Stay tuned? What Does That Mean?

A student asked me about an email he’d received this week.  His co-worker had signed off with “Stay tuned.”  This was new to him.

1959 radio with tuning knobs (source: Wikipedia)

In general, the word tuning means “adjusting.”  When a piano doesn’t play accurately, we call a piano tuner to adjust the strings.  If a business project isn’t exactly the way we want it, we say it needs some small changes or fine-tuning.

The expression in my student’s email is related to televisions and (before that) to radios.  To find the station you want to listen to, you have to tune in by turning the tuning knob to the right location.  Once you’re tuned in to one station, the broadcaster wants to keep you there, so you will hear all of their programming--and their commercials!

Just before a commercial, the announcer would say, “Stay tuned” (or “Don’t touch that dial”).  We’ll be right back after this message.”

The meaning in the email is, “I’ll get back to you soon with more information.”  It’s an informal expression you can use in both email and in conversations.  Try it out!

______________________________________ Note: When I was writing to a friend about my new television show called Feel Like You Belong, I closed my email with “Stay tuned.”  I intended this as a double meaning.  First, I meant to say that there would be more information coming soon.  But also, I chose these words because they are originally a broadcasting expression.  ☺

Embracing Triplets: How We Sometimes Repeat Ourselves

An old American joke goes like this.

A tourist on the streets of New York asks a resident, “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?”  The New Yorker replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Carnegie Hall stage (source: Wikipedia)

This joke is only funny if you understand the double meaning of “get to” in the opening question.  The tourist’s meaning is concerned with finding the location of Carnegie Hall, a famous venue for concerts.  The New Yorker’s meaning of “get to” is “be invited to.”  Of course, only the best musicians can play there, so it will take lots of practice to “get there.”

The line, “Practice, practice, practice” is famous in American culture, and you might hear it being adapted to other situations. 

Besides English, I know many languages use repetition as a colorful way of emphasizing an idea.  In the West African language of Hausa, the word kaɗun means “little."  To say “very little,” Hausa speakers say kaɗun-kaɗun.  In one aboriginal language of Australia, the word binji means “stomach.”  Binji-binji is the expression for “pregnant.”

Real estate yard sign (source: Prudential Realty)

What is interesting for me is the use of the triple form to emphasize an English speaker’s point of view.  If you ask a real estate agent the most important aspects of a piece of property for sale, the famous response is “Location, location, location.”  In other words, the top three selling features all involve where the property is located.

Triplets in English can also be used for complaining.  “Work, work, work!” someone might grumble to a friend.  “Don’t you ever take time to have fun?”  More examples are given below.

TRIPLETS FOR EMPHASIS: Meaning

Go, go, go!: To encourage people to go/run faster (sports)

Yes, yes, yes! / No, no, no! Strong affirmation (or negation)

Ho, ho, ho.: How Santa Claus laughs

Jobs, jobs, jobs.: Interviewee on radio re: needs in this economy

La, la, la. [with fingers in ears]: I’m not listening to you.

Surprise, surprise, surprise!: In famous military sitcom, Gomer Pyle gets a visit from his cousin

Location, location, location.: The top three considerations when buying real estate

Practice, practice, practice.: The answer when a NYC tourist asks, “How can I get to Carnegie Hall?”

Penny, Penny, Penny!: A neurotic physicist tries to get his neighbor’s attention

(source: Wikipedia)

COMPLAINING TRIPLETS (spoken by...)

"Work, work, work! That’s all I do around here!" (tired person)

"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" (frustrated younger sister)

"Sports, sports, sports! Is that all you watch on TV?" (frustrated wife or girlfriend)

"Bitch, bitch, bitch." (someone tired of another’s complaining)

BLASé TRIPLETS (lack of enthusiasm) (meaning)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Curtly spoken: Okay, I got it. Now I gotta get out of here.)

Yadda, yadda, yadda. (And so on and so forth.)

Blah, blah, blah. (Ongoing talking. Meaningless chatter. This is tiresome. Et cetera. And so on.)

Please write to share other examples you can think of.

What Do Americans Mean By TGIF?

On Fridays you may hear co-workers or classmates say “TGIF!” This is a common acknowledgment that the end of the work week or school week is here, and the weekend is ready to begin. As you are learning, Americans are very fond of acronyms and abbreviations.  In this case, TGIF stands for “Thank God It's Friday.”

If you want to start using this expression at your school or workplace, there are three things you should know about saying it correctly.

First, it’s pronounced /tidʒiyai'ɛf/, with stress on the final letter.

Next, there is no –s at the end of “Thank” because it is a verb, not a noun.  You are probably familiar with the noun form “Many thanks!”  The meaning of TGIF is sort of like “I thank God” or “We thank God (that it’s the weekend).”

Also, the word “it’s” is a contraction for “it is.”  Many of my Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking friends try to say “is” because in their language, the word “it” is optional.  In English, “it” is grammatically required.

Getting over the hump: Quitting time on Wednesday is 3/5 of the way to the weekend!

Finally, let me make a cultural observation.  Some people are not accustomed to using religious language.  If so, you can substitute “Goodness” for “God” in similar expressions.  For example:   • Thank goodness my paycheck came today!  I’m traveling tomorrow and my bank account was at zero.   • I left my apartment key in my room.  Thank goodness my roommate was there when I got back home. By the way, did you know that some Americans call Wednesday “hump day”?  A hump is a small hill.  If you see the week as an obstacle to arriving at the weekend, then you are happy when Wednesday is done and you are more than halfway through the week.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

One restaurant chain knows people like to celebrate after work.

Getting Comfortable in Michigan, Chapter Two: Making Left-Hand Turns

Driving culture is huge in the United States.  Except for New York City and a few other crowded metropolises, cars are an American way of life.

Born to drive: the author poses with his first Buick, won when his ticket was drawn at a metro-Detroit raffle.  (Also pictured: the author’s dog, Rocky.)

The U.S. has a history of cheap gasoline (except in the past decade).  It has vast spaces to traverse.  And it has a population of independent citizens who want to go somewhere WHEN they want to go somewhere.  We can also thank Henry Ford, who realized that sales of his early models depended on their being affordable to the working class. As a young driver in Detroit, MI (aka the Motor City), I got accustomed to making “Michigan left turns.”  This involves driving through an intersection in the left lane, making a u-turn across a median, and then coming back to the intersection to make a right turn.

image via Wikipedia

As I got older, the name occurred ethnocentric to me.  Why call it a “Michigan” left?  Surely other states have this traffic feature as well?  As it turns out, no they don’t.  This idiosyncratic turning mechanism was adopted by the state’s Department of Transportation in the 1960s, the only state in the nation.

Although it is quirky, traffic engineers will tell you that it reduces accidents.  By sending left-turn drivers past an intersection—via deceleration and acceleration lanes—and eventually making a right-hand turn, there are fewer broadside collisions in intersections.  Broadsides are among the deadliest accidents and happen when turning vehicles misjudge oncoming traffic or don’t see it at all.  Michigan left turns only expose drivers to glancing blows, instead of the deadlier 90º impacts also known as T-boning.

Michigan lefts help prevent broadside collisions (also called T-boning) as in this photo.  Safety engineers also report fewer pedestrian accidents with Michigan left turns. via jalopnik.com

For narrow highways, a standard Michigan left may be too tight for turning, so engineers have added a feature called a “bulbout.”  Below is a diagram of a bulbout in Grand Haven, MI, about 10 miles from my house.  It allows u-turn drivers extra space to complete the turn before straightening out their vehicle for the eventual right turn.

image via Wikipedia

A similar attempt to enhance turning safety is done through the “jughandle” turns in over a dozen U.S. states.  They are particularly associated with New Jersey.

Because they also cause drivers to drive extra distances and wait extra time, jughandles are unpopular with some drivers.  Recently, the New Jersey legislature introduced a bill to outlaw future construction.

With over 700 intersections designed with the Michigan left-turn, this feature is in no danger of disappearing from my state anytime soon.

For newcomers here, welcome to Michigan.  I wish you safe driving and safe left turns!

Michigan: America's High Five!

green mitten state tee

My home state of Michigan* stands out. It really does, and I can prove it.

First, a disclaimer: every one of us thinks our birthplace is special. We are all “homers” when it comes to local favoritism. I’m reminded that George Bernard Shaw once said, “Patriotism is the belief your country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”

But now, let’s get back to the facts. Miles above the earth, Michigan is one of only three American states you can identify from space (Alaska and Florida are the other two). Why so visible? Because they’re peninsulas! They’re land surrounded on three sides by water.

The great thing about Michigan is that it has not one, but two peninsulas. In fact, our state motto is Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. (States like to put their mottos in Latin; it makes them sound smarter.) This means: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. So, now you know two things: we’ve got shoreline, and we’re pleasant.

The other great thing about our peninsulas is that they’re surrounded by fresh water. Alaska and Florida are surrounded by smelly salt water and sludge from oil spills. If you go swimming in one of Michigan’s four Great Lakes, you won’t get a mouthful of disgusting brine. Some Michiganders** claim you can drink the water straight from Lake Superior.

To help their students remember the five Great Lakes, Michigan teachers use the acronym HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Only Lake Ontario doesn’t border Michigan.

Michigan flag includes our motto (at the bottom), water, a sunset (or sunrise), and some antlered animals (we do a lot of hunting).

Residents from our east coast (from Alpena to Port Huron) will call it the “sunrise side” of the state. This was probably created by a marketing person who wanted to sell more property on Lake Huron. People on the Lake Michigan side call it the “sunset side” of the state. This is sexier because everyone likes to take romantic pictures of the sun going down on their vacation. A lot of rich Chicagoans buy property on the west coast of Michigan because it’s only a 2- or 3-hour drive to get away to their vacation homes. This makes property along Lake Michigan pricier.

Remember to make the Lower Peninsula holding up the palm of your right hand. Point with your left index finger. (Do the opposite for the U.P.)

Whenever you meet Michiganders, they will show you where they’re from by pointing to a spot on their right palm. Just accept this. We say our state’s lower peninsula looks like a mitten. If you contort your left hand above your right hand, you can make a kind of scrunchy Upper Peninsula (or U.P.). Connecting the Upper and Lower Peninsulas is the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge, the Mackinac Bridge. It’s five beautiful miles to drive over, but if you’re afraid of heights, don’t look down!

Businesses have capitalized on this mitten concept by selling souvenirs in the shape of hands and mittens. I’ve seen mitten-shaped baskets and oven mitts for sale. My daughter gave me a tee-shirt saying, “Michigan – America’s High Five,” which, you have to admit, is a friendly kind of slogan. Midwesterners like to think of themselves as friendly, down-to-earth people. We get kind of peeved when people from New York or L.A. say that ours is just “fly-over country.”

When Midland, MI (located mid-land in our state) got a pro baseball stadium, the owners had a contest to name the team. My wife suggested the Mid-Michigan Mitts (and even made elaborate sketches). This was really clever, we thought, because the state looks like a mitt and baseball players wear mitts—get it? In her drawings, a baseball in the mitt looked like a big white dot, representing Midland’s location. Her slogan was, “I’m smitten with the Mitten.” She didn’t win; the owners chose Loons instead, even though this wild bird doesn’t even live in central Michigan.

Our state is so friendly, we want to give everyone a high five!

International visitors to the U.S. like to visit the East and West Coasts because they’re famous. They visit the Gulf Coast for Mardi Gras or sunbathing. We like to refer to Michigan as America’s North Coast. Remember all that fresh water? Fact is, we’ve got more miles of coastline than any of the contiguous 48 states. That means fishing, waterskiing, sunset (or sunrise) watching, jet-skiing, swimming, snorkeling, beach strolling, and sailing for all water lovers. No place in Michigan is more than 85 miles from a Great Lake shoreline.

People from the state’s U.P. (pronounced yoo-pee) are called Yoopers. They are very proud of living in an area of pristine forests and natural beauty and for a while wanted to secede from Michigan and create a state called Superior. Aside from hunting, fishing, and logging, there’s not a lot of industry there, so it wasn’t really a viable proposition. Still, Yoopers have their regional pride. They joke that everyone from the Lower Peninsula is a troll…because we all live below the Bridge.

If you want to make a foreign day trip from Michigan, it’s a piece of cake. You can cross a bridge into Canada from Michigan’s U.P. into Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. (It’s a French name; we pronounce Sault as “Soo.”) There’s a second bridge from Port Huron in the state’s Thumb region into Sarnia, and another one from Detroit into Windsor. If you prefer, you can drive to Canada over the Ambassador Bridge and return via the tunnel under the Detroit River. Entrants of the Detroit Marathon run both routes during the first half of the race, which offers the world’s only international underwater mile!

The U.S. stars & stripes and the Canadian maple leaf.

A while ago, there was a controversy about Wisconsin, our neighbor across Lake Michigan. Wisconsinites claimed that their state also looked like a mitten. This was roundly pooh-poohed in Michigan. After all, Dorr County, the little nubbin of a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan, looks more like a hangnail than an actual thumb. After Americans took an objective look at the map (see above), they largely agreed there is only one U.S. state that looks like a mitten.

This book for children helps them learn their alphabet and interesting things about Michigan. It’s a great souvenir because it packs flat in your suitcase!

For international visitors who want to make the most of their Michigan visit, here are my top dozen suggestions.

Upper Peninsula
Sault Ste. Marie: the Soo Locks (an engineering wonder)
Munising: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (take the boat tour!)
Paradise: Tahquamenon Falls (the brown water is from tannins, not pollution)
Whitefish Point: Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
Porcupine Mountains: hiking and camping
Mackinac Island: (no motor vehicles allowed) My favorite place in all of Michigan!

Lower Peninsula
Mackinac Bridge: Labor Day walk across bridge led by Governor
Hartwick Pines State Forest: Old-growth pine forest and logging museum
Detroit: Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (U.S. history on steroids)
Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit: Comerica Park (home of the baseball Tigers)
Grand Rapids: ArtPrize (world’s largest art competition)
Midland: Dow Gardens and Alden B. Dow home/studio (amazing architecture)
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan football stadium (America’s largest)

If you come visit Michigan’s west side, give me a call. I’ll give you a tour of Grand Rapids, our state’s second city. Then, maybe we’ll walk the beach of Lake Michigan at sunset.

* By the way, don’t let someone tell you that folks from the Mitten State are called Michiganians. That attempt by Gov. Engler in the 1990s was made to sound fancy-schmancy. Real residents call themselves Michiganders.

Vocabulary note: a “gander” is a male goose.

** A pronunciation note for my international friends: The “ch” in Michigan is pronounced like the middle of “machine” and not “macho.” It’s a French spelling of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, which means “large water.” Here’s an earlier post on that topic.

Intercultural Blog Carnival: The Relationship Between Language and Culture

Welcome to the Intercultural Blog Carnival, hosted this month by Headbloom Cross-Cultural Communication! Gathered here are 10 terrific articles from intercultural professionals from across the globe. The articles provide insight, tips, and even a little humor on the inter-relationship of language and culture. If you have worked or lived in a foreign country, you may share some of the experiences discussed by our panel of experts. Whether you are looking for ways of seeing culture through a new lens or hoping to discover new stories for your colleagues and clients, this is the place for you!

1. Is there a culture where speakers are so closely attuned that they exchange few words between themselves and yet fully understand each other? Rochelle Kopp looks at the Japanese concept of Ichi ieba ju wo shiru or “Hear one [word], understand ten.” Click here for her article. A recognized authority on Japanese culture, etiquette, and business practices Rochelle Kopp works between American and Japanese businesses who need to understand each other. Author of over 20 books, she is Managing Principal of Japan Intercultural Consulting in San Francisco.

2. From deep personal experience, Jonathan Barrera Mikulich looks at language through the lens of cultural identity. In this thought-provoking piece, he asks if one can be Latino without speaking Spanish. Click here to read his article. Based in West Michigan, USA, Jonathan is the owner of Latino Branding Power, providing strategies within Hispanic marketing communications through graphic design, marketing, brand management, advertising, and public relations.

3. A wise person once quipped that learning a language without learning its culture was setting oneself up to be a fluent fool. Valérie Berset-Price sits on a flight next to an international businessman who is learning to say all the right things in his second language but is doing and thinking all the wrong things. Click here to read her article. A dual citizen of Switzerland and the USA, Valérie is a consultant, cross-cultural educator, speaker, and trainer who blogs for the Huffington Post and bridges global business cultures through her Professional Passport® curriculum.

4. Joe Lurie loves to look at the world through the most common human denominator: food. In this piece, he examines Chinese culture through the food they eat and the words they use to express it. Click here to read the article. Joe is a cross-cultural communications trainer, consultant, university lecturer, certified Cultural Detective facilitator, and Executive Director Emeritus at University of California Berkeley’s International House; he is a popular contributor to the Cultural Detective blog.

5. Deanna Shoss takes a quirky view on the ages-old problem of communicating across the foreign-language divide in “3 Things Guaranteed to Alienate When Speaking Across a Language Barrier.” Read her article here. With over 25 years’ experience in an “Anthropology Meets Marketing” approach to communications, Deanna works with government, not-for-profit, and corporate clients to provide branded communications for web, print, and social media, multicultural marketing, intercultural skills training, and leadership coaching for cross-cultural communication and community building.

6. What difference do a few fingers make among global friends? Lauren Gawne reminds us that gestures, even though wordless, do not translate from one culture to another. Read her article here. A PhD student in Linguistics, Lauren comprises half of the blogging partnership of Superlinguo (along with Georgia Webster) from Melbourne, Australia. In addition to doing research on Tibeto-Burman languages and LOLcats, Lauren also knows how to make insulting gestures across a range of cultures.

7. Lindsay McMahon offers a glimpse into the ways in which U.S. American culture is deeply embedded in the sayings of American English. In her contribution, she addresses six common proverbs and the interconnected themes of hard work and self-sufficiency. Click here to read her article. Lindsay is the founder of English and Culture, based in Boston, Massachusetts. She works with international professionals to help them succeed through English and cross-cultural training.

8. Christopher Wright gives a few tips on when to talk about personal topics and when to discuss business when working across cultures. Click here to read his article. A cross-cultural management consultant and trainer, Christopher Wright is also Director at The Practice Office in Madrid, Spain.

9. It takes special skills to communicate with people who do not share a common culture. In this contribution, Margarita Gokun Silver shares tips for listening when your conversation partner is from a different language background. Read her article here. Creator of the Culture Mastery 4 C’s Process™, Margarita is a certified expatriate and cross-cultural coach who offers coaching and virtual learning resources through the Global Coach Center Online Academy.

10. Alan Headbloom has always been curious about how a culture declares itself through the expressions it employs. This post looks at the prevalence of guns in the United States and how this triggers so many sayings in American English. His observations can be read here. See Alan’s bio below.

Do-It-Yourself Culture and a Dig in the Backyard

I just spent an hour digging in my back yard. In the summertime, I love gardening and puttering around in the dirt because first, it’s therapeutic and second, it makes my yard look good. Today’s effort, however, wasn’t one of those days.

I was digging up the dirt trying to locate the lid of my septic tank. What’s a septic tank, you might ask? Well, houses in the U.S. have two options for getting rid of dirty water. Urban residents already have their homes hooked up to city sewers. The clean water comes in from the city (and you pay a yearly fee for that). The dirty water goes out another pipe line to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Country residents–us included–have the second kind of wastewater disposal: the backyard septic tank. Water goes out the kitchen and bathroom pipes into a cement tank in the ground where the solids are deposited at the bottom. The fluids eventually rise to the top and flow out escape pipes into a grid spread across your backyard, a little below the surface. The idea is a little gross when you stop to think about it, but I guess the water is just absorbed and filtered into the ground while the solid waste collects at the bottom of the tank, waiting for a pumping truck to come suck it out.

Roto-Rooter is one of many U.S. companies that pump out septic tanks.

Well, every 3-5 years you are supposed to have the tank cleaned out. When our toilets started backing up last month (refusing to flush down) and the sinks began gurgling every time we ran the dishwasher or washing machine, we figured something was wrong. It turns out we hadn’t had the septic tank cleaned out in seven years. Yikes!

Research showed local companies charge in the neighborhood of $300 to clean out a septic tank. One company charged $270 and had a $10-off online coupon. I also found out they’d discount you another $40 if you dug up access to the lid yourself. Figuring it couldn’t be too hard, I went out to dig it up. There was good news and bad news.

• Luckily, it was warm outside on this 3rd of December–no snow!
• Unfortunately, I had never done this before.
• Luckily, the location was easy enough to spot. (Grass is greener over the septic tank!)
• Unhappily, I didn’t know how deeply the tank was buried.
• Luckily, my shovel hit the concrete roof at a depth of only 6-8 inches.
• Unfortunately, it took me an hour of turning over sod before I located the lid.

When I have to do this five years from now, I’ll be better prepared. I took a photo of the location (see below). Shockingly, the end of the tank is aligned directly out from our master bathroom. Go figure!

Are you a do-it-yourselfer? Do people in your home country do home improvement jobs themselves? From a recent news story, I learned that Home Depot is closing its stores in China. Apparently, most Chinese don’t like D-I-Y home projects and would rather pay someone to do them. I grew up on 10 acres of land in the country, and my dad was a firm believer in teaching his kids how to be self-sufficient: sewing, housekeeping, and yard maintenance. This was even though he was a businessman who could afford to pay workers to do these jobs.

This afternoon, I was grumbling because the digging took a lot longer than I thought, and I had other things to do in my office. But there is an odd satisfaction of having done it myself. And I did save 40 bucks. Tell me about the extent of your home repair projects. Do you cut your grass? Shovel your driveway? Paint walls? Would you install a ceiling light? Build a deck? Put in a garden? Install a new toilet? Lay tile and grout?

I look forward to hearing from you. The truck comes here on Thursday.

Lid to my septic tank, newly exposed, waiting for the truck to come and pump it out.

New vocabulary

puttering = keeping busy, sometimes doing a little work

gurgling = making deep, bubbling water noises

in the neighborhood of = approximately

gross = [slang] disgusting, unpleasant

easy to spot = easy to see (or find)

Go figure! = How could this be true? [sarcasm]

Duh! = Why didn’t I figure this out before now?

Does Language Inspire Brand Names, or Do Brand Names Inspire Language?

This fall, the Hostess Baking Co., an iconic American business, filed for bankruptcy. Under various names, it had produced some of the most famous baked goods in the U.S. for over a century. Sales of these products have fallen off as Americans have begun to look for healthier snack alternatives. If you talk with your American friends and co-workers, they can tell you of their own life experiences with perhaps three of their most famous snack cakes: the Twinkie, the Ding Dong, and the Ho Ho.

Hostess Twinkies Box

Hostess Ding Dongs

Hostess Ho Hos

Interesting to note is that all three product names have meanings in American slang or regular speech. The question is: which came first, the slang or the brand name? Checking into their origins, we know that the Twinkie was created over 80 years ago, with its name inspired by another company using the word “twinkle.” Both the Ding Dong and the Ho Ho were much more recent Hostess inventions.

The expression “ding dong” has had two meanings: either the sound of a doorbell or, in slang, someone who is an idiot or fool (also called a ding-a-ling). The expression “ho ho” is primarily used to suggest amusement (or at Christmastime, the laughter of Santa Claus: Ho, ho, ho!) in American English.* The brand names were clearly invented after these two expressions had their meanings.

When Twinkie snack cakes were invented, however, the name “twinkie” had no other meaning. Since then, many meanings have sprung up.

“Twinkie” in American English
• someone who is physically weak or soft (like a snack cake)

• a cute, young gay male (slang, sometimes also: a twink)

• someone who has gained celebrity status but is in reality a lightweight (without real credentials)

• Minnesota Twinkies = nickname for the Minnesota Twins baseball team when they are playing badly (the sense of weak, ineffectual men)

• an Asian American = negative slang for someone who looks Asian (yellow) on the outside but behaves like mainstream Americans (white) on the inside, in other words, an Asian who has given up his/her original cultural values**

• Twinkie legal defense = when a defense lawyer says his/her client was not in control of his/her mind (and therefore not guilty) because of an altered mindset, for example, because of eating such a bad diet of unhealthy snack cakes

In the case of the Twinkie, American culture took the identity of the product and adapted it into useful expressions in its vocabulary. How many English expressions can you think of which came from a brand name? Do you know which came first? Do you have examples from other languages and cultures?

* A newer slang sense of Ho Ho involves a black (or African American) parallel for Twinkies and Asian Americans (discussed above): someone who is black in appearance but has mainstream American (white) values on the inside. This meaning is more commonly expressed in the brand name “Oreo” (a dark brown cookie with white filling).
** “Banana” is another expression for this kind of Asian American.

sources: iStock Photo (co-worker photo), Wikipedia (all other photos)

Intercultural Blog Carnival: Call for Submissions

With the launch of last June’s Intercultural Blog Carnival (IBC), globally minded netizens got a chance to feast on a range of articles on how to make adjustments to life in a new country. Eight international experts shared blog posts hosted by Lindsay McMahon at englishandculture.com. This week, we’re ready to officially welcome submissions to our latest IBC. The topic this time: how language and culture are interrelated. These submissions will be posted online December 5.

Intercultural writers are invited to share tips for global readers at the intersection of language and culture with me via email here. These can be new pieces written specifically for this carnival, or they can be already written posts from your blog which directly relate to this theme.

Why should you contribute an article to the Intercultural Blog Carnival?
• Build community with other intercultural professionals
• Gain new ideas and perspectives from your colleagues
• Provide fresh content for your social media followers and clients by sharing the blog carnival with them
• Receive an inbound link from headbloom.com (which improves your website ranking and authority)
• Get your unique content in front of a new audience of hundreds of readers

Please send your submissions by Thursday, November 29. I will respond within two days of your contact to confirm inclusion of your submission in the IBC. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to reading your contributions.

Apple-Polishers, Sycophants, and Suck-Ups

Across societies and cultures, every organization seems to have one person who is overly flattering and ingratiating. We call this person a yes-man. The boss’s pet. Ms. or Mr. Spineless.

Don’t get me wrong. We all want to please others, do a good job, get recognition for our efforts. However, most of us will not act like a doormat. We will not go overboard to get on the good side with clients or superiors. There is something called self-dignity that usually prohibits us.

However, some people are so eager to please their bosses or their customers that they will do anything to earn their approval. In American English, we call these people “brown-nosers.” A famous one in U.S. culture is the TV character, Eddie Haskell, from the 1960s sit-com “Leave It to Beaver.”

The Cleaver Family

Lumpy, Eddie, and Wally

Eddie was friends with Wally Cleaver and often came over to the Cleaver house. Whenever he greeted Wally’s mom, Eddie would say something like, “My, that’s a lovely apron you’re wearing, Mrs. Cleaver.” June Cleaver, who knew a brown-noser when she saw one, would just roll her eyes. (Usually, Eddie’s flattery was simply a cover-up for some trouble he was about to instigate.)

Today, the expression for someone who insincerely compliments and fawns is a “suck-up.” My father’s generation used the expression “apple-polisher.” This comes from an earlier era when rural students used to take food (like apples) to school to give to (underpaid) teachers as a supplement to their groceries. The student who wanted to curry favor with the teacher would go to the teacher’s desk and shine up the apples—to the disgust of his/her classmates.

A generational note of caution: older Americans may disapprove of the expressions “brown-noser” or “suck-up” because of their original meanings. Both allude to the reference of “kissing someone’s ass” as a way of ingratiation. Younger generations have lost this original reference of degrading oneself and so, use it more casually.

NEW VOCABULARY
apple-polisher = [old-fashioned] someone who ingratiates him/herself
sycophant = [formal] someone who always agrees in order to curry favor
suck-up (n.) = [slang] someone who ingratiates him/herself
to suck up to someone (vb.) = [slang] to try too hard to please someone
to ingratiate = to make others like you by doing/saying agreeable things
to fawn = to pay special attention to someone
yes-man = someone who always agrees with the boss
someone’s pet = the favored employee, student, or child
bootlicker = someone who ingratiates him/herself
brown-noser = [slang] someone who ingratiates him/herself
fawner = someone who pays special attention or gives or excessive compliments to another

Here is a related article from the Harvard Business Review blog: “Stop Being a People-Pleaser.”

photos via Wikipedia