In the original Japanese link of the image, like one of the commenters said about the first characters of the writing on the board, “五十せ？” It was supposed to be 幸せ, just really messily written. Looks like teachers are guiltiest of messy handwriting more so than students.
Something interesting in Newark, New Jersey.
I am a big fan of the art nouveau movement. In fact, I have previously done an illustration combining that art style and Pokémon, some of my favourite things.
However, many do not know that art nouveau took a lot of inspiration from Japanese art, especially woodblock prints, ukiyo-e. From Wikipedia:
Two-dimensional Art Nouveau pieces were painted, drawn, and printed in popular forms such as advertisements, posters, labels, magazines, and the like.Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from many parts of the world.
And ukiyo-e’s flatness of dimension highly influenced the Japanese animation industry, and that particular art style is sometimes called “superflat.”
Thus I thought it really interesting when I came across this article of a Japanese ex-host (escort) Takumi Kanehara who gave up his life at the bar pleasing woman and turned to creating pleasing works of art. He produced a series of Art Nouveau Mucha-style pictures of various Studio Ghlibli’s works such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and more. Thus in essence, anime art nouveau. How does one even begin to describe that? A work based on modern Japanese animation using a Western art style inspired by traditional Japanese art.
To find out more of his works, here is Kanehara’s Twitter.
Photo credits to Doug Mills/The New York Times
For those who are confused why the shutdown happened, here is a New York Times graphic showing the spending bill that was bounced back and forth between the Senate and the House, and the lack of resolution on the future budget led to the shutdown.
For those who are curious as to which agencies specifically are affected and how many people will be furloughed, here’s a CNN searchable interactive list of all agencies affected, with numbers of furloughed listed as well.
P.S. When I first saw that NY Times picture (posted above), I thought I saw a picture of a guard precariously balancing on guard rails.
Approximate two hours ago, at midnight, as the U.S. congress was unable to reach a resolution in passing the budget, a shutdown of the government happened, furloughing some 800,000 government workers and shuttering some non-essential agencies and services.
That is repeated ad nauseum; what’s interesting is: how are the two polarised news sources — MSNBC on the left, and Fox News on the right — reporting this brouhaha?
For those not in the know, the Republican-held House in the Congress has been largely blamed for being unwilling to pass the budget without trying to force through language that aims to strip the Affordable Care Act, also popularly known as “Obamacare,” from the bill.
Fox News has reported that lawmakers have “missed the deadline,” emphasising that the shutdown would “limit access to national monuments, parks,” and how the shutdown might impact travellers.
MSNBC, on the other hand, of course, was all “First shutdown in 17 years!” and various iterations of how the shutdown is impending doomsday.
Someone once said to me, “哎呀，你的中文那么不标准！”
That basically meant: Aiya, your Chinese is really substandard!
And that was in response to me telling them my Chinese name. That someone was from Beijing, China, and I am from Singapore. We both speak Chinese, but upon hearing my pronunciation of certain words different from the way they do it, they denounced it as being substandard, for not being the “Beijing standard.”
Thus, they claim linguistic superiority of Chinese over any other regional differences.
It’s not even the way Cockney differs from RP in England, or African American Vernacular differs from General American English — in Wikipedia, the Chinese spoken in Singapore and China are both called “Standard Chinese,” but inevitably there are bound to be phonological differences, that even Wikipedia cannot capture.
A very basic example is the way my name is pronounced.
A character in my name, 俊, is transcribed in pinyin as “jùn”. As many of my friends from China would pronounce it, and the way Wikipedia transcribes it, they say:
/t͡ɕyn/
with a /voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate + high front rounded vowel + alveolar nasal/. There is a very audible “tch” sound at the onset of the word.
In Singapore, that character in my name would be pronounced:
/d͡ʒyn/
with a /voiced palato-alveolar affricate + high front rounded vowel + alveolar nasal/. That means that the initial “j” sound in Singaporean Chinese is similar to the way “judge,” “gee,” and “job” is pronounced in English. There is no “ch” sound audible at the onset of the word.
Another difference would be the character 需, xū, as in “to need.” In China, it would be pronounced:
/ɕy/
with a /voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant + high front rounded vowel/. There is a very audible, thin “sss” sound at the onset of the word.
In Singapore, that character would be pronounced:
/ʃy/
with a /voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant + high front rounded vowel/. It is almost indistinguishable from the way “she” is pronounced in English.
Here is an example of how Standard Chinese sounds are generally pronounced by people from Mainland China:
Note the “j” “q” “x” sounds at the 41 second mark.
Compare with this Singaporean Chinese news clip:
Note at the 23 second mark, the news broadcaster even says a name that has my 俊 “jun” character in it, and the initial “j” is a lot softer than the Chinese from Mainland China. Also, the Chinese spoken by the interviewee immediately is closer to how most Singaporeans speak Chinese — with consonants closer to Taiwanese Chinese than Mainland China Chinese.
Another video clip of Singaporean Chinese, as spoken by kids, with a lot of usage of the “xue” word. Note that they all say /ʃyœ/ (sh-ü-eh).
A very simple reason why there is that difference is in the way we learn Chinese. Those in China learn Chinese via the “bopomofo” method (see video embedded above), where there is an emphasis on preserving the initial sounds (“ji-yu=ju” “xi-yu=xu”). In Singapore, Chinese is taught via the hanyu pinyin system, where its English letters are used as a springboard to understanding the sounds of Chinese. That makes sense in Singapore, given that its bilingual education system begins even in kindergarten, whereas English is only introduced in the Chinese education at a much later age in elementary school.
As such, there are some overlap between the consonants of English and Chinese in Singapore, where “xu” is pronounced “she” and “you” is pronounced “you/yew” (as in English), rather than “yo-uu” (as Mainland Chinese people would).
Furthermore, given that the influence of Chinese dialects such as Hokkien (Southern Min/Min-nan), Teochew, Cantonese, and Hakka, all of which are southern Chinese dialects, you get pronunciations of certain consonants that mimic Taiwanese or Hong Kong Chinese, such as interchanging “chi” “shi” “zhi” with “ci” “si” zi” in casual speech sometimes (that is, people who are not broadcasters or taking exams). An example would be the first video of Singapore Chinese I embedded (about the iPhone 4), where the guy said “zè” instead of “zhè” (这).
Does this make any of the Chinese spoken in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other parts of the world less “standard” than the Beijing standard?
Were that so, then wouldn’t all variants of English but British English, not even American, be the gold standard of English in the world? Languages change and adapt to the locale, and to insist that only one type of the language is proper and the rest substandard is arrogance in its linguistic superiority.
On a whim, I took one of those online colour tests challenging one to see how well one can discriminate colour hues. This is what I got:
However, when I submitted my score, age, and gender to see how well I fared against those in my gender and age group, this is what they reported:
How does one get a score of -332? Does that mean a better-than-perfect colour acuity? Do they perhaps see more hues than human can? Maybe they’re secretly mantis shrimps.
What does it take for a language to become a language? Quite simply: grammar. Any constructed language in fiction has the potential to become functional languages, all it takes is a sound structure that is productive and consistent. It’s not the size of the lexicon but the ability to distill fundamental rules about how things such as plurals, tenses, cases, progressives, etc. can be consistently realised in the language.
Thus being able to speak Quenya or Sindarin, some of the most comprehensive constructed languages out there, shouldn’t be something of a shame. J.R.R. Tolkien has in fact said before, “The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.”
There are criticisms that constructed languages cannot be compared at the same level of languages that exist in real life, and that the ‘evolution’ that languages such as Quenya experiences in the literature isn’t the same as when real-life languages develop regional dialects and accents from contact with other people and isolation from geographical boundaries. Why should that be the case? Just simply because the change is the result of an author’s machinations doesn’t discredit any change ascribed to the constructed language from being any less real, if said constructed languages mimic real-life examples of language evolution.
There are several constructed languages in the world that experience little to no regional change, such as Esperanto or Lojban, but why should they be seen as more legit than Klingon, simply because people have had the opportunity to use them in real life?
So go forth and proudly claim your multilingualism!
When one has only 710 km² of land space (274 sq miles), as Singapore does, trying to fit 6.9 million people by 2030, one is bound to run out of space. Even the most skilled of SimCity players will struggle to find land to fit everyone in. So what is Singapore, with its current 5.4 million population, to do?
They look not to the skies, but underground.
Science fiction and fantasy have long talked of underground cities and subterranean structures, from the mines of Moria in Lord of the Rings to London Below in Neverwhere. Well Singapore is planning on “building underground to create an extensive, interconnected city, with shopping malls, transportation hubs, public spaces, pedestrian links and even cycling lanes,” as reported by the New York Times.
For all of Singapore’s flaws with trying to introduce creativity in its education system, one can’t deny that Singapore is hungry to establish itself as being at the forefront of architectural innovation, and have achieved a fair amount, usually by importing renowned architects from all over the world.
For more of Singapore’s impressive architecture, click here!
Come with me, and you’ll be
in a world of pure imagination.
Take a look, and you’ll see
into your imagination.
Hope I may, cross my heart,
to fulfil my wildest expectations.
But I seem, yet to be,
only failing expectations.
Everyone has left me far behind
All I have are words to keep
“Anything you want to, do it.
There’s nothing to it.”
There is no life I know
to compare with pure imagination.
Living there, you’ll be free
if you truly wish to be.
The Hexacoto 