英語用字

每個英文詞彙都有符號象徵(denotation)和隱含意義(connotation). 隱含意義可以帶出不同感覺,態度,意見. 例如 soldier/warrior, 或者insect/bug, 或者 illness/disease/ailment/condition, 又或者fat/obese/plump/portly/stout/substantial.

文字可以反映使用者的身分,性別,社會地位,種族或者環境場合. 以前英語來源可以反映使用者的身分背景, 因為英文來源可以是拉丁語, 法國語等. 而在不同時代, 所用字彙代表著使用者的社會地位. 例如名詞 fire/flame/conflagration, 或者 fear/terror/trepidation 又或者動詞 rise/mount/ascent. 基本上從字彙可以猜出使用者是來自上流社會或草根階層.

在現代社會, 當運用英語時, 在不同場合, 能恰當地挑選出適當的字去表達自己, 我認為是英語高手的其中一個標記.

Reference: Laurel J. Briton. The Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2000.

English Grammar

On Wednesday 15th October Hong Kong's chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen delivered his policy address. During that policy address, he took a few seconds to comment on the sentence " Bow Tie Keep Your Election Promise", suggesting that one 's' should be added to the end of the word 'Keep'. According to my understanding, in this is sentence, the verb form is called 'imperative' in grammar. There are two types of 'imperatives'. Affirmative imperatives have the same form as the infinitive without to, while negative imperatives use do not plus infinitive. One example of imperative sentence is 'Enjoy your holiday', or 'Have some more tea'. The imperative sentence does not necessarily have a subject, but we can add one to it for the sake of clarity. For example 'Mary come here.', or 'Bow Tie come here.', or 'Bow Tie shut up.', or 'Bow Tie Keep Your Election Promise.' All these sentences are perfectly correct grammatically.

Reference
Michael Swan. Practical English Usage. Oxford University Press, 2002.

法隆寺

For the purpose of learning Japanese, in the next four months, I shall do some close reading on about eleven articles. One of them is about a temple in Japan. Details of this article are as follows:

法隆寺 (607) は 聖德太子（５７４－６２２）の鎮魂の寺である。奈良時代（７１０－７９４）の政権者は、度重なる火災疫病は太子の怒りであると考えていた。何故そう考えたかというと、太子一族から政権を奪い取った穌我氏は陰謀策略を重ねて、太子の血縁者をことごとく抹殺していったからだ。そのためになくなった聖德太子の怒りがさまざまな災い起こしていると考え、それ以上太子の怒りを招かないよう、この寺であらゆる手をつくして、彼の鎮魂に努めたのである。救世観音像は法隆寺が再建されたその１００年後（７３９年）に藤原氏によって建てられた。通称「夢殿」と呼ばれる東院に安置されている。以後１０００年白い布にかぶさりたこの像は秘仏としての目触れることはなかった。１８８４年、岡倉天心とフェノロサ（Ernest Fenollosa）は法隆寺夢殿を調査した。彼らは。古都の文化財を調査、保護するための政府のエージェントだった らしい。夢殿の救世観音像は数世紀もの間秘められており、だれもみたことがなかった。鎌倉初期の法隆寺の学僧でさえ、「だれもみたことがない。仏像のかたちはわからない。」と記錄している。実際、天心とフェノロサは５００ｍもの白い布をほどいてようやく８世紀以前では最良のコンデションにある木彫佛をみいだした。そのとき、法隆寺の僧侶たち逃げたしたという。1

Note:
1. Copied from Reading Selection. Japanese Language Program: Department of Asian Studies, UBC, 2009.

清少納言

Yesterday I continued learning about the many things that Sei Shonagon 清少納言 (966 - 1017) hated. One of them was the manner displayed by the Japanese men in a drinking party. They shouted while drinking, they poke fingers into their mouths. Those who had beards, stroked them with hands. They kept on asking others to drink. When they were drunk, they still asked one and other to continue. They trembled their bodies, shook their heads, wore funny faces, and together they sang some childish songs. They were supposed to be well-bred people yet they had such bad manners. Sei Shonagon felt it resentful when she saw the scene. Another thing that she hated was while one was in bed thinking of sleeping, a small mosquito appeared. It showed its presence by flying near one's face. It was so close that one's body could feel the wind generated by the flapping wings. It was extremely hateful, according to Sei Shonagon. Both stories give us a glimpse of the daily life of some Japanese one thousand years ago.

枕草子

Yesterday my teacher talked about the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (枕草子) written by a Japanese lady 清少納言 one thousand years ago. In Louis Frideric's Japan Encyclopedia, the entry on her is : 'Writer (Kiyohara Akiko, b. ca 965), lady-in-waiting to Empress Fujiwara no Sadako (977-1000?) . . . [She] is the author of the unforgettable Makura no soshi (The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon) . . . Her "pillow book" inaugurated a new literary form called zuihitsu; in it, she used remarkably pure language to give innumerable details on life in the Heian court, court customs, and events that took place while she was in the empress's service. She became a Buddhist nun when Fujiwara no Sadako died.'

枕草子 has many sections, the section taught yesterday was called "The Hateful Things" (にくきもの）. In a single sentence or in one paragraph, it records different things that Sei Shonagon herself finds hateful. One thing under this category is when shamans pray in such a low voice that it becomes drowsy. This paragraph shows us one kind of treatment that a Japanese might expect to receive when he fell sick, and shows that exorcising was a common practice in those days, before the Japanese are known internationally for their brand name products such as Toyota cars and Sony home electronics.

井原西鶴(二)

This week my Japanese language teacher finished talking about "Koban wa nesugata no yume" "小判は寢姿の夢". This short story comes from Ihara Saikaku's (1642-1693) last major prose work, "Seken munezan'yo" (1692). The twenty short stories collected in this book revolve largely around the life of lower-class city dwellers in the Kyoto and Osaka region on the last day of the year, a time when the year's debts had to be settled. "小判は寢姿の夢" talks about how a poor family settles its debts. Its solution is for the wife to leave behind her new born baby and to work as a wet-nurse for a rich family, knowing that her own baby would probably die of starvation without mother's milk. This story comes to an end when the husband finally decides to bring back his wife so that the family can stay together to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, putting aside their financial worries for the moment.

井原西鶴(一)

昨晨的一場大雪, 令到市面交通一遍混亂, 而我亦遲了十分鐘向日文老師報到. 她要講解的是井原西鶴的一篇散文, 題目是 "小判は寢姿の夢". 她曾說不少人認為西鶴是日本的莎士比亞. 於是我在參考書中找他的一些背景. 節錄如下:

Saikaku Ihara: Writer and haikai poet [1642-93], born in Osaka. . . It is said that he [once]composed 23,500 ku in 24 hours . . . He then began to write tales and novels in ukyo-zoshi style on the daily life, characters, and morals of his time. . . Ihara Saikaku's body of work is extraordinarily fecund, and is usually divided into three periods. [參考來源 : Louis Frederic, translated by Kathe Roth Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002]


真希望能夠快些瞭解一般日本人在十七世紀的生活情況.