Au marché (o mar shay)

Next stops - SACC Mall, Shah Alam and Amcorp Mall, Petaling Jaya. Malaysians’ love affairs with things French is nothing new. We name all kinds of businesses, places and food with French accent, typically indiscriminate (but there are some good ones too) use of de, d’, le, la, l’, names of places in France, and also French words. If it sounds French, it sounds good, chic, fashionable. So we have, among many others, de quartz selling watches, de gem selling jewelleries, d’village restaurant, de Paris bridal wear, de France slimming, le shop convenience store, le Paris optician, la Kiara apartments, Rendezvous club, déjà vu bar, and a wide range of cafés and boutiques. So it is only natural for the promoters of retail spaces at SACC and Amcorp to name the places they are promoting Bon Street and Le Marche Le Village (Marche without accent aigu - Marché) respectively. They sound good, don’t they, if you are not concerned with the correct syntaxic, semantic and cultural use of the terms. But who would care so much about the syntaxic mode of le bon goût à la française when the vast majority of the population are at the prototaxic or parataxic levels of la langue française. If it sells, why fix it?

It's legal, no?

Oh no, not again, what's it now, you might say. Is this bordering on obscenity. I'd say, look again, very closely. It's perfectly legal, and it is called a retail display. They are... well, mannequins - models or dummies (mannequin is spelled exactly the same in French and in English, but pronounced differently of course, means model in French and dummy in English - an issue of lexical homonomy here?). Do you think that looking at them is a shameful thing to do? Back to the syntaxic experience, self-system and value-system. If you happen to be a nudist, which means that you believe in nudity and that it is OK to appear nude in public, you may think or feel that having your clothes on at a nudist function is a shameful thing to do. Got the picture (if you are a visual person or can visualise) or the idea (if you are not quite a visual person)? You should now have a fairly good idea of what "syntaxic-semantic adventures" is about. You have seen below that words in different languages or different dialects of the same language can have the same meaning, same words in the same language can have different meanings or mental images, same words in the same language can be interpreted or comprehended differently according to the self, value and cultural systems or the contexts of discussion, and that what you are thinking or imagining may not be exactly the same thing as what the other guy or gal is thinking or imagining eventhough both of you are referring exactly to the same thing in words. Phew. We are now ready to embark on a journey. Fasten the seat belts and bon voyage!

The artsy test

If you are a-OK with the puss* test below, you can now proceed with this artsy test. But wait a minute, is this art? Try the test. Art is a creative expression of beauty, implies a certain degree of aesthetics and is made with the intention of stimulating the human senses which include the mind and the spirit. The quality of an artwork is judged by the degree of appreciation - the amount of stimulation and the impact it brings about. Again, the meaning of something like an artwork, and I propose that these paintings indeed qualify as an artwork, is in the mind of the beholder (and the artist, I wouldn't call an artist a creator as an artist normally simply repackages or represents something created by someone else, whatever you wish to call the creator or the incidental evolutor). You may intepret this artwork according to whatever your syntaxic experience has taught you and how your self-system has developed. You may even argue that this is not actually an artwork, and that it is just a syntaxic-semantic manipulation. But I think the answer lies in your answer to the puss* test below.

The puss* test

(Pic courtesy of Carl Marx) A rather interesting visual representation. The meaning is in the mind of the beholder (and of the artist as well). If you are game, get hold of an English-literate male subject and do this test. Ask him to share what is the first thing that crosses his mind when you mention the word puss* (for the less initiated, * = y). Now, if you think that puss* is a highly misused word, you can try other words like chick, escort, model, screw, and the like. Mind trick? No. Brainy, language-literate homo sapiens grow up in different modes of experience and attach different syntaxic meanings to spoken words according to the development of their self-system - the unique individual "me". And along the way, there is a constant collision between, among others, the 2 potent motivational forces of intimacy and lust. Remember the adolescent years? Things of course are a lot more complicated these days as the boy meets girl stuff is no longer the standard model (you also have to deal with boy-boy and girl-girl thingy). Anyhow, the answer you get from the test may give an indication of the motivational system of your subject or friend.

Wak Long & Pak Dogol in Paris

(Shadow play, pic courtesy of All Malaysia). We acquire and keep words, names and meanings as we go through life. The term "wayang kulit", made up of usually unconnected words may not mean much to those who have not seen Wak Long and Pak Dogol in action. It's amazing, names like Wak Long and Pak Dogol can be retained and recalled with ease. Although we are used to names such as Ali, Abu and Ahmad, we can also retain a long list of alien words such as chateaubriand steak, chicken cordon bleu casserole, haathi mere saathi, kuch kuch hota hai, Al Pacino, Luciano Pavrotti, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Schumacher, Bayern Munich, Ronaldinho, Maria Sharapova, Mary Poppins and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So we sent Wak Long and Pak Dogol to Paris by kapa trebe to give the French a different flavour of les guignols and puppet shows, and to see if they can remember the names of the 2 clowning court jesters.

Kapa trebe blepah

At a quick glance, one can be forgiven for thinking that this might be a signage in foreign language from an airport perhaps somewhere in Africa. Look again carefully. I am amused by this Kelantan airport signage from an interesting story in The Star newspaper today (which also shows a nice picture of actress Maya Karin in tudung, yes, that's right, on a Celcom billboard - only in Kelantan. She appears differently, as one would normally observe, on similar billboards elsewhere).

And a rough guide to semantics: Check-in = Perekso dale; departures = kapa trebe belepah; information = nok tanyo gapo?; viewing gallery = slamak jale. The words are perfectly clear and understood by Kelantanese but the phonetics can be quite a challenge to those without a valid paspok to Klate.