Imma let you finish

When we came across the "imma" construction, the first thing i thought of was Kanye West's rude barbs. His hijacking of Taylor Swift's acceptance/thank-you speech made the entertainment section headlines, worldwide.

For those who wanna watch the clip, here you go:

Enough dweebs and couch potatoes have commented enough on this incident. A mere cursory search on youtube throws up enough inane videos that comment on the topic. So we aren't going that route.

It's more the "imma" construction that is interesting.

Evidently, it's highly associated with AAVE (African American Vernacular English) usage that is common among the ghetto set in the US. In other words, this is rap-speak. While not using it myself, I think that like many others out there, it is fun and funny to slip into such referencing of the blacks' rap register once in a while.

The usage of "yo", "yo dawg", and even "in da house" is all rap-speak or raplish.

I was just thinking that since language itself is a living entity, it evolves through the continual and communal creative input of users. In this case, "imma" is a contraction of "I'm gonna", which itself is a contraction of "I am going to". I guess it's a case of being more and more economical. In short, we humans are lazy, and contractions serve such useful functions in getting the intended meaning across with less effort on our part. And hey, if it catches on with the trendsetters, it's gonna catch on with the plebian masses as well.

So, considering how the spread of popular culture and the influence of the media is like, it's no surprise that the younger set might lapse into such a usage in the future. But please, let's retain the lapse into courtesy and politeness.

Yo, know what? Imma end here for now.

Always keep trash with you

When I was in Beijing, a number of signs tickled me to no end.

I had a field day taking snapshots of the humorous signposts.

Now that this blog is officially up, I thought I might share one here that was considerably funny. I saw this in one of Beijing's Summer Palace:

At first glance, this was funny and I think it's pretty obvious to us why it is so.

However, being trained to be a linguist with an eye for detail and mind for questions, the natural question came to me:

"Why is it that the Chinese Chinese would end up with such sentence constructions when it is totally off the mark and results in another reading altogether?"

Admittedly, the translators must have made an approximation of an equivalent translation on a word-for-word basis. It seems like all that is missing from that sign is an adjective, probably along the lines of "carelessly" or "haphazardly" (given their penchant for outrageous translations). If that was added on, the sign would read perfectly well, and it would go to show that the Chinese (or those who translated the sign) had succeeded in stating an accurate prohibitory instruction.

Probably we don't use that many words for simple imperatives. I thought of our own signs and they frequently come in the manner of "Do Not Litter" or "No Littering". However, we can't deny that it is possible that some of the more verbose ones among us Singaporeans may well say things like "Ehh, please don't anyhow throw your rubbish anywhere hor!" (Equivalent to "Please don't carelessly throw your rubbish away")

I like the Chinese... ... street signs. They tickle me. Haha.