Assalamualaikum!
For this entry, I am focusing on the claim that bi/multilingualism relates to how it creates competency in other things aside from language.
The level of competency in one person differs from others and surely, one can be good at certain things but probably not good at others. Accordingly, language acquisition differs from one person to another and there was a claim that individuals who are bilingual and multilingual possess higher competency level than monolinguals. During our lecture, my lecturer used Lionel Messi the Argentinian football star as an example to relate how he may excel in his profession as a footballer but not certain if he would be good at, say, writing essays in his academic years. Similarly, bi and multilingual students are said to be more competent and excel in their academic compared to those who only know one language.
One of the things related to this would be the claim that bi/multilingual individuals have cognitive advantage of taking more things into their brain compared to those who are monolingual. The brain works differently for different people and hence, one's competency would differ too.
Taking myself as an example, I have been a big fan of Hongkong Cantonese's serial drama for years and have been constantly watching them since I was in Primary 6 (in 1998). 4 years later, I am able to converse with my Chinese friends and even Malay family members who share the same interest. Many ask why Cantonese? Well I don't really know how to answer the question; I guess it just came along when I first got addicted to watching the series. And further question that I often get from people is how do I learn without having basic learning process?
Like I mentioned, brain chooses what it prefers to be included into memory and perhaps learning Cantonese happens to be something that my brain feels like learning! I am already exposed to Brunei Malay, Standard Malay and English since birth so if the claim were to be true, my brain still has more slots to learn other languages. Being bilingual or multilingual don't just occur in everyone; the desire by the brain to keep on filling in from time to time and constant learning could be some of the factors too. The saying "practice makes perfect" could be applied to this context and thanks to the brain, memories are created and stored.
Despite this, the claim that bilingual/multilingual individuals' ability to possess more into their brains compared to monolinguals could be misleading as it could not explain the competency level just by learning many languages. What if the monolingual person is great at cooking, for example? Does it not involve the brain to work too? If we were to include these questions, then the claim would be easily weakened and refuted. But for this entry, the post circulates around what our lecture discussed on and that is the relation between cognitive actions and competency in language acquisition.
Love Love Love,
Zyra A.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
RTB translation
Hello again (:
Last night, I happened to watch 'Hawaii Five-O' on RTB 2 with my dad. And there was this one scene that made my dad went "what happened to the translation?"
So here is the overview. In that scene, character A was telling character B about his brother who committed fraud and planned to leave the country to escape punishment.
Character A: "It's my brother, Matt. I said I was going to help him get through this, but he planned on escaping. I just don't know what to do"
Character B: "I'm sorry"
Okay, so the translation was in Malay and the translation for character B's dialogue read "Saya minta maaf" which is the direct translation of "I'm sorry." My dad and I were surprised that the translation just came on as if character B was being apologetic of his wrongdoing, when his words were meant to offer consolation to character A. The translation could be "saya bersimpati" which will directly translated as "I'm sorry to hear that."
Reason being could be direct translation to the original text by character B but such can be misleading to non-English speakers. Now those viewers will think that any "I'm sorry" will mean "saya minta maaf" - as simple as that when this phrase has another meaning. My dad is an English teacher himself and me being an English major student, we can directly pinpoint the issue to this translated phrase. But for viewers who depend solely on the translation, misleading would be inevitable.
Love Love Love
Zyra A.
Last night, I happened to watch 'Hawaii Five-O' on RTB 2 with my dad. And there was this one scene that made my dad went "what happened to the translation?"
So here is the overview. In that scene, character A was telling character B about his brother who committed fraud and planned to leave the country to escape punishment.
Character A: "It's my brother, Matt. I said I was going to help him get through this, but he planned on escaping. I just don't know what to do"
Character B: "I'm sorry"
Okay, so the translation was in Malay and the translation for character B's dialogue read "Saya minta maaf" which is the direct translation of "I'm sorry." My dad and I were surprised that the translation just came on as if character B was being apologetic of his wrongdoing, when his words were meant to offer consolation to character A. The translation could be "saya bersimpati" which will directly translated as "I'm sorry to hear that."
Reason being could be direct translation to the original text by character B but such can be misleading to non-English speakers. Now those viewers will think that any "I'm sorry" will mean "saya minta maaf" - as simple as that when this phrase has another meaning. My dad is an English teacher himself and me being an English major student, we can directly pinpoint the issue to this translated phrase. But for viewers who depend solely on the translation, misleading would be inevitable.
Love Love Love
Zyra A.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
"Queue ticket?" Or "ticket queue?"
Assalamualaikum beloveds! Been a while since my last post (:
So this entry will be about this signboard I came across at Baiduri bank at The Mall in Gadong and this is what it says "Queue ticket." I spent about 15 mins trying to figure out if it was supposed to be "Queue ticket" or "Ticket queue" or even, "Queue for ticket."
I had options in my head on what the signboard should read instead of the stated. Often signs of "Queue" can be found at banks, shopping malls and fast food restaurants to name a few but this signboard at Baiduri bank really got me thinking.
1) By "queue ticket," does it mean that the tickets are doing the queuing? Because often in English, the action precedes the noun e.g. "running man"
2) An option that could be considered is for the signboard to be instructional. Instead of "queue ticket," probably "Queue for ticket." It makes a lot of difference, doesn't it?
3) Another option could be "Ticket queue" - this would make more sense.
Overall, I personally find signboards helpful in leading directions especially for people who are not familiar with certain place. There was a staff guiding the customers but he couldn't have entertained all customers at one time. And really, if the signboard failed to give the meaning it aimed, then who to blame would be another discussion altogether.
Love Love Love!
Zyra A.
So this entry will be about this signboard I came across at Baiduri bank at The Mall in Gadong and this is what it says "Queue ticket." I spent about 15 mins trying to figure out if it was supposed to be "Queue ticket" or "Ticket queue" or even, "Queue for ticket."
I had options in my head on what the signboard should read instead of the stated. Often signs of "Queue" can be found at banks, shopping malls and fast food restaurants to name a few but this signboard at Baiduri bank really got me thinking.
1) By "queue ticket," does it mean that the tickets are doing the queuing? Because often in English, the action precedes the noun e.g. "running man"
2) An option that could be considered is for the signboard to be instructional. Instead of "queue ticket," probably "Queue for ticket." It makes a lot of difference, doesn't it?
3) Another option could be "Ticket queue" - this would make more sense.
Overall, I personally find signboards helpful in leading directions especially for people who are not familiar with certain place. There was a staff guiding the customers but he couldn't have entertained all customers at one time. And really, if the signboard failed to give the meaning it aimed, then who to blame would be another discussion altogether.
Love Love Love!
Zyra A.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Bilingualism in my family part 2
(continued)...
Marriage is also a factor to be bilingual (and/or multilingual) in both my dad and mum's families. On my paternal side, my dad has a sister-in-law who originates from Singapore and a brother-in-law who is a convert from Iban family while from my maternal side, my mother has a brother married to an Indonesian woman. These addition to our family brings along their mother tongue language into effect (although not imposing on us to be good at Singapore Malay, Iban and Indonesian respectively) but we have the advantage to learn too! So for these aunties and uncles of mine, being bilingual or multi is expected when they married into a family who does not speak their born language. Occasionally, we tend to be influenced by the accent and tone of speech whenever these individuals converse with us e.g. my Singaporean auntie will have this sentence to ask "Alaaa...kenapa lambat? Tadi siapa drive? Bapak atau Huzairie?" - "Why so late? Who was driving? Your father or Huzairie?" This may look typical of any Brunei Malay conversation but it sounds different because my auntie has her own Singaporean accent and I admit, my sisters and I especially often find ourselves speaking in slight Singapore Malay accent too!
With knowledge and acquisition in both Malay (Standard, Brunei and Sarawak) as well as English, this has also affected our communication in the virtual world aka Facebook, Twitter and SMS. As many other families out there, mine is not excluded from doing code-switching in the mentioned medium of communication. Mass media also helped in the mastering of other foreign languages such as Tagalog, Hindi, Korean and Cantonese to name a few and interestingly, I can communicate with my family in these languages! Not 100% fluent but on the acceptable level.
I guess I should stop here before I bore you with more of my story on my family and our use of bili/multilingualism. Hope there are some academic values in the posts I am sharing (: Will try to improve as the time goes by!
Love Love Love
Zyra A.
Marriage is also a factor to be bilingual (and/or multilingual) in both my dad and mum's families. On my paternal side, my dad has a sister-in-law who originates from Singapore and a brother-in-law who is a convert from Iban family while from my maternal side, my mother has a brother married to an Indonesian woman. These addition to our family brings along their mother tongue language into effect (although not imposing on us to be good at Singapore Malay, Iban and Indonesian respectively) but we have the advantage to learn too! So for these aunties and uncles of mine, being bilingual or multi is expected when they married into a family who does not speak their born language. Occasionally, we tend to be influenced by the accent and tone of speech whenever these individuals converse with us e.g. my Singaporean auntie will have this sentence to ask "Alaaa...kenapa lambat? Tadi siapa drive? Bapak atau Huzairie?" - "Why so late? Who was driving? Your father or Huzairie?" This may look typical of any Brunei Malay conversation but it sounds different because my auntie has her own Singaporean accent and I admit, my sisters and I especially often find ourselves speaking in slight Singapore Malay accent too!
With knowledge and acquisition in both Malay (Standard, Brunei and Sarawak) as well as English, this has also affected our communication in the virtual world aka Facebook, Twitter and SMS. As many other families out there, mine is not excluded from doing code-switching in the mentioned medium of communication. Mass media also helped in the mastering of other foreign languages such as Tagalog, Hindi, Korean and Cantonese to name a few and interestingly, I can communicate with my family in these languages! Not 100% fluent but on the acceptable level.
I guess I should stop here before I bore you with more of my story on my family and our use of bili/multilingualism. Hope there are some academic values in the posts I am sharing (: Will try to improve as the time goes by!
Love Love Love
Zyra A.
Bilingualism in my family part 1
Assalamualaikum WBT (: Morning people of earth! (draft on Thursday January 19th)
My first post was not so catchy I should say, so hope this time will be better. We are in ICTC Lab having just finished a lecture by our very own Dr. Gary Jones and he gave us outlines on what our presentations should be. One of the options excites me: bilingualism in your immediate family and this could just be my choice.
Coming from big families on both my paternal and maternal sides, and with myself having inherited Sarawak-Malay and Brunei-Malay blood (my dad's side and my mother's side respectively), being bilingual is already in the book way before I was born. Taking a simple definition of bilingualism, it can be referred to as the ability to speak in two languages. Well of course, the whole concept of bilingualism cannot be as simple as that but I won't go into that. My insight for this post circulates around my family and how the use of bilingualism comes to be in usage.
My paternal grandfather was a teacher and this is no surprise with his children eventually following his steps in becoming education officers. Including my dad, 3 of his siblings are teachers and so do his sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Interestingly, my dad's sisters are both Maths teachers; his sister-in-law is a Religious Teacher; his brother-in-law a Malay teacher and my dad himself an English teacher. So as can be seen, different medium of teaching is used - English for Maths and English subjects; Bahasa Melayu for Malay and a mixture of Bahasa Melayu and Arabic for religious teaching. Already my dad, his siblings and in-laws have to master those mentioned teaching mediums to communicate and interact for their profession reason: this has not include the common language that they speak in among my dad's family members and that is Bahasa Sarawak.
If you consider Bahasa Sarawak to be a distinct language from Bahasa Melayu, almost everyone in my paternal family is then, bilingual. Added to English as the third medium of communication, that makes us multilingual even! Bahasa Sarawak is unique with its own tone, pronunciation and terms to name a few and compared to Bahasa Melayu, I personally find it hard to be involved in my family's conversations whenever they communicate in the former. Often, I reply to my grandmother in Brunei Malay in response to her questions in Bahasa Sarawak and I get laughed at for not able to master my ancestors' heritage! Well I can speak and understand the basic terms and sentences, but to get to the fluency level is yet for me to achieve. People say learning takes time and I am taking my very own sweet time on this one ;)
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Facebook, Twitter and now a blog?
Assalamualaikum and evening all (:
For someone who is not that good in this whole online thing, I should (and can) consider myself as an achiever for reaching this far. Hmm don't get it? I don't either! :p Kidding!
See, I view myself as a girl who is not that good in computer/online thingy and when Facebook first started, I was not as excited as some others! Then one day, I suddenly have my own Facebook account (I was forced to!); then signing up for Twitter (forced too!) and now a blog! (well, if my lecturer is reading this I'm not sure if I should say I'm forc...no, I'd rather say I'm obliged to) (: To say that I am ecstatic having to create and produce a blog is a lie; but I wouldn't mind learning another new thing in life. Life is all about learning, isn't it? So here goes!
The content may bore you, so apologies in advance. But I know there are only a number of you who can relate to the coming posts I will be sharing. And to those I say, one final semester beloveds :')
Toodles!
Love Love Love
Zyra A.
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