Random Story Time

So I was chatting with my good friend Mitchell Irons about the topic of identity, wherein he asked me, "how do you introduce yourself?" particularly in light of my internetz handle and the fact that I have an Anglo-Saxon name attached to my Chinese name because I got really fucking sick of having people mispronounce my Chinese name and preferred to take on an English moniker so I wouldn't have people butcher it in my hearing.

Anyway, that's not the story I was gonna share today.

Mitchell writes about the French method of name introduction:

In French, we introduce ourselves to people by saying “Je m’appelle mitchellirons.com”. In our first French classes, we don’t learn that “Je m’appelle” is a reflexive construction of the verb “appeller,” which means “to call” as in “to describe.” Instead, we’re told that “Je m’appelle” means, “My name is.” And idiomaticlly, it does: it’s the phrase used in the same situations as “my name is” used in English. But take that construction apart, and the difference between “I am so-and-so” and “My name is so-and-so” becomes as clear as day. When we say, “Je m’appelle,” we are saying something akin to “I am called by,” or “The descriptor I use to describe myself is…”
When I was four years old, my family and I went shopping at Yaohan, and I saw this awesome teddy bear I really liked. (He kinda looks like Tenderheart Bear. Minus the heart on his tummy.) I liked his softness and I asked my dad to buy it, and I read on the tag he was accompanied by, "Je m'appelle Teddy".

Me being, you know, Chinese and not French, and still unable to quite pronounce unfamiliar words, I thought it was pronounced something like "je-maah-play" and spelled "jemaple".

I called it "Jemaple" about immediately, to everyone who would talk to me I introduced my new teddy as "Jemaple". My brother and father tried to correct me all the time, saying, "it means 'my name is'!" I didn't care, I thought they were just h8rs on my teddy bear's awesome wicked name.

Now, of course, I know that they were right, and I also know what the real meaning is.

But Jemaple will always be Jemaple to me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Race in Cartoons

So I was moseying on to work this morning when I started hearing the theme song to 6teen in my head, and I was reminiscing on the time I used to have cable TV and I watched cartoons and the SciFi channel just about incessantly (okay, I also watched TLC). 6teen was an interesting show to me. The basic premise is that of six teens who hang out at a fancy lemonade stall one of them works at, and it follows their trials and travails as they figure out how to get by on their own, holding their jobs (or not) and how they work through their problems. It also happens to follow a very smart comedy formula, with multiple storyarcs within a single episode. The creators did a good job realizing that yes, a younger audience could indeed appreciate smart shows. The characters, being cartoon characters in themselves, are not exactly what one might call nuanced, but the creators certainly did try to explore different aspects of their characters. Jen, for example, works in the sporting goods store. She
Read more

My Pidgin Does Not Signify Lack Of Intellect

I recently received in my inbox an email from my father, who likes to forward me a lot of things that he thinks will interest me. Except of course, he never really realizes just how easily antsy I can get, and how willing I am to pick apart an article. (I used to hit Reply to All whenever he'd send me an email to let all and sundry know what I thought and all the problems with whatever he sent me, so now he wisely BCCs people instead.) This article was about Miss Singapore, and I can't find the original article, but hree's another one about the same issue . While at the Miss World pageant in South Africa, she inadvertently slipped into speaking Singlish, the Singaporean creole that mixes English, Malay, Chinese and god knows what else. And this was a huge fucking deal because apparently, all beauty queens must be able to speak perfect English, the standard of which is probably set by the English-speaking world that is the UK and North America, I guess. And because Miss S
Read more

May 13 Blogswarm Links Post

This is where all Malaysians and residents of Malaysia are welcome to leave links to their participation in the May 13 Blogswarm. For more information, check out LiveJournal and Facebook . Comments Policy:  Please note that moderation is turned on for comments older than 7 days. I try to check in regularly, but this may be hard as I will be traveling. Do not use this place to debate what others have said. If you do and you crash my site in due process, I'll get very irritated at you. That shit is rude. Don't do it. 
Read more