Why did the chicken cross the road? and other linguistic challenges

Why did the chicken cross the road is a classic joke, but we recently found out that it's very much an English-speaking-culture joke. We had dinner last week with two colleagues, one Australian and one German. After dinner we served our Australian guest tea in a mug that had a version of the chicken-road joke. It was a "Far Side" comic. She loved it, but confusion took over as we tried to explain to our German guest the meaning of the joke. She's fluent in English, but didn't understand why that version (or the original) made us smile. (The joke turns out to have quite a history, check it out here.) Humour is so much more about culture than it is about language.

We continued talking about humour and I brought up the example of Mr Bean. I'd thought he was pretty clever with his non-verbal humour that seems to be appreciated across cultures, but our friend tells us that in Germany, Mr Bean is seen as "British humour"!

Most of our colleagues and friends are not Australia, many are not native English speakers either. Sometimes people in Australia notice that our English isn't quite as Australian as it used to be and it's because we've spent nearly 24 years living and working outside of Australia in multicultural environments. It means some of our word choices are different, for example, I tend to say "bathroom" more often than "toilet" these days, simply because it's less likely to cause confusion or offence. I used "rush hour" just this morning and found out that "peak hour" is more often used in Australia. Probably "gas station" comes out more often than "petrol station". I tend not to use colloquial words like "arvo" or "footy" and geographically-tied words like "ute" (pickup truck) and "regional" (yes, this word is used differently in Australia to other parts of the world). Our accent has become more "international" and we probably don't lengthen our vowels as much as many Aussies do.

My work as an editor and writer means that words are on my mind a lot. Almost all I write is for an international audience. Both my jobs are with international teams who speak different kinds of English, or have English as their second, or third language. Linguistic challenges are often on the table for discussion, hence my apparently well-known "Wednesday Words" Facebook statuses. The other day I tried to set up an online meeting with a British colleague and American colleague. Communication went a little bit awry with what I suspect was a hastily written email by our British colleague that confused my American colleague. Each of us had a slightly different understanding of what had been written. No big deal, as far as I know. But it could easily have been.

Working in an environment like this can make you think more carefully about the words you use and how you say them. A good communicator thinks more about their audience than they might have in their own country. For example, if I'm talking to an American, I would tend to say "ketchup" not "tomato sauce" or "candy" not "lolly". If I'm talking to a friend who speaks English as their third language I might choose simpler words and sentences than I would when speaking to my Australian or British colleagues, not because my friend is unintelligent, but as a way of respecting them by speaking in a way they understand.

It might be a surprise to you, but the differences between our English go way beyond spelling, word usage is a big difference, and not simple biscuit vs cookie vs scone. Will I stand at the back of the room, or in back? Is it good or bad news if I hear "you lucked out"? Is the chicken walking in the road or on the road? But I think it's time I hopped on my bike and rode on the road to the grocery store.

Share my world #3

Camping and photography combined last summer!
Taken at sunrise at Lake Biwa.

I slipped off the wagon with this one. It's been a month since I last responded to the prompt. Here are this week's questions and answers:

What do you do when you’re not working?

I could write an essay on this, but my simple answer is: Read, watch DVD episodes, play word or card or other simple games on my phone, crafting, coffee with friends, riding my bike, photography, camping.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

I don't play the lottery, but if someone gave me a significant amount of money above and beyond what we needed, I might buy my first house or apartment in Australia. I'd probably also use some to support other missionaries.

What makes you laugh the most?

Yikes, that's hard. Possibly irony?

What is your biggest pet peeve with modern technology?

That I don't understand it well enough to fearlessly fix it myself when things go wrong with something like email that I use on a daily basis for my work.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I'm grateful that the regular school year has finished for everyone now. 
I'm doing something unusual on Sunday, taking a couple of friends to visit a church plant run by OMF colleagues in Yokohama.

This prompt comes from Cee's Photography blog. 

Altered forever

I'm the mum of three boys. It's altered my humour forever! 

Not long after we took off for our camping trip on Monday I saw this and got excited. "Toilet Car"! Seriously?

Moving forward into more retreating

In an hour or so the second half of my week away begins. It is the Women in Ministry retreat that I usually go to in March. This is my sixth time and I'm really looking forward to

it. (This was my blog post about last year's.) It brings together women from all sorts of backgrounds, countries, mission agencies, and ministries. The variety is refreshing, stimulating, and enjoyable.

As it's in the same venue where I've been running the Writer's Workshop/Retreat I hope that I'll be able to transition into it fairly easily. I'm looking forward to seeing some friends I haven't seen in a while and catching up more deeply with others I see occasionally.

Last year we had a speaker who told some very funny stories. I has some great laughter-therapy! I've already had some this time around too: at lunch today we had some fun going at our table. One of the great things about these retreats is the internationalism. I love the humour of my Scottish friend, Hazel, let's just say it's closer to Australian humour than some other countries.

I think, however, that I've done enough writing now. Aside from writing this blog post I've put together enough stories (nine) to talk for about 20 minutes. That's longer than most places will allow us to speak for, so I'm probably safe. I'm certainly feeling satisfied. That's a lot more than I anticipated being able to get done! Time to have a little bit of a lie-down before the Women's Retreat fun begins.

Humour Differences Aren't Often Funny

I was out all day the other day, mingling with a bunch of Christian women, many Americans, some Japanese, and some from other nations like Finland, Scotland, Canada, Germany etc.

Humour is often challenging in an international environment like this. It isn't just that not
everyone speaks English as their first language, but that our senses of humour are culturally defined.

For example, several years ago I made a casual comment to an American teacher who was leaving Japan and would therefore miss teaching my child the next year, that she "was lucky to miss him". She was highly offended and proceeded to tell me so: that she was indeed competent to handle challenging children and that she was shocked that I should be of such a low opinion of my son. I suspect an Australian would have just laughed. Her reaction was a big surprise to me!

I do find I'm drawn to some non-Aussies more than others because their humour matches mine better than others. I guess that's personality too, but someone suggested today that American-New England humour is closer to the British-type humour that we Australians enjoy. And that the ribbing they give each other is sometimes misunderstood by other Americans. Interesting.

In any case, I did a little internet research about Australia, British, and American humour (not indepth, mind you, I'm no expert!)

I found this link by the Australian Government, intended, presumably to inform/warn visitors about Australians.

In general, Australian humour is closer to British humour than American humour. If you're interested in the different between British and American humour, here are a couple of Youtube videos.

In the first video (4:19 long), the main point the speaker makes is that British comedians tend to be failures and flawed (self-deprecating humour) and make that a big point, but American comedians tend to be heroes. Australians major on self-deprecating humour too.

(Warning: there is a little bad or crude language in both videos).

The next one is a bit long (7:14) and amateurish and is by a New Yorker (which, I now know because I just looked it up, is not a New England state, but is close to there). He does give some good examples of British humour and explanations of some of the differences and how British humour is perceived in the US.

One of the things we love about hanging out with other Australian and UK expats is the humour that we can indulge in.

Gales of laughter

I've been reading funny stories to the boys out of a book written nearly 40 years ago. The book's called "Japan: It's not all raw fish" by Don Maloney, an American businessman who has quite a flair for writing humour. The book is a compilation of a weekly column that he Japan Times, an English-language newspaper.
wrote for

Though his stories of Japan are a bit dated, there is enough in them for us to really enjoy them.

We're still laughing over the story about eating on the Shinkansen (bullet train). One time he was offered for lunch, "among other things — a 'mixed sandwich' (that means 90% bread, 1 % ham, 9% cucumber". Then one time he went for breakfast just after the "breakfast" in the dining car closed at 8.30 and was offered "Beef Stew, Curry Rice, or Mixed Pizza. "I almost decided on the Mixed Pizza — 8.30 or not — but then remembered that, in Japan, 'Mixed' is a translation of 'cucumber'..."

Every now and then someone will mentioned "mixed" and much laughter will ensue.

The most recent story I read produced wails of laugher at one point also. But first I need to explain a little. The author couldn't understand why taxi drivers didn't respond to his clear instructions in Japanese. Then one day his secretary witnessed an interaction in a taxi and gave him this advice,

"Please understand, your Japanese is fine. It's just that taxi drivers – and many other Japanese, too — make up their minds when they see you that you speak a foreign language, not Japanese. So, even when you speak Japanese, they're all tuned to hear a foreign language and that's what it sounds like. Try warming them up first," she advised, "with an "Ano ne," or with a "Sumimasen" (Japanese attention getters) repeated a couple of times. That will tune them back to Japanese and you'll be okay."

We've experienced this phenomenon ourselves. The most memorable being when I was pregnant with our second son and attending a large university hospital for a pre-natal checkup. For some reason I had to go to the in-hospital pharmacy to have a script filled. The pharmacy had a little hole-in-the-wall for outpatients, so we fronted up there. This tiny young came to the counter to serve us. We started to talk in Japanese to her and she fled. She just ran away leaving us wondering what we'd done. She went to get someone else braver, someone she thought would manage these scary foreigners better!

Back to the story in the book, the author tried his secretary's advice one night and this is what happened:

"We were rolling along at the usual 80 km/h, and about five or six blocks from the traffic light [where we needed to turn] I leaned forward an gave him my opening 'Ano ne'. Completely shocked, he hit the brake with both feet. As the tires squealed like a mailman's bicycle, I went over the back of the front seat and was standing on my head next to the driver."

At this point in the story, it took a long time for everyone to regain composure and quieten down enough for me to finish the story, relaying the satisfying news that the taxi driver did indeed follow the author's instructions, to the letter, after this.

No doubt there are many other foreigners out there with their stories. We've heard stories of experience foreign looking missionaries who were accompanying fresh Asian-looking recruits and have had conversations with a Japanese person looking only at the Asian-appearing person. Yes, how you look is important!

P.S. It isn't a book I'd give to the boys to read because there is language that dishonours God in it, plus there are numerous references to things that they simply wouldn't understand. I do my best to edit those out as I read. Even so, we often struggle to get through a story without repeated interruptions from our youngest asking for clarification.

Happy times

There are a heap of things I could write about today and life in general at present. It's been a happy day. In fact things are generally going along pretty well for our household at the moment and I'm savouring it.

Everyone at the dinner table tonight could think of at least one thing to "celebrate". I'd love to tell you about some of them, but I've clearly run out of time today to write anything much, or anything that makes a lot of sense. So I'll cheat and quote someone else.

We're having so much fun reading a series of books after dinner that is very close to my heart. The Billabong series by Mary Grant Bruce. Back a while I blogged this:

But back to what my eldest is reading now. He's picked up the Billabong Series by Mary Grant Bruce (written between 1910 and 1942). It is a series that was given to me by my grandparents during my tween and teenager years (usually one for my birthday and one for Christmas). I brought all 15 books with me to Japan. They probably hold the status of being the books I've read the most number of times. Every time I received a new one, I'd re-read all the books I'd previously received. It is good writing. I re-read it again last year before we went back to Australia. It had me in tears a number of times! 

I don't think it means too much to my son that he is reading books that his great-grandparents gave to me, but it does to me. Add to that how precious these books are to me and how Australian they are, and I am stoked (translation - elated).

Well, my son didn't get through the whole series back then, so I've decided to read them myself to everyone. Being about 100 years old, there is vocabulary in them that the boys have never heard of, and plenty of other things that need explanation too. However, there is plenty of action, drama, and humour to keep us all entertained.

The understated Aussie humour is hilarious, especially in the repartee between characters. But the author also has fabulous phrases every now and then. For example, this phrase that tickled our 13 y.o. so much, he went to school and quoted it to his English teacher:

(The story is set on a property in rural Victoria and they have a city-cousin visiting them, who lost his seat on the horse while mustering cattle.)

"When the rescuing party extricated Cecil from his involuntary botanical researches he was a sorry sight."

And here's a conversation between three teenagers, commenting on how much two of them have grown:

 "Ill weeds grow apace," quoted the latter gentleman (Wally) solemnly. "Jim's a splendid example of that proverb. 

"M'f!" said Norah, "How about yourself?"

"I'm coming up as a flower!" Wally replied modestly.

"A Christmas lily, I should think!"—whereat Jim murmured something that sounded "More like an artichoke!" 

Both of these sections had boys practically rolling on the floor laughing.

I love it! It is something special to have books that I treasure, be enjoyed by my kids. And in reading them aloud for the first time, I'm gaining a fresh enjoyment of them too.

Rolf Harris Part 2

Can you tell what it is yet?

I mentioned back here that I was enjoying an autobiography by Rolf Harris. The background to acquiring the book started back in January last year in a conversation in the CAJ library about Australian biographies. I blogged about it here. The essence of it was that post was that in the CAJ library, almost all the biographies are of Americans. So, when we were back in Australia earlier this year I made it a point to find some second-hand Australian biographies to buy and bring back. No idea if the library will accept them, but this is the first one.

Rolf Harris is a long-time artist and entertainer in Australia and Britain. He does, in fact, live in Britain. But his identity is very firmly Aussie. 

I found his autobiography very honest. It didn't gloss over his shortcomings. The best biographies are like this, I think. It is always fascinating to read how someone famous struggled in their early years. And what they were like "before" fame. If they're presented as rather ordinary it helps me to feel I can relate to them so much more. And even more so if they allow you to see their struggles, especially once they "make it".

Rolf is someone who doesn't fit into any neat category in the entertainment world. He's done a lot of different things. He says he's not fantastic at any of them, but has somehow managed to combine them to make a career.

I think the thing he does best is connecting with his audience. He comes across, on TV or on stage, as someone who enjoys entertaining people and being "with" you.

Probably the best thing I can say about the book is that my teenager has read it and enjoyed it. In fact he got to it before I did. He loves to read, but he'll not just read anything! This is a great read.

Monday Muppets

A friend of mine used to do the occasional Monday Muppets post. Seeing as I'm exhausted (read the Rolf Harris book for too long last night), and I also told the Grade Twos today that I write on my blog daily, I'm going to take the easy route and post a Muppet video, the Muppets and Victor Borge.

I really enjoy Victor Borge, I think I discovered him about the same time as I discovered Mr Bean and in the same place: during my uni years when I used to have lunch at my minister's house after church. For me, though, he shares a similar feature with Mr Bean, I tire of him fairly quickly. However in small doses they are both very entertaining.

Laughter therapy

It's been a rather emotional day for me, but not something that I can share here. So, to cheer me up, and who knows, someone out there might need cheering up too, I post a fun Swedish Chef video.

"There's an Australia Bush"

Jamie Jo wrote a fun post recently about the kids of a missionary on furlough.


It reminds me of when we were on Home Assignment last and our 4 y.o. son was known as "the boy from Japan" in his class. We got some strange looks from parents who wondered what "boy from Japan" has blue eyes and blond hair. After six months we finally ended up at a birthday party and had some revealing conversations with some parents. They'd thought their kids were "telling some big ones" and were embarrassed to ask the real truth. Once they understood that we'd been living in Japan but were truly Australians, they were much relieved and we had some laughs. Then we realised why people had seemed unfriendly, they just didn't know what to ask us!


I also remember when we were home for holidays five years ago and we announced that we were going to show the boys some "Australian bush". Our plan was to go out to a local national park and do a little bit of hiking. After that our middle son, who was about five at the time kept pointing out "bushes" saying: "There's an Australia bush."


There truly are some fun times with missionary kids and their perception of life!

Funny haircuts

We had haircuts for two boys this evening. The tradition has become to watch Youtube videos while Dad cuts hair (with a razor). Having recently introduced them to Mr Bean, we showed them these videos tonight and they nearly wet themselves (again). 

*It is one story, broken up into four videos.

 

 

Cheap haircuts anyone?

This is a slightly tongue-in-cheek ad for cheap hair cuts at a hairdressing school in Salt Lake City. Have a look and decide whether you'd let them cut your hair.

And take a look at the behind-the-scenes video too. This is what convinced me that they weren't totally serious.

Thanks to Rachel for blogging these videos.

Identifying with Margaret Houlihan

We've been watching M*ASH recently. It provides a much needed comic relief some evenings and a good excuse to sit down and do nothing for a bit. My apologies if you've never seen it, I'll assume today that you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, then I do recommend that you get your hands on an episode and try it out, it is timeless.

The other night we watched an interesting episode where the 4077 did an exchange with another unit. Hawkeye and a nurse switched places for a few days with another doctor and nurse. The nurse turned out to be Lorraine, a good childhood friend of Margaret Houlihan. It is a bit shocking when first Margaret "loves" Lorraine, then turns on her and "hates" her. Lorraine confronts Margaret, asking why she's changed from the fun-loving girl she knew. Margaret finally confesses her dilemma. That she is head nurse and has forced herself to be professional and in control in order to fulfil the responsibilities on her shoulders. She says she's forgotten how to be anything else and has no friends in camp. 

I understand how Margaret felt. How hard it is to change from being responsible to having fun. I find it hard as a mum to do this. Our boys get out of control too easily when the responsible ones (i.e. parents) join in the fun. It can really drain the joy out of you.

On another realm I understand the challenge to figure out what it is to be a 'professional'. The other day I was chatting with a friend/colleague about my recent OT volunteer work. I expressed a little surprise at the positive responses to my assessment reports on children I've seen. My colleague, said, "But of course, they are the opinion of a professional."

Sometimes is it hard to view myself as a professional. I guess that comes partly from being out of the profession for so long. I remember feeling like this as a student. Like I had to put on a different 'persona' to go to work. I think that feeling faded as I got used to it, but it is back, just a little.
I love it that this comedy has such a depth to it that I can identify with some of the struggles of the characters.

Grin from South Africa

I thought you'd all enjoy this. Some time ago a friend of mine in South Africa sent me this email that her son received. (Genuine!) Dear Mr Corder We wish to inform you that the staff of the South African Post Office are currently on strike. This unfortunately translates into a delay in you receiving your September issue of XXX. Please accept our apologies for any incontinence this may cause. Regards, Cheryl XXX Magazine Subscriptions Thought you could all do with a cheer up! And to think someone's paid to turn out official documents like this!