In "'Chinese helicopter': Singlish OED entry baffles Singaporeans," Helen Chen (2016) writes that she and many other Singaporeans "have been baffled" by the definition of the new noun Chinese helicopter, which has recently been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), along with other other words of Singaporean origin. Chen reports that whilst the OED thinks it important to recognise the contributions of all the cultures that continue to enrich English, some Singaporeans think it favours English over the other cultural elements that make up modern Singapore.
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My Yes/No question is:
Do you know what a Chinese helicopter is?
My answer is:
Yes, I do now, but I never could have guessed before, unless the context cues told me.
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| OED entry for Chinese helicopter |
I think it's cool that English, unlike French and some other languages, has no official body that pretends to dictate what is correct and incorrect in matters of vocabulary, grammar or style. Shakespeare would have laughed at such silly official presumption had the great Queen Elizabeth, who led England to a golden age, tried to interfere in his use and creative reinvention of English. And I'm pretty sure that the sensible French people largely ignore the august pronouncements of the their Académie française as they eagerly borrow words from English to the great distress of the purists.
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| Screen snip of bogan in the OED |
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| Publication history for bogan, n |
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Reference
Chinese helicopter, n. (2016, March 13). In "Chinese, adj. and n." OED Online. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/31770?redirectedFrom=chinese+helicopter#eid1208819190
[Because the OED requires a subscription for access, I've copied and pasted the relevant part of the entry into this MS Word document.]
This blog makes me think about my own language,Thai, that the new words and vocabularies have been added a lots from the past. Our slang usually comes up depending on the trend. Sometimes they're cool and funny for me, but I also realize that if we change and add up too many slang, does it ruin the language too?
ReplyDeleteGood question Fang. I wonder what your classmates think about it. I'm actually working at the moment, not relaxing with coffee, so I'll share my ideas on your question later.
DeleteI definitely think it would ruin the language though. As you see so many thai teenagers are using slang without knowing how do those words come from and i have seen some teenagers whom didn't know what the old word is so they just use the slang ones and forget about the official words. I think if most people are still keeping on using these slangs, it will definitely ruin our language.
DeleteBut I think changes of the existing words and the addition of new words by a lot of slang might not ruin the original language because they were created by a specific group of people in one period and someday would automatically disappear. And this process of slang happens over and over. The thing that we should be concern about is the overuse of slang that makes people so confused that they forget how to use the original words correctly and properly.
DeleteLanguage is always changeable according to time and users. It is alive and beautiful in itself, albeit being slang.
Of course, unchangeable language is a dead one.
After I had read your interesting question, I suddenly thought about one kind of helicopters in the world and then I searched Chinese helicopter on Google. At that time, I thought it was similar to Thai helicopters. So, I would read your response. I found out that I definitely misunderstand!
ReplyDeleteI believe I will see this word in newspapers, films or magazines soon. Regarding English language, it's great to have chances to make new words every time because making new words enables something relating to English language become interesting. For example, you will have more synonyms and antonyms that let you to be able to write a lot of style of articles or essays.
I think that "Chinese helicopter man" may not be happy with this meaning by OED, It's quite bias. However, There are many words in Thai that given from mispronunciation of foreign language for example, "ราชประแตน" (Rad-cha-pra-tan) was changed from "Rajah's pattern) means one of traditional Thai costumes for male.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't know before read your blog. At first I thought it's a kind of helicopter made by Chinese because so many things "made in China" or "made in RPC" nowadays. Thank you for your interested information!
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ReplyDeleteWow! That is an extremely discrimination of Singaporean's society. I couldn't imagine that kind of thought. Even the country with such high standard education also felt unsatisfied their populations. On the contrary, I think their knowledge about Mandarin is worse than English. Maybe, their milestone is to communicate like native English speaker.
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