Hey! :)

A few of us went to Fong Seng for prata after class last week, and there I found that I didn't understand the menu, and had no clue as to what most of the items were referring to. I suppose, being Singaporean, it is expected that we know the coffeeshop lingo, where kopi-C means a certain thing, and kopi-siu tai, means something else. But truth be told, I'm quite clueless about the names. Hence, when I look at the menu, I don't know what to order? Who knows if something I order turns out to be something utterly disgusting, or something I hate? That said, I have to emphathize with foreigners who travel overseas and do not know what the names on the menu refer to. Every country would have it's own cultures, that its people understand, based on the primings we have already received, which cause us to associate things with each other. This therefore explains the ability of most to decode the mystery of the kopi and teh coffeeshop varieties, which are indeed, more numerous than I ever knew. One item in particular caught my eye, and I wondered what Castello was. Turns out that it is a mixture of coffee, milo and tea. How the word came about I would never know, because the '-as-' in the word seems incongruous with any of the words coffee, tea, and milo. Well, it was great fun trying to decipher the menu, but it might too, be a source of great frustration for someone who just generally wants something drinkable, or who is exceptionally fussy as to what he/she expects in the drink.

The Aforementioned Prata shop menu:


This series of pictures I took at various times: First of all, there's the 'Hand-Wash' sign from Shell stations, to mean manual carwash, which I have discussed in an earlier post. Next, there is the 'Thaksin Beef Noode' sign, which probably means that the Beef Noodles are of the best quality, as Thaksin is a man who was held in great respect (I don't know whether this still holds after the scandal last year). But what I mean to bring across is that certain words bring certain connotations that the viewer will only know if he/she has actually been immersed in the unfamiliar cultures, and to those who do not know about the cultures, who have received no primings with regard to the cultures, will find the choice of words quite meaningless. Therefore, the primings of a person play a crucial role in the interpretation of our surrounding world. Another thing about the signboard that caught my attention, was the slogan: your lunch is our business. In this case, business could be taken to mean two things, i) The stall cares about how much you eat, how you are that day, etc, or ii) The stall couldn't care less about what you (as the viewer) chooses to eat, etc, just so long as it allows us to earn money out of you. :)

I then saw the sign for 'work pass services center', which may not sound odd at first, but in truth, the word 'work pass' is a term that only exists in Singapore, and I was unable to find it used in other countries, where 'work permit' was used instead.

Another thing that caught my attention was the sign for Public Car Park. I find it hard to assign a category to the word park in this example, and I do not know whether, were I to draw a syntax tree, the words car and park should be on the lowest node together, or the words public and car. Both ways would work, and both make sense semantically. However, I wonder which is the accurate one? Is it that one should park in a park for public cars? or that one should park in the car park meant for the public's use. If I were an alien dropping in on Earth for the first time, I would be unable to tell the difference. Moreover, the parking for motorcycles and for motor cars were not given the same proper nouns. As such, one might become confused as to which is the more accurate version. 'Motorcycle parking' is very much more concrete and less ambiguous as compared to 'Public Car Park'.

This poster caught my eye, and I wondered at the connection, if any, between the Chinese title of the show and English translation of the title. Where did the word 'prosperity' come from? It seems out of place to me, and this happens so often, where we read translations, and have no clue as to how different the translation is from the original, how much we are missing by simply viewing the translated versions.

Here are some road signs in Singapore, which may or may not be used in other parts of the world. However, the fact that we understand all of them, shows how important priming is, as it allows us to build up an information bank in our minds about situations, which we can then call upon in times of need. However, as mentioned, these primings may not exist for people from different cultures, who will take some time to develop these primings too, and thereby fit better into the fabric of the society. One sign in particular, that I wasn't able to get a picture of, said 'Camera Zone Ahead', which I'm sure most people have seen on the Singapore highways. However, without priming, would such a sign seem a little nonsensical and meaningless?

Finally, below are some photos I took of signs, objects and whatnot, and I would like to invite you guys to participate, through the identification of what these objects could possibly be, where the photos could possibly have been taken. In identification, please be as specific as possible about the object. Through this experiment, I hope to show the importance of priming, or lack thereof in the identification of familiar things.