recently. Another reason could be because these are extremely colloquial usages of words and may not have been deemed as crucial enough to be included in dictionaries for people, and especially foreign learners of English, to have knowledge of.

Reboot

2010-03-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

I was searching Dictionary.com for the meaning of a word and in the process of doing so, a phrase from one of the online ads caught my eye, and this time, it was an ad by Monster.com, a job agency/database I think and they were advertising for people to find jobs with them and submit their CVs to their company.

What was interesting was the phrase "Time to reboot your career". I'm not exactly the most IT-savvy person around, but I know that the word "reboot" is usually used with reference to computers, systems, technical things like that.

I checked a few dictionaries and got varying results.

OALD had the standard primary sense (meaning that learners of English do need to know):

re•boot /ribut/ verb [vn, v] (computing) if you reboot a computer or it reboots, you switch it off and then start it again immediately

Since it all started at dictionary.com, and I was there, I checked it too, and got similar results. Just one sense. No sense of having your career rebooted.

I went to Merriam Webster, and worse still, it had no entry for "reboot". I wonder what that means, the lack of codification. Why would reboot not be codified in MW?

Then I went to the supreme authority and there I found a slightly different interpretation. OED codified two senses, one primary and the other extended. The first literal sense was the one I was more inclined to.. The second use of the word was a metaphorical interpretation, the one that the Monster.com ad made use of...

1. trans. Computing. To boot (a computer, operating system, etc.) again, esp. after a power failure or malfunction. Also intr.

2. trans. In extended use: to start (a process, etc.) afresh or with renewed vigour; to restart. Also intr.

I think the difference in primings between the literal and metaphorical senses of the same word is indicative of one's experiences. Sometimes, like in my case, people can be more familiar with the literal sense, so when the sense is extended to become non-literal in some usages, we may take a second glance, because the typical words associated with the word are absent, and in place, a metaphorical extension is done such that we need to "imagine" and draw the conceptual link... I thought it was cool that in the ad (see above), the Ctrl Alt Del keys were displayed in their positions, to represent the "rebooting" process, and this pictorial illustration is meant for viewers to be able to draw the conceptual link between literal and metaphorical meanings involved. To restart the computer after a malfunction is akin to restart your career with renewed vigour maybe after overcoming an obstacle or something.

So computer system being rebooted - YES

Career being rebooted - Hmmm, yes, that works too I guess!

Sleeping around

2010-03-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

I reached school early this morning so I was wandering around the Central Forum looking at the travel agencies and looking for a cheap getaway to BKK haha. Then I came to this big poster-sign and a phrase caught my eye.

Do you see anything strange? No grammar mistakes, smooth flowing sentences etc. But. Why SLEEP AROUND?!?! What does "sleep around" mean? To me it's the act of being promiscuous. I checked OED and it agreed with me :) It's a colloquial expression in English and the example sentences in OED clearly illustrated the meaning of the phrase.

b. Implying sexual intimacy or cohabitation. Also, with around: to engage in sexual intercourse casually with a variety of partners; to be sexually promiscuous (colloq.).
a900 Laws Ælfred Introd. §29 (Liebermann), {Asg}if hwa fæmnan beswice unbeweddode, and hire mid slæpe. c1000 ÆLFRIC Gen. xxxix. 7 His hlæfdi{asg}e lufode hine and cwæ{edh} to him: Slap mid me! c1250 Gen. & Ex. 967 For{edh} si{edh}en {ygh}he bi abram slep, Of hire leuedi nam {ygh}he no kep. c1386 CHAUCER Sir Thopas 78 An elf queene shal my lemman be, And slepe vnder my goore. a1400 Trevisa's Higden (Rolls) VII. 143 A clerk of {th}e court hadde i-sleped wi{th} hire. 1819 SHELLEY Cenci I. iii. 63 Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival. 1898 Sessions Paper of Central Criminal Court Feb. 266 He has been sleeping with my wife. How would you like it? 1928 A. HUXLEY Point Counter Point xxvii. 445 ‘Sleeping around’{em}that was how he had heard a young American girl describe the amorous side of the ideal life, as lived in Hollywood. 1936 R. LEHMANN Weather in Streets II. 185 A child's out of the question now, they don't sleep together any more. 1940 W. FAULKNER Hamlet II. 92 All we want anyway is to keep her out of trouble until she gets old enough to sleep with a man without getting me and him both arrested. 1952 M. LASKI Village xvi. 218, I don't think for a minute she's been sleeping around..but you know what gossip is. 1967 J. POTTER Foul Play xiii. 161 He's only interested in George and Freda and whether Johnnie and Freda slept together. 1975 P. LORAINE Wrong Man in Mirror 78 Rose Maddox was not a loose girl; she did not sleep around with just anybody.

Just for fun, I did a googlesearch and I found the same results.

I just thought it's funny that a travel agency would choose to use such a phrase without having no knowledge of its collocational meaning. I showed the photo I took to 3 people and ALL, without fail, they all responded to the same phrase and laughed, indicating that I'm not the only one who feels that the construction is strange. I read on further and apparently, the travel agency is saying that it allows travelers who choose their agency to sleep in different hotels on their trips. Thence, the term, "Sleeping around". Haha.

Wedgie

2010-03-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Another amusing food-sign. I typed in "wedgie" in googleimages and this came up. I'm assuming this a purely linguistic error so I shan't talk about it because it isn't relevant to our module. But I want to talk about the word "wedgie"! Haha. (For certain reasons yet again, I cannot disclose how I arrived at this topic.)

We all know what a wedgie is. Something embarrassing, mostly. I checked OALD and Merriam Webster for the definition of "wedgie" and to my surprise, the word was codified in both dictionaries! I initially thought it was a word that was simply made up and extended to the meaning of... having your ahem being pulled up.

Merriam Webster:

1 : a shoe having a wedge-shaped piece serving as the heel and joining the half sole to form a continuous flat undersurface
2 : the condition of having one's clothing wedged between the buttocks usually from having one's pants or underpants yanked up from behind as a prank —often used with get or give

MW had a different first sense though...

OALD:

wedgie /wedi/ noun (informal) an act of lifting sb up by his/her underwear, usually done as a joke

Why did OALD leave out the first sense codified in MW? Perhaps because the lexicographers felt that only the primary sense of "wedgie" (to have one's underpants yanked up as a joke) was necessary for learners of English to include in their lexicon.

I proceeded to do a google search on "wedgie" to see how the word is used in Singapore.

Both senses codified in MW were used, as seen from the screen capture below.

What was interesting to me is that all my life (however long I've come into contact with this word "wedgie"), I've been using it in a slightly different manner! I never knew that wedgie was meant to be a joke. My friends and I have always used it in a sense that yes, the underpants are in a weird in-between position (erm it isn't where it should be positioned, that is), but not for the reason that somebody else yanked it upwards as a prank. I always thought a "wedgie" to be an accident, a product of sitting on something for too long, or sitting in a weird position, or running too fast... So I would use it like... "EH, you've got a wedgie!", or more discreetly, "Ahem... err... wedgie!!!" Something along those lines.

I just thought it was worth considering, that a word can have very similar meanings, but due to perhaps, personal experiences, one's individual primings can differ from what is codified/standardised. For me, even though all evidence (from whatever limited evidence I've found online) seems to be at odds with my definition, I don't think I will be able to easily put my meaning, albeit an extended one, aside and pretend that I never had that priming in my life. In other words, individual primings occur BECAUSE of individual experiences, which is something that no one, even ourselves, can eradicate simply because we want to.

Worms and Coffee

2010-03-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

I came across this phrase on the web and this stood out as strange because I've never heard of "Worms and Coffee" before.

In my lexicon, worms do not collocate with coffee because there is no conceptual link between both words. I checked OALD to find out what coffee means...

cof•fee /kfi; NAmE k; k/ noun
1 [U, C] the roasted seeds (called coffee beans) of a tropical bush; a powder made from them: decaffeinated / instant coffee ground / real coffee a jar of coffee a blend of Brazilian and Colombian coffees coffee ice cream
2 [U] a hot drink made from coffee powder and boiling water. It may be drunk with milk and/or sugar added: black / white coffee (= without / with milk) Tea or coffee? I’ll just make the coffee. Let’s talk over coffee (= while drinking coffee).
3 [C] a cup of coffee: Two strong black coffees, please.
4 [U] the colour of coffee mixed with milk; light brown see wake v.

No mention of coffee with worms. Finding it strange, I decided to google the phrase 'worms and coffee'. As soon as I did that, a whole page of listings came up in the results, and I soon realised my ignorance.

I learned that... worms love coffee grounds for a variety of reasons. I quote one of the contributors in a forum:

"I think it has to do with several things. First is the caffeine. Secondly, coffee grounds have lots of surface area which allows bacteria to grow (and as you know, THAT is what they eat). Thirdly, I believe it adds to the gritty substance in their "guts" that they use to grind their food, since they have no teeth."

I am no worm-cultivator or coffee bean planter so I have no idea whether all these reasons are true or not. But what I do know is that my experiences (or rather, lack of) with worms and coffee as separate entities led me to have different primings, such that I found the construction weird and I had no prior notion of any semantic relation between both words.

Just to confirm that the phrase really existed, I went to google some more images of "Worms and Coffee". A couple of pictures came up, with signs and cafe names containing the same phrase... Interesting.

So how would you like your coffee served? Black, white, or with worms? :D

Magical and Revolutionary, indeed.

2010-03-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

I was surfing the Apple website recently, and I came across this ad for the Ipad (haha this term alone can cause quite a commotion). I was slightly puzzled by the choice of words in this linguistic construction. Why is the Ipad a magical and revolutionary product? Adjectives such as "magical" and "revolutionary" are not exactly what we would describe the Ipad or any product actually, for that matter. I did a dictionary search for those words to try and see what their primary senses are.

Merriam Webster:
Magical
1 : of or relating to magic
2 a : having seemingly supernatural qualities or powers b : giving a feeling of enchantment

Revolutionary
1 a : of, relating to, or constituting a revolution b : tending to or promoting revolution c : constituting or bringing about a major or fundamental change
2 capitalized : of or relating to the American Revolution or to the period in which it occurred

OALD:
Magical
1 containing magic; used in magic: magical powers Her words had a magical effect on us. Mercury was believed to possess magical properties.
2 (informal) wonderful; very enjoyable enchanting: a truly magical feeling We spent a magical week in Paris. There is something magical about the pure exchange of love between parent and child.
ma•gic•al•ly /kli/ adv.: She looked about in the faint hope that Simon might magically appear from nowhere.

Revolutionary

1 [usually before noun] connected with political revolution: a revolutionary leader revolutionary uprisings
2 involving a great or complete change: a revolutionary idea a time of rapid and revolutionary change revolutionary advances in medicine The effects of technological development are revolutionary.

The dictionary senses indicated that "magical" usually collocates with things to do with magic and powers, or things that give a seemingly enchanted feeling. "Revolutionary" usually collocates with things to do with war, politics, institutions, technologies. I did a quick Google search for both words just to see what kind of other words they would typically appear with and both searches proved my intuitions.

In light of all these notions, would I go to the extent of labelling the Ipad as a magical and revolutionary product? Probably not, it's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? But then again, exaggeration is one of the many linguistic tools used in commerical advertisements, which is probably why these extreme adjectives were chosen to represent the Ipad.

So now... how many of you possess the Magical and Revolutionary Ipad that Apple so claims it to be?

CHAMPION lah you

2010-03-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

Last week while talking to one of my friends...

Friend: Have you heard strange things about this person...?
Me: What's her name?
Friend... xxxxxxxx
Me: OMG yes, she used to drool and fall asleep in every class... blablabla, super champion!!

(For confidential reasons a lot of information irrelevant to this post has been left out, which will explain why the above conversation seems short and awkward when actually it was really longer and funnier)

Ended up thinking about the use of the word "champion".
I did an OALD search and this is the current definition:

noun
1 a person, team, etc. that has won a competition, especially in a sport: the world basketball champions a champion jockey / boxer / swimmer, etc. the reigning champion (= the person who is champion now)
2 ~ (of sth) a person who fights for, or speaks in support of, a group of people or a belief: She was a champion of the poor all her life.
verb [vn] to fight for or speak in support of a group of people or a belief: He has always championed the cause of gay rights.

Did a couple more dictionary searches, Google UK and Singapore searches, and the senses I got from those searches all revolved around the same thing... Then how did my usage of "champion" as an adjective come about?! I've heard it elsewhere, I couldn't have been the only person in the whole world using it in that way, could I? That thought for some reason was slightly horrifying.

My last resort, dictionaries on Singlish.
A search in Singlishdictionary came to nothing, so I went to the infamous Talkingcock.com, and there! I found it. Something similar to the way I had used the word.

CHAMPION (Contributed by MC)
A term describing the unbelievable actions of a person. Usually used in a derogatory manner.
Ah Beng : "Wah lau! You never hear! Ah Seng is in hospital! His finger kena bitten off by his hamster!"
Ah Meng: "Serious ah? He damn champion, man!"

Hahaha. What's with the names that they give?! Anyway, in Singlish, "champion" can be used in a slightly different manner. Of all the sources that I looked up, this was the closest that came to capturing the sense of "champion". I certainly used it in an unconventional sense, definitely NOT meaning the sense of being a winner in a competition. It was used in a derogatory manner, yes, with negative connotations, maybe with an attitude of saracasm. This sense is definitely not in the standard English lexicon. Looks like I'm a fluent speaker of Singlish. Sigh.

Something's different

2010-03-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

I was tapaoing some food back from the area where I live and along the way back I saw a.... "Maid Agency". A construction we're all pretty familiar with I think. But that got me thinking, do our local primings of what it means to be a maid in Singapore differ in any sense from being a maid overseas- in the UK, in France etc.

So the first thing I did was to check the dictionaries.

Merriam Webster:
1 : an unmarried girl or woman especially when young : virgin
2 a : maidservant b : a woman or girl employed to do domestic work

Longman:
1 a female servant, especially in a large house or hotel:
a kitchen maid
2 old use a woman or girl who is not married ➔ old maid

Seems quite straightforward. Both dictionaries show the sense of being a female who is a domestic servant. So I was like hmmm... that sense does describe a maid working in Singapore but somehow it doesn't quite capture the essence of it completely.

So I resorted to using Google, the convenient alternative which does the trick sometimes. And well, that's where I found the slight difference in a maid in Singapore and a maid in Western countries.

Maid agency, maid portal, maid hub... problems when employing a maid etc. Then I did a UK search.

Slightly different entries came up, but the primary sense of the word remains. Here we see the word used to mean specifically "domestic cleaning service". Otherwise, the other entries were quite vague.

The interesting part was when I clicked 'images'. But in the local pages there were pictures of Filipino/Indonesian women etc, something like this below.

Then in the UK pages, many of the results were like this:

Lol. Quite different huh. The same results appeared in the French pages too.

What I learned was that words can have overlapping meanings, like in this case, and at the same time, there are slightly differing senses. What we would expect a maid in Singapore to be is quite different from what a maid is in western countries. There's the French maid style uniform to wear, most of these maids are employed in large mansions/private properties/hotels (chamber maids) whereas in Singapore, the maids come from Asian countries in the region, plus you can find a domestic helper in many homes, whether landed or high-rise. Overall, the meaning of the word is generally the same, but in practice, the senses differ, which is something that is noteworthy because it is precisely our contextual situations that give rise to different primings of the same word eventually. Each context develops a way of handling the same word to suit their realities and needs accordingly, thus resulting in two or more very different kind of senses that a word adopts.

random pandom

2010-03-06T06:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not certain whether this Boomz word has anything to do with the Boomz entry that I posted a few weeks ago, but yeah if it does then it's cool and it speaks a lot about creative lexical innovation and marketing (not sure if it's working). If it has nothing to do with Ms boOmz then I'm just a bit puzzled as to why this word is up there so dramatically and attention-grabbing. Strange... does it have any other significance?

I happen to see this small notice on the table that I was at in the Central Library one morning, and was reminded of Prof Ooi's example in class about SMRT and their "suspicious-looking people or article...". Aren't we proud of NUS? We didn't copy SMRT wholesale but it is a modification and improvement of their statement, so that it doesn't sound so strange. I was just a bit irked by the inconsistency in capital/small case in the first statement, but that's beside the point.

Got Arrowed

2010-03-01T00:05:00.000-08:00

I was having a conversation with some of my friends one day and I came across this phrase that one of them used: "I got arrowed by... to do (something)". That sparked my interest and I went home to do a googlesearch to see how the word "arrow" has been used in both Singaporean and UK contexts.

So first I did a dictionary search in the Merriam Webster and Longman dictionaries, and both were congruent in that they showed that the word "arrow" is used as a noun. This is Longman's entry:

ar‧row [countable]

1 a weapon usually made from a thin straight piece of wood with a sharp point at one end, that you shoot with a bow

2 a sign in the shape of an arrow, used to show direction:

Follow the arrows to the X-ray department.

The UK google search was also in agreement with that dictionary definition of the word "arrow". Despite me going to the extent of typing in "got arrowed", a phrase that is typically used in Singapore, all I got was the page as shown below. No "got arrowed", but mostly "arrow" used as a noun. There was one particular entry, the second one, which had the phrase "got arrowed". It said this "My first attempt which I didnt plan, saw the guards on one tower spotting me climbing. I got arrowed to my doom." On closer inspection, this came from a gaming forum (Assassin's Creed), and although "arrow" is used here as a verb, the meaning is probably still literal. The guy really did get arrowed to his doom, with real bows and arrows. I think... But considering that "arrow" is meant to be used as a noun, it is still quite an interesting discovery in the UK context I suppose.

Then I tried googling for the same phrase "got arrowed" in the Singapore pages, and I found numerous entries.

Quite a stark contrast from the UK page.

I got arrowed by he and himself
Call it bad luck but i once got arrowed to do COS for three days
I got "arrowed" for guard duty on Tekong before on a Sunday
anybody ever got arrowed to arrange makan or games for your unit men?
You, the one that does most work, got arrowed to bind, print and submit the report
and got arrowed to stay behind to form a sort of quasi-diplomatic mission,
Dave got arrowed to dress in red and white

I clicked and clicked to find more results and the results confirmed that Singaporeans really use "got arrowed" in quite a unique way. "Arrow" is being collocated with auxiliary verb "got", and "-ed" suffix is added on to the end of the word to get "got arrowed". It was even more fascinating that the phrase is also being used in certain respectable websites, not just random blogs and forums. From the instances collected above, I observed that the phrase has a negative semantic prosody, meaning that, people are usually "arrowed" when they are forced to do something that they don't wish to do. There is also an element of no-choice and no free will. Interestingly, many of the entries revolved around the topic of NS and were posted by NSmen, recruits. NS men are also usually "arrowed" to do guard duty, complete tasks, and other menial tasks like arranging games and meals etc. Haha. Right about the no free will part there.

So it does seem like Singaporeans are using the word "arrow" in a liberal fashion, making use of word-formation and changing processes to come up with a phrase that best suits the Singaporean reality. In other words, "we always kena arrowed".

Hair-raising stuff

2010-02-21T04:57:00.000-08:00

This shop name cracked me up quite a bit. Look closely, it says 'Hair Raising Experienced Consultants'. I was visiting a friend's house during the festive season and the moment I saw this, I forced my friend to stop the car so I could get out and snap this picture. I was curious so I tried looking around to figure out what this shop actually sold/did. Well, as it turns out, it's a salon. I saw another board-sign nearby with the prices and services, that's how I figured. Why would anyone want to name their salon as such?! Puzzling.

OK maybe, maybe it's a direct translation from the Mandarin figures, but... I suck at Mandarin, so too bad I can't read that and anyway I doubt it's a literal translation because I don't identify any of the Mandarin figures as 'tou fa' (hair in Mandarin).

So what does this linguistic construction really mean?

1. Experienced Consultants (ok this part, I can understand)
2. Experienced in raising hair? (now this part starts to get mysterious)

Pity it was closed, I really wanted to see how hair-raising their services were.

Yummy-lebrity

2010-02-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

Yami-lebrity! Caught my eye because it sounded so... strange. Evidently a blending of the 2 words "yami" from yami yoghurt and "celebrity". I don't exactly know what's the link between eating yami yoghurt and being a celebrity but I couldn't exactly go near the poster to check it out.

I suddenly thought of something random. "Yami" = pun for "yummy"?
OK maybe... maybe not.

Caution.

2010-02-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

When I first saw the video on Youtube, I was flabbergasted. Boomz? Preens? Beegini? Zip-bra? Seriously, could anyone really speak like that?! I laughed along with the masses, and I mean really laughed (ALOT), because admittedly, it was quite funny what. Then came Shingz. That was the last straw. Not funny anymore.

Then I saw a sign in the Engin Canteen (yes again, engin food is better than ours sadly) which said "CAUTION. BOOMZ!". It was stuck right on top of a giant red firecracker, obviously a Chinese New Year decoration. It suddenly dawned on me. People are really using this term! I mean I knew it before, because shortly after the big uproar, everyone started sprouting "Boomz" like free and no one really genuinely understood what the essence of the word was (If we even do consider it a word).

According to Nicholas Yong, a Straits Times reporter, "boomz" is here to stay, along with other words like "kiasu" and "wah lau" in the Coxford Singlish dictionary. (Source: blogs.straitstimes.com)

I'm feeling so boomz today.

I'm wearing something boomz.

Recently, I was talking to a friend, and she was expressing her anger about a certain issue, and having slight trouble finding the right word to express her anger... and then BOOMZ! She went like "...I will reallllllly be sooooo.... BOOMZ!" and then cue for laughter. Somehow that lightened the mood immediately.

So my thoughts are, similar to the ST reporter, whether we like it or not, this word is here to stay. (Somehow it also has a unifying effect among Singaporeans) Already we hear it being uttered every now and then, on MRTs, buses, classrooms, conversations etc. Everywhere! I eagerly (or not) anticipate seeing how the word will continue to evolve in the coming future in our country. Who knows? It may even earn itself a place in the Singlish lexicon soon (or has it already done so?).

When asked what "boomz" means, Ris Low said that it means "something that is loud, something that is strong, and something that has an effect on people." (Source: RazorTV)

Wow. We have been so boomz-ed.

Partner lemme upgrade you and your ice milo

2010-02-12T00:17:00.000-08:00

Last week in class, we talked about the word 'UPGRADE' and how its use has been extended from the conventional "system/skills" upgrade to an "improvement of self" meaning...

I thought it was funny because the very next day, while having breakfast at Macs (at Engin canteen in school), I saw a sign at the counter saying "UPGRADE YOUR DRINK TO ICED MILO". Hmmm. That certainly caught my attention. Interesting, now drinks can be upgraded too! I was thinking about the original meaning of the word "upgrade", and wondering why changing your drink to Iced Milo would be considered an upgrade at all. Is Iced Milo a more atas/posh drink in the first place? Is it due to its slightly higher cost that we need to fork out if we want to make a switch? If that's the case, then the meaning of "upgrade" may have been modified/extended to suit this situation, because there is no explicit connotation of "improvement".

Then that reminded me of Beyonce's 2006 album, entitled "UPGRADE U", as seen in the fancy font in the picture above. I did a quick search about what that actually means, and this is it.

The phrase revolves around a relationship between a man and woman, with the woman claiming that she can "upgrade" her man, introducing him to new things, improving his lifestyle and reputation. (Source: Wikipedia)

Some of the lyrics:

Lemme upgrade you

Partner let me upgrade you

Flip a new page

Introduce you to some new things

And upgrade you

I can up

Can I up?

Lemme upgrade you

This just ties in with what we said in class, this extension of the meaning of "upgrade" has really been taken to a whole new level. Self-improvement, in terms of material wealth, reputation, popularity, looks, attractiveness and the like, is constantly being promoted and hailed as necessarily crucial in the song. In other words, the range of entities that can be "upgraded" has widened quite a bit, to the extent that anything that involves improvement is considered an "upgrade".

Lemme UPGRADE YOU.

Squeezed Prices!

2010-02-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

Right, I know the picture is small, the words on the sign are blur, and basically this is not a very good photo and it doesn't reflect well on the photographer = ME. But I took this on a moving bus, and I was literally jumping up and down to try and capture the sign, so this was the best I could do with my lousy iphone camera anyway.

In case you can't see it clearly, the advertisement for John Little says in bright orange "WE'VE SQUEEZED OUR PRICES TO HELP YOU SAVE ANYTIME, EVERYDAY!" When I read that, my eyes immediately focused on the first half of the sentence "We've squeezed our prices..." Prices are being squeezed? Interesting collocation. Maybe I'm ignorant, but I have never come across prices being squeezed. Prices can be reduced, cut down, halved, lowered etc. But squeezed?

Bus Captain

2010-02-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

This is probably a familiar sign to many of us, seen in the newer buses in Singapore. I was just wondering, who is the Bus Captain? After asking for the opinions of the friends I was with, we came to the conclusion that the Bus Captain is the bus driver. I'm not sure if we're right, but who else will be able to assist a disabled person in alighting the bus and is in the position of a Captain?! Why is the bus driver given another name anyway? Why "Bus Captain"? It seriously sounds like a lame hero title. Do the bus drivers know that they're called Bus Captains?

Definition of the word "captain": (taken from the convenient dictionary.com)
1. a person who is at the head of or in authority over others; chief; leader.
8. the pilot of an airplane.

so by extension, the bus driver is the head of everyone in the bus, and since he's driving the bus (just like the pilot with the airplane), hence we hereby declare the bus driver to be the prestigious "Bus Captain". Naise.

Eating?

2010-02-09T19:02:00.000-08:00

Last week my parents gave me a lift to school on Friday around 7.30am and so we had breakfast at the Deck. My dad went to the Malay stall to order food and when he came back, he looked puzzled!

Dad: The Malay aunty asked me whether I was "eating"! Of course I'm eating the food what.
Me: Errr. I think she meant, are you "eating" (HERE) or ta-paoing (TAKE AWAY).
Dad: Huh?! Then why can't she ask me whether I'm eating HERE?

Just an observation. I think for most of us, when we order food in places like coffeeshops, canteens, kopitiams, and the stallholder asks, "eating?", it is presumed that we know that they don't mean "are you eating", but they imply, "are you eating here?". And it is interesting, because we do know that they mean that! We don't say, "huh? Of course I'm eating your food (that's why I ordered it in the first place)". In other words, we are primed to know what the single word "eating?" in the local context of ordering food in certain places means because we have grown up ordering food from those places.

Apparently, my Dad hasn't ordered enough hawker food in his life to understand that "eating?" doesn't just mean "eating".

Shang-Hai Observations

2010-01-26T06:34:00.001-08:00

Hello! First post of the semester. When we were asked to create a blog to record our observations about how language can be used in different ways, my Shang Hai trip 2 years ago immediately came to mind. I visited this place, this water park or something like that (unfortunately I had been sleeping in the mini-bus all the way there and by the time I woke I was still so sleepy + everything in Mandarin = failure to remember anything except that Tom Cruise filmed a scene from his movie Mission Impossible (I think!!) and these 2 signs).

"Protect the plants is to protect the nature" - Well I guess semantically, it does kinda makes sense because when plants are protected, nature is protected. But using my intuition, somehow the construction just sounds awkward! I have a feeling it has to do with the determiner "the" used twice before "plants" and "nature", especially "nature". You don't say - "Wow, I really stand in awe of THE nature!" That's just weird. I think there's more to this construction that needs some fixing... but I just can't figure it out. Enlighten me if you will!

"Fall into water carefully" - I certainly had a good laugh with this one. The Mandarin phrase reads something like "water is ___m deep, please be careful" right? Then along the way the translating seems to have gone slightly awry, resulting in a total mis-interpretation of the original intended meaning. The construction is syntactically well-formed, every word in correct position, but it does not make pragmatic/semantic sense. No one falls in water voluntarily, and definitely not carefully?! Maybe the translators meant to put across in English that "the water is deep so be careful not to fall into the water" but perhaps in their efforts to shorten the sentence such that it becomes a phrase, they conveniently switched "careful" and "fall into water" around, added the "ly" to make "careful" an adverb so that it sounds grammatical, and then ta-dah! There you have it, a nice well-formed sentence which makes no sense and is hilarious.