Emergency! Slots Conserved!

The bookings will be available on the IVLE by 4pm, 21 Aug 2009. You know where to find it. This is the best solution for the situation and it should satisfy everyone else. *Terms and conditions still apply!

With Apologies,

I really want to help to the best of my ability those whom want to be helped.

As I didn’t remember that it is a crime to hold consultations on Saturdays , I went ahead with making Saturday consultations available. Since I have just been ‘informed’ that I cannot do so–and on top of that, for ‘Truncated weekdays’ students cannot be seen talking to me after 6pm–I will have to make another round of changes.

Here are the possibilities; the outcome will be uploaded shortly: just keep checking back.

(1) I will be speaking to my Head to request for permission to miss Wednesday’s department meeting.

(2) Sign ups with 43 after-school slots will be made available on the IVLE so that it is fair game, and you will have to sign up.

(3) Converting the double-period class time into consultation slots. Priority for the weaker students.

(4) I change my urgent personal plans on 28th Aug. How, I do not know (yet!)

Of course those (six only) who missed the first consultations will still be barred unless they have valid reasons.

For those who do not know how to use the Internet

…you can use the Search function on this blog to find articles related to your ‘interest’.

For those who do not know how to process words here on the blog, you are supposed to read them–not simply look at them. They are not discrete random variables.

Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages

Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008 By MICHAEL KINSLEY

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729711,00.html

Whtevr u say, Mike, but this hedlin didnt get editd and thts why it readz like this

Like the detectives and the prosecutors on law & Order[1], two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world’s magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it.

Writers are sensitive souls–generally intelligent and hardworking but easily bruised. Treat them right, though, and you will be rewarded. Writers shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, essay or review. Then their writing–their baby–is ripped untimely from their computers (well, maybe only a couple of weeks overdue) and turned over to editors. These are idiots, most of them, and brutes, with tin ears, the aesthetic sensitivity of insects, deeply held erroneous beliefs about your topic and a maddening conviction that any article, no matter how eloquent or profound or already cut to the bone, can be improved by losing an additional 100 words.

If you’re lucky, your editor will have lost all interest in your article by the time you produce it, and on the way to a fancy expense-account lunch, he will pass it along unmolested to the copy editors (apprentice fiends, with intense views about semicolons). If you are not lucky, your editor will take a few minutes to ruin the piece with moronic changes and cloddish cuts before disappearing out the door.

I didn’t always feel this way. (And even now, nothing here should be construed to apply to the editors of TIME, who edit with the care of surgeons, the sensitivity of angels and the wisdom of the better class of Supreme Court Justices.) I have spent most of my professional life as an editor. When editors get together, they complain about writers with the same passion that writers bring to complaining about editors.

Writers, they say, are whiny, self-indulgent creatures who spend too much time alone. They are egotistical, paranoid and almost always seriously dehydrated. Above all, they are spectacular ingrates. Editors save their asses, and writers do nothing but bitch about it. “If anyone saw the original manuscript from …” (and you can insert the name of your favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning writer here) “… that guy wouldn’t get hired to clean the toilets at the Stockholm Public Library. Say, the Pulitzer is the one they give away in Scandinavia, isn’t it? I better remember to change that in a piece we’re running. The stupid writer says it’s the Nobel. What would they do without us?”

Editors are selfless, editors believe. They labor in anonymity and take their satisfaction vicariously. The writer gets all the glory. He gets the big bucks. He gets invited to the parties, the openings, the symposia, while the editors toil at their desks turning the writer’s random jottings and pretentious stylistic quirks into something resembling English prose. But that’s O.K. Editors don’t mind. They say, “Have a lovely time at that writers’ conference, and we’ll have the rewrite done when you get back.” (“And your laundry too, you unappreciative bastard,” they mumble under their breath.)

When I was an editor, I reasoned like an editor. But these days I am a full-time writer, and I have put away the editorial mind-set. Now I say, before you criticize writers, you should write a piece in their shoes.

Did you say paranoid? Is it paranoid to wonder why an editor hasn’t returned your calls for two weeks, even though she has been sitting on your piece for four? Did you say egomaniacal? What self-respecting egomaniac would put up with the enraging powerlessness of the freelance writer, totally dependent on the whims of half-literate editors for a pathetic drip-drip-drip of income. Oh, for a regular paycheck and health care, so you wouldn’t have to suck up to some jerk of an editor for the next mortgage payment. (“Yes, I see. You want it to be iambic pentameter with internal rhymes. I’ve never read an analysis of the political situation in Pakistan done that way before. What a good idea!”)

So this is an apology to any writers I may have treated callously over my years as an editor. If I didn’t answer your e-mail, I’m sorry. If the check was late or the amount less than agreed on, please forgive me. If I shut my office door, turned off the lights and hid under the desk when I heard you coming, I deeply regret such childish behavior.

On the Internet, they don’t have editors. Or they don’t have many. Writers rule, and a thought can go straight from your head onto the Net. That used to sound hellish. Now it sounds like heaven.

• [1] Interestingly, in the Print edition, the title is removed; “Writers Rule” prefixes the sub-heading; and “law & Order” gets ‘corrected’: “Law & Order”.

Mix tongues? Bagus, bao ying

By Janadas Devan (The Straits Times)

Oct 14, 2007 

PUBLIC discourse in Singapore, conducted usually in English, has been studded of late with Chinese and Malay expressions. Consider these examples from the past month:

NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say, in arguing why companies should be required to reveal the age profiles of their workforce, said: This way, even if the ‘CEO sumpah (‘swears’ in Malay) ‘I never discriminate against older workers’, he will have to explain himself.’

Dr Amy Khor, chairman of the government feedback unit Reach, when speaking in Parliament of the CPF changes, reported that some people feared the changes would leave them with ‘bo chi, bo kang (‘no money, no job’ in Hokkien)’.

A grassroots leader at a dialogue session, who felt that elderly Singaporeans should be given access to their CPF savings early so they can ‘have a good time at the IR’, asked Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong what would be the use of having money when one is old and bo gei (‘without teeth’).

Mr Lee replied: ‘If they win (at the IR) they will tan tio (‘benefit’). If they lose, their children will take care of them. If they have no children, the Government is there. Bao jia (‘definitely win’).’

But that would be disastrous for the country as a whole, Mr Lee warned – ‘bao si (‘sure die’).’ He added: ‘Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui (‘no teeth, no money’) is worse.’

The longevity insurance, the Prime Minister went on to tell his audience, is a winner – ‘bao ying (‘sure win’)’. ‘If you look at the obituary pages… you read, mo mo mo mo gao ling jiu shi (‘So-and-so is 90′ in Mandarin). So many 90-year-olds…and some over 100.’

Mr Lee speaks three languages – English, Mandarin and Malay – fluently and some Russian too. But I do not recall him mixing it up – code-switching, as it were, between tongues – to the extent that he did at this dialogue. What is going on?

Well, obviously, Singapore’s leaders have discovered that breaking occasionally into Chinese or Malay, even when they are speaking primarily in English, can be rhetorically effective. The examples above also indicate a more relaxed attitude on their part towards Chinese dialects.

According to the General Household Survey, one in five Chinese Singaporeans habitually speaks a Chinese dialect other than Mandarin at home. For this reason, Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen urged MPs recently to ‘spew forth with passion your Hokkien lyrics and poetic metaphors’ when speaking to their constituents about the CPF changes. It is doubtful if poetic metaphors, in any language, can ever be persuasive on financial matters, but it is significant that Dr Ng mentioned Hokkien, not Mandarin.

We have certainly come a long way since the early days of the ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign. As my colleague Peh Shing Huei noted recently, there was a time when ‘even simple dialect phrases in locally produced Mandarin drama serials were scrubbed out’. Yam seng, for instance, the traditional toast, was in the early 1980s replaced on television with ‘the politically correct Mandarin phrase, gan bei’. That may not qualify as ‘a kind of linguistic genocide’, as Mr Peh quoted the film-maker Tan Pin Pin as saying, but it would certainly qualify as an authentic case of asinine inauthenticity.

Singaporeans do speak a variety of languages. Almost all of us are bilingual, if not trilingual, to some extent or another. Even people like me who communicate primarily in English, do occasionally break into Malay or Hokkien or Tamil – to clinch a point, to cite a saying, to establish a point of contact with our interlocutors. That is how we habitually cakap- cakap among ourselves. This newspaper always provides English translations of even the simplest Chinese or Malay expressions it cites – even cakap-cakap, amazingly enough, even bo lui – but most us above 50 years old don’t need them.

This facility of ours for bi- or tri-lingual citations is I think wonderful. It is boring to be always speaking in only one tongue. There are Malay expressions that convey thoughts English cannot. There are Chinese and Indian sayings that encapsulate insights unavailable in English. Since we are bilingual, there is no reason why we should not occasionally slip into our English speech and writing the odd phrase or two from one of the other languages we know. The variety achieved thus would be pleasing; the variations would lend our communications a certain multidimensional quality.

As a matter of fact, English writers have been doing this for centuries, sprinkling their writings with quotations from both ancient and modern languages.

‘Five words sum up every biography: Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor’, I read the other day in an essay by Aldous Huxley. ‘I see the better way and approve; but I follow the worse way’. The English translation conveys accurately enough the same thought, but it lacks the precision of the Latin original.

‘What is she really like? It is hard to judge beneath the joie de vivre.’ How often have we not read sentences like that? Joie de vivre is usually translated as ‘joy of living’, but the English version lacks the panache, that certain

je ne sais quoi – other French phrases with no exact equivalents in English – of the original.

‘Looking into the heart of light, the silence./ Oed’ und leer das Meer.’ That comes from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The German line, a quotation from Wagner’s Tristan, means simply ‘Desolate and empty the sea’. So why couldn’t Eliot have written just that? Well, read the lines again and it would be clear their affect and sound turn crucially on the German intrusion.

All this is quite different from bo gei, bo lui, admittedly, but only in degree, not in kind. If magazine writers can routinely invoke someone’s joie de vivre, there is no reason why Mr Lim cannot utter the odd sumpah. If British and American writers can break occasionally into Latin or German to achieve particular effects, there is no reason why Singaporean writers cannot break occasionally into Mandarin – or Sanskrit or Arabic even – to achieve similar effects.

Mixing it up in this way would be far preferable to mixing it up in Singlish. This maintains the integrity of the different languages; Singlish doesn’t.

‘Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui is worse’- that remains a grammatical English sentence despite the Hokkien intrusions. ‘Ah pek no teeth, siong. Ah pek no teeth and bo lui, worse one’ – that is Singlish, a grammarless confusion of English and Hokkien.

Faham tak? 

 

Look who’s killing the language

Doris Lessing

Thu, Oct 18, 2007
ST / New York Times

LAST week, the novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature. Moments after the announcement, the literary world embarked on a time-honoured post-Nobel tradition: assessing – and sometimes sniffing at – the work of the prize winner.

One of the most pointed criticisms of Ms Lessing came from Mr Harold Bloom, a Yale professor and literary critic, who told the Associated Press: ‘Although Ms Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable.’ He went on to add that the prize is ‘pure political correctness’.  

Interestingly, Ms Lessing had some strong thoughts about political correctness, thoughts she expressed in this adapted article, which appeared in the New York Times op-ed page on June 26, 1992.

WHILE we have seen the apparent death of communism, ways of thinking that were either born under communism or strengthened by communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of communism as political correctness.

The first point: language. It is not a new idea that communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a communist jargon recognisable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about ‘concrete steps’, ‘contradictions’, ‘the inter-penetration of opposites’ and other such phrases.

The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s, when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use: ‘The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation…’

Words confined to the Left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read entire articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but their writers did not know it. And there is an aspect of this heritage that is much harder to see.

Even five, six years ago, Izvestia, Pravda and a thousand other communist papers were written in a language that seemed designed to fill up as much space as possible without actually saying anything. Because, of course, it was dangerous to take up positions that might have to be defended. Now all these newspapers have rediscovered the use of language. But the heritage of dead and empty language these days is to be found in academia, and particularly in some areas of sociology and psychology.

A young friend of mine from North Yemen saved up every bit of money he could to travel to Britain to study that branch of sociology that teaches how to spread Western expertise to benighted natives. I asked to see his study material and he showed me a thick tome, written so badly and in such ugly, empty jargon that it was hard to follow. There were several hundred pages, and the ideas in it could easily have been put in 10 pages.

Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with communism – as Swift, for one, tells us – but the pedantry and verbosity of communism had their roots in German academia. And now that has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world.

It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language.

The second point is linked with the first. Powerful ideas affecting our behaviour can be visible only in brief sentences, even a phrase – a catch-phrase. All writers are asked this question by interviewers: ‘Do you think a writer should…?’ or ‘Ought writers to…?’ The question always has to do with a political stance, and note that the assumption behind the words is that all writers should do the same thing, whatever it is. The phrases ‘Should a writer…?’ and ‘Ought writers to…?’ have a long history that seems unknown to the people who so casually use them. Another is ‘commitment’, so much in vogue not long ago: ‘Is so and so a committed writer?’

A successor to ‘commitment’ is ‘raising consciousness’. This phrase is double-edged. The people whose consciousness is being raised may be given information they most desperately lack and need; may be given moral support they need. But the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. ‘Raising consciousness’, like ‘commitment’, like ‘political correctness’, is a continuation of that old bully, the party line.

A very common way of thinking in literary criticism is not seen as a consequence of communism, but it is. Every writer has the experience of being told that a novel, a story, is ‘about’ something or other. I wrote a story, The Fifth Child, which was at once pigeonholed as being about the Palestinian problem, genetic research, feminism, anti-Semitism and so on.

A journalist from France walked into my living room and before she had even sat down said: ‘Of course The Fifth Child is about Aids.’

An effective conversation-stopper, I assure you. But what is interesting is the habit of mind that has to analyse a literary work like this. If you say: ‘Had I wanted to write about Aids or the Palestinian problem I would have written a pamphlet’, you tend to get baffled stares. That a work of the imagination has to be ‘really’ about some problem is, again, an heir of socialist realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary.

The demand that stories must be ‘about’ something is from communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.

The phrase ‘political correctness’ was born as communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behaviour. Arts – the arts generally – are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralising, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctors do not seem to know what their exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that they may know and do not care.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine his or her assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

A professor friend described how, when students kept walking out of classes on genetics and boycotting visiting lecturers whose points of view did not coincide with their ideology, he invited them to his study for discussion and for viewing a video of the actual facts. Half a dozen youngsters in their uniform of jeans and T-shirts filed in, sat down, kept silent while he reasoned with them, kept their eyes down while he ran the video and then, as one person, marched out. A demonstration – they might very well have been shocked to hear – which was a mirror of communist behaviour, an acting out, a visual representation of the closed minds of young communist activists.

Again and again in Britain we see in town councils or in school, councillors or headmistresses or headmasters or teachers being hounded by groups and cabals of witch hunters, using the most dirty and often cruel tactics. They claim their victims are racist or in some way reactionary. Again and again an appeal to higher authorities has proved the campaign was unfair.

I am sure that millions of people, the rug of communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma. 

***

 

Influenza Porcina

 

See your Doctor if you are feeling…

…burning sensation in the form of questions

…a heavy burden upon you due to your extra GP work done

See me for consultations! Hurry! Last round before your Prelim!

Your days are numbered. (Numbered, literally. Refer to IVLE for bookings.)

Ed: Fight! Fight! Fight on!

That’s what the “L” is about (“laban” in Tagalog). Certainly not L for Loser or Lamer. Thanks to contributions from Perry and http://kuyakevin.blogspot.com/2009/08/cory-aquino-and-l-sign.html.

No surprise

(Daughtry’s song really brings me back to Earth after the trance that is Chicane’s Poppiholla. To feel happier, it is good to know that Taylor Swift’s really a sweet girl who glamorises teachers of the English langauge–she said if she wasn’t a singer, she would love to be a grammar teacher!)

This is a post documenting the notes I took while on seminar this afternoon. Here I must say that I found it a surprise that some GP teachers in another college have such an easy time at work that they found the sight of those who multitask (mark and listen) during such seminars an eyesore deserving of snide remarks. They were just seated behind us (an entire row of markers from my humble college). And they are from the best college in Singapore. Probably they don’t know what being overworked feels like, so I can be forbearing on that. I have always had good relations with that college, so I shall let it pass this time.

The topic of the day is “new media”:

Michael Yap, Deputy CEO of MDA
– 2006 revenue: $19b
– Censorship as a “symbolic marker” to define boundaries; the authority knows there are ways people can bypass the restrictions, but there still need to be such symbolic markers in place to show that there is some control in the midst of openness–so the question is, why are people still complaining about tough censorship? (Here, I recall the truth in this elaboration. Indeed Singapore has a rather lax stand than I had expected overall with regard to sex and violence [sans politics and religion]; 3Oh!3’s Don’t Trust Me wasn’t even banned! See the attitude of some parents in foreign land: http://www.advocateweekly.com/ci_12892648)
– MDA consults the people and usually won’t act till complaints are raised (so it’s really not as restricted as you think!)

Cherian George
– New media is like a buffet spread: you pick the news that you like, be it gossip or sports
– Traditional/old media is like a set meal: they come to you in packed form though you can choose not to eat your veggies by not ignoring them.
(- A question I thought of as a potential essay question while I listened to his presentation: Should we conserve traditional journalism/media?)

***

A dying art
Michael Jackson’s real legacy was lost, thanks to demise of arts journalism
By Hong Xinyi
Aug 4, 2009

AS IT turned out, a former boy-band member supplied one of the most insightful statements about Michael Jackson in the wake of his death on June 26.

‘He is a language,’ said JC Chasez of ‘NSync. ‘He is a piece of vernacular when you talk about dancing, singing, entertainment.’

It was an interesting way to think about the King of Pop – as a lexicon, rather than tabloid fodder.

Impersonators always had to master his distinctive vocal tics: The fervent hiccups, the urgent scatting, the puckish giggle (‘heee-hee’). Mere words never seemed enough for this singer, who was always on the hunt for bursts of noise – moans, howls, one long scream.

There was visual shorthand too, the privilege of a performer who had worked so hard to stand out that he could be identified solely by silhouette: The tipped fedora, the sequinned glove, the shortened trousers (to draw your eye to his footwork, a trick learnt from Fred Astaire), the hold-for-applause stances adapted from beloved idols such as James Brown and Sammy Davis Jr.

Those were the ABCs. But the language that is Michael Jackson was never meant to be considered in isolated yelps and freeze-frame poses. It was, firstly, a language that was quintessentially American, both in terms of its diverse influences and its own inventive ambition.

Jackson’s choreography was replete with moves from ballet and Broadway, from ghetto trends and vaudeville tricks – from the highest of high culture to the lowest of the low, and many things in between. But it managed to remain completely unique because of its own clearly defined agenda: How do you transcend the limitations of being human?

His most iconic moves enthralled the eye because they seemed joyously impossible. The precise backward glide of the moonwalk and the suave 45-degree lean seemed to defy the laws of gravity; the staccato shoulder heaves of Thriller and the graceful lurching in Ghosts imagined how zombies and phantoms would move, if the undead were inclined to dance.

It was also a language that thrived on tension. His most intriguing pop songs were strange, taut narratives where the only catharsis came from a relentless beat.

Billie Jean, inspired by a fan who claimed he had fathered her child, is a tale of attempted seduction and denied paternity propelled by a paranoid, irresistible bass line that compelled whole stadiums of fans into chanting the line ‘the kid is not my son’.

Even a groove-happy love song like Remember The Time is a trick, where saccharine reminiscence simmers into something just on the edge of aggression.

Michael Jackson’s was, in short, a fascinating language. But while there have been reams of articles written about him since his death, these have focused largely on his oddities, his addictions, his undoing.

Those who wished to learn about his work were hard-pressed to find stories that explained why millions of people cared about him in the first place. I do not mean the awards won and records broken. I mean the elements that enabled those numbers.

There were some glimmers: A boy-band soundbite, a good piece by the New York Times dance critic, a hint of analysis in online magazine Slate: ‘His music is the strangest and darkest ever to achieve blockbuster success; by comparison, Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles and Madonna are positively milquetoast. Consider some song titles: Bad, Dangerous, Leave Me Alone, Blood On The Dance Floor, Scream, In The Closet, Cry, The Lost Children, Threatened. Repulsion, sexual anxiety, implacable sadness, violence, terror, celebrity stalking – these were his great themes.’

But the fact remains that so many interesting stories about Jackson’s work remain unwritten. Perhaps this is because those equipped with the tools to explain it are practitioners of a dying trade.

Just as his ascent exploited the potential of then new media like music videos, Jackson’s death coincides with the steep decline of arts journalism.

In the past six months alone, Vibe and Blender have folded, and Spin and Rolling Stone have downsized.

And respected music magazines are hardly the only ones feeling the crunch.

In a March article, American online magazine Miller-McCune.com interviewed the head of the National Arts Journalism Programme, who reckoned that ‘in 2005, there were approximately 5,000 staff positions on American newspapers that involved writing about the arts…Today, he estimates that due to layoffs, cutbacks and the closure of several prominent papers, that number is down to 2,500. That is a 50 per cent decline in only four years – a disproportionate loss even for an industry in decline’.

But what does it matter, really? To a media industry facing widespread challenges, saving arts journalism may well be the least of its worries.

You could argue that good arts criticism helps to raise awareness of good art, encouraging readers to seek out the thing that the critic describes. You could say that good arts journalism functions as a time-honoured space for dialogue and reflection about art, for questions to be raised and contexts to be provided.

But the truth is this: A song comes on the radio, and somehow it makes you want to dance, and it makes you want to cry; suddenly, the day seems changed, charged.

And if no one explained anything, the song would still be written, and the music would still work its voodoo. Writing about its construction and its rhythms does not really change anything.

It is just a way of trying to make the music last a little longer – that is all.

Deja vu: Sanct-

This feels like deja vu, but maybe it’s not. Anyway I was rechecking on the word, “sanct”, after the afternoon class today and I saw this page:

I thought I saw this page before; probably when I was half asleep, and I must have been when I did the slides for the week when we were discussing on the passages on Freedom of Speech.

Good that someone in the class brought it up, fully practising your freedom of speech! I stand corrected.
***
One God, many names
Janadas Devan in the Straits Times
Jan 13, 2008

DOES it matter what one calls God? Would he answer to Allah but not X, Yahweh but not Y, Brahman not Z? Would he be confused if Christians called him ‘Allah’, Hindus ‘Yahweh’ and Muslims ‘God’? Is he a linguistic chauvinist? Would he say: ‘Call me ‘God’ as in English, not Gott as in German; Theos as in Greek, not Deus as in Latin; Allah as in Arabic, not Alaha as in Aramaic or Syriac?’

These are, of course, inane questions. Idiotic humans might ask them; God, if he exists, cannot possibly abide such silly questions.

Neti, neti, the Buddha would say when pressed by over-eager disciples to describe the nature of ultimate reality – ‘not this, not this’.

Jews are reminded of the utter incapacity of language to encompass God by the Tetragrammaton – the four Hebrew consonants (Yod Heh Vau Heh) designating God, usually transliterated as YHWH in English. So sacrosanct is the name of God, observant Jews do not vocalise the Tetragrammaton, preferring instead to refer indirectly to Yahweh as Adonai (’my Lord’) or Elohim (’God’) or by means of euphemisms such as hash-Shem (’the Name’) or Shem Hameforash (’the ineffable Name.’).

Muslims are told by scripture that ‘God has ninety-nine names’ – among them ‘the King, the Holy One, the Perfect Peace, Granter of security, Giver of protection, the Omnipotent, the Overwhelming,’ and so on. ‘In congregate, (these names) affirm God’s supreme perfection and cultivate deeper understanding of his beauty and majesty,’ writes Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a Muslim scholar, in an article aptly titled One God, Many Names. They also affirm that the transcendent cannot possibly be fully encompassed by language.

Mystical literature illustrates the point. Here is a list of some phrases that one scholar culled from 17th century Christian mystical writings describing the experience of God: ‘Inflaming transubstantiations; super-essential unions; abyssal liquefactions; deific confrications; meridian holocausts in a visceral and medullar penetrability.’

The extravagance of these phrases illustrates how every attempt to describe religious experience has to be, of necessity, ‘a raid on the inarticulate,’ as the poet T.S. Eliot put it. If God is ineffable – and all the religions are agreed that he is – a degree of linguistic modesty ought to figure among the prime religious virtues.

It is a lesson the religious, of all faiths, are apt to forget. Consider, for instance, how Reverend Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, spoke once of the names of God. Speaking of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he said: The conflict is about ‘whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme.’

Almost every word in that statement is nonsense. Firstly, Hubal was a pre-Islamic pagan god that Prophet Muhammad rejected. Secondly, ‘Jehovah’ is not a name that appears anywhere in the Jewish Bible. It is an English mistransliteration of the Jewish Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Most scholars now believe the Tetragrammaton is better vocalised in English as ‘Yahweh’. And thirdly, ‘Allah’, far from being un-Christian, is related to the word that Jesus Christ himself – who spoke Aramaic, let us not forget, not English, Greek or Latin – would have used to refer to God: Elah or Alah.

Which brings us to the nonsense uttered on the other side – by the Muslim Pat Robertsons of Malaysia. Christians, they have ruled, cannot use ‘Allah’ to refer to God in Malay translations of the Bible. The word is unique to Islam, they insist. It would confuse Muslims – and presumably God too – if Christians used the same word. These assertions make no sense whatsoever – culturally, historically and linguistically.

A section of my family on my mother’s side are Chitti Melakas, the Indian version of Baba Chinese. For as long as I can remember, they have always referred to God, when speaking in Malay, as Tuan Allah or ‘Lord God’, though they are Hindus.

They are not the only ones. To this day, hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians call God ‘Allah’. Arabic-speaking Jews do the same. There is no indication Arabic-speaking Muslims have been confused as a result.

Arab scholars and Imams would know what linguists have established beyond a shadow of doubt: The words for ‘God’ in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, all Semitic languages, are so closely related as to be virtually indistinguishable. The Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – may have different conceptions of God, but etymologically-speaking, they all call God by the same name.

The Arabic Allah shares the same root as the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Alaha. Elohim derives from eloh (Hebrew for ‘God’), Alaha is an emphatic form of alah (Aramaic for ‘God’), and Allah is linked to ilah (Arabic for ‘God’).

‘All three of these Semitic words for ‘God’ – eloh, alah and ilah – are etymologically equivalent,’ as Dr Abd-Allah notes. ‘The slight modifications between them reflect different pronunciations conforming to the historical pattern of morphological shifts in each tongue.’

How would it be possible to say Christians cannot say ‘Allah’ when Christ himself – who walked the face of the Earth six centuries before Prophet Muhammad did, and is accepted by Muslims as a prophet – would have said Alah, Elah or Alaha?

There are reasons why the Quran calls Jews and Christians ahl al-kitab – ‘People of the Book’. They share the same religious texts as Muslims; they share similar revelations; and the Semitic languages they spoke are more closely linked than are Sanskrit, Latin, English and the other Indo-European languages.

There are two ways in which this linguistically meaningless argument in Malaysia may be resolved.

One, Malaysia’s Islamic authorities might consider what word for ‘God’ the Prophet would have used when speaking to his wife’s cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian. For two years after he first received God’s revelations, the Prophet spoke of his experiences to nobody other than his wife Khadija and her cousin.

Would he have told his Christian relative: No you can’t say ‘Allah’; say ‘Tuan’ or ‘God’ or ‘Deus’?

If the Malaysian authorities can confirm this could not possibly have been the case, then the matter might be closed: All Christians, like the Prophet’s relative, may be allowed to say ‘Allah’.

But if the authorities still insist that what was admissible for the Prophet’s relative should be inadmissible now, for whatever reason, then they might consider another option. Denied the right to use ‘Allah’, Christian Malaysians may be allowed to go back to their linguistic roots, and use the Aramaic Alah or Alaha as Christ would have.

One letter ‘l’ less or one syllable ‘a’ more than ‘Allah’ – that should be enough to prevent the impossible and non-existent confusion of Islam and Christianity in Malaysia.

National Day Messages

Here are some messages (extract or summarised) from important people:

 

PM Lee’s National Day Message 2009 

“Whether fighting the recession or the flu, we made sure every Singaporean knows he is not alone, but that the community and the country are behind him. So long as you make the effort and do your best, the rest of us will help you to pull through. My fellow Singaporeans, in the half century since we attained self government, we have been tested many times, but we have also created many possibilities for ourselves. Let us stand shoulder-to-shoulder, so that whether it rains or shines, we can work together and achieve the best results for Singapore. This is how we build a better and more vibrant nation, and make Singapore a special place that we are all proud to call our home.” 

 

The Workers’ Party (Youth wing), in its National Day statement issued on Aug 5, 2009 to Today and Channel News Asia

Singaporeans were urged to “be more” instead of “have more”.  They also warned that Singaporeans could “lose the most precious gift of all: Our humanity, our conscience, our dignity.” This seems to echo the vision of the party: A nation where each Singaporean is counted as a valuable citizen rather than an employee of Singapore Inc. A nation that is respected the world over for not just its efficiency and material wealth, but for the kindness and generosity of its people and leaders.”

 

What do you see? What do you see?

 

Mr K, in his National Day statement issued unofficially on Aug 7, 2009 to this blog

 

It has always been difficult to be less of “an employee of Singapore Inc” and more of “a valuable citizen” of Singapore. In fact, it has always been difficult to differentiate between Singapore and Singapore Inc. Singapore Inc has done well over the decades and it is certainly no mean feat.

 

As life gets commercialised, it also gets quantified. It seems like a free market where humans are traded. Exotic species from all over the world can be imported easily, and hopefully, under the rally of multiculturalism, we all accept the variety. Gong Li, Jet Li. After all, we don’t go to a buffet eating just porridge and rice.

 

What is a Singaporean? What do you see?

 

Tonight I see the moon and the stars in the blanket of the night. Tonight I see a gay couple cuddling up in the NTU canteen where Ronald McDonald sits. Tonight I see people in NTU not clearing their trays after their meals; the cats come out to play.

 

Tonight drivers straddle lanes like there is no tomorrow. No one can wait for what tomorrow may bring. So what could you see?

 

I saw for myself that such offenders are not always Singaporeans–certainly not those I ‘caught’ red-handed tonight in the institute of higher education.

 

The concept of the Singaporean has been expanded even before we know it, admit it. “Singaporean” could be the new “English”, where additions and editions made the language internationally convenient.

 

When we call one a Singaporean, we would have to accept these differences and try to be patient and wait for change to take place. We may not all learn to clear the trays yet, but slowly we will. When we see an inconsiderate Singaporean, we may want to extend the benefit of the doubt that it is still a period of cultural nexus. Otherwise, the globalisation we are living in might just make us tear at ourselves in fear in such uncertain climate.

***

 

From the Straits Times; July 29, 2009 (Interview with WTO Chief Pascal Lamy; extract)

Is globalisation marching backwards?

With the economic crisis hurting the economies of the US and Europe, many people are now looking to China to pick up the slack in exports by driving up its domestic consumption. Is this achievable? Long before the crisis, China knew that as a medium- and long-term strategy it would have to increase domestic consumption and become less dependent on export-driven growth. China has a huge potential domestic market. If the Chinese economy reflates and if there is a bit less saving and a bit more consumption, there is margin for manoeuvre. But it’s also true that whatever will there is on the Chinese side to increase domestic investment and consumption, it will take time to get there. In the meantime they need trade – a lot.

Countries are allegedly closing their borders to not only trade but people during this economic crisis. Do you see a process of de-globalisation taking place? We’ve had a lot of globalisation in recent years, and this globalisation may lead to some de-globalisation. It may, I’m not sure, I’m just looking, researching, trying to understand it. There are obvious elements that will not change – technology will not de-globalise, you will not de-learn. Now on the other side…I’m quite convinced that, given the de-leveraging that has to take place, given more risk adversity and more regulation, finance will be less of a globalisation stimulus.

***

Finance may be less of a globalisation stimulus, but in this country it still very much is a stimulus for everyone to work hard.

 

How do we show that we value one another in a paradigm that is much shaped by capitalistic ambitions? Can we solve this problem with another campaign? By standing shoulder to shoulder in the sun, lightning, thunder or in rain, we work towards one goal. That implies self-sacrifice, and in the process we may well have become mentally and emotionally Spartan. But the country thrives still and life goes on.

 

Perhaps only the ignorant possess the vibrancy. The facade of our concrete jungle too exudes that vibrancy through explicit colours or lighting. The vibrancy of a nation that is Singapore, if it is not to be achieved, can be achieved. We can simply pay more tax and watch Gong Li VS Jet Li on Channel 8 blockbuster TV: Once Upon A Time In China, Hollywood, And Now Singapore! Likewise, bring in the Brazilians! They know how to samba and we have the sambal chicken! I don’t mind Kaka playing in the S-league! Vibrancy, we can achieve!

***

Janadas Devan in ST on Aug 9, 2009: The real Aug 9–and the one we celebrate

“Just as one cannot see any corner of Singapore without imagining what it might look like in the future, one cannot imagine being a Singaporean without projecting that identity into the future. The Singaporean, by definition, is a being that can exist only as an ongoing project.”

Safety Factor: language

If we do not let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we have lost our “safety factor,” an engineering principle of critical importance.

This is a sentence taken from one of the paragraphs used as examples in the Remedial. (For those who are lost, get the handout from your classmates. I may type out the paragraph here if I have the time after I’m done with PW!)

The verb “do not” is actually used correctly here: If we do not let an extra 10 in, we have lost our safety factor. This paragraph proves by contradiction why you should let them in.

Especially when you consider the verb “lost”, that means you have kept the extra space for nought if you do not use it. The safety factor’s purpose is thus lost. The safety factor is there for an emergency, so, as a famous politician in Singapore would say, “If this is not a rainy day, I don’t know what is a rainy day.”

Hence, if you do not let in the extra 10, your lifeboat’s safety factor would not have been used for the purpose it was built.

The example that follows the sentence in question is actually there to just explain the rationale for having the safety factor. Thus you know the author’s certainly in support of having and using the safety factor.

Do you own the road?

Some people deliberately jaywalk slowly across major roads in some parts of Singapore, hoping that they are run over so that they can claim the insurance payout in such difficult times. Thankfully, such occurrences have become rarer.

While jaywalkers who hog the road is one thing, cyclists who hog the lane is another–and a car that hogs the road is yet another.

I’ve seen many cars doing that. The fact that they do not signal shows that they don’t really have the intention to switch lanes: they just want to hog the lanes.

Most appear apologetic when they realised they were wrong and they backed off. But the speeding red Cayman which had been straddling two lanes far too long on narrow Lornie Road this morning had the gall to flash its headlights after I cut him in. The Cayman swerved a little. It didn’t look like it could control its own speed without my assistance.

It’s running foul of the law, not me; I was only trying to overtake it.

What do you see? What do you see?

Moral of the account: Don’t speed, don’t straddle the lanes; especially when you ain’t no good.

(Coincidentally I had a weird dream this dawn. I saw a wrecked motorcycle on the first lane of a road, then a fallen tree trunk some distance after. I drove over them both.)

In real, sometimes there are just too much debris on the roads. My car has been ambused a few times already, the most recent scratch-and-tear being the result of a rock the size of a fist. Most trucks don’t secure their load properly and if they carry on doing so without being punished, there is no real incentive for the very few to obey the commonsensical rule of the road (rather than the rule of business).

Too many inconsiderate people around. And don’t get me started on those who can’t take care when they open their car doors without slamming against the car next to them…

(Still in my clinic waiting for the consultees to come…)

Ed (Aug 2, 2009): I stand corrected: just saw a Lamborghini challenging the traffic light at the junction of Wheelock and Ion in broad daylight while straddling two lanes and causing massive noise pollution. It caused a cabbie’s engine to stall in the middle of the junction. And thanks, Bryan, for pointing out the mistake.