Thursday December 22, 2005
Is handphone Manglish?
By FADZILAH AMIN
I've often come across the word “handphone” being used in The Star. I’m sure that most Malaysians use this word too.
However, according to my teacher, the word “handphone” is actually some sort of Manglish. She said the right term should be “cellphone” (American) or “mobile phone” (British).
She also taught us that there is no such word as “outstation” as it is just another Manglish word but I’ve also heard this word being used by radio deejays.
Another thing she said is that the word “won” (past tense of “win”) is pronounced “wan”, not “won”. However, I’ve noticed that some actors in Western movies pronounce it as “won”.
Hence, I’m really confused. Please help me to understand them more! – Grace
1.handphone
The word “handphone” is no longer Manglish, but an accepted alternative to “cellphone” and “mobile phone”.
The latest edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2005) recognises this in an entry, with the definition given as “noun used in SE Asia as the word for MOBILE PHONE/CELLPHONE”.
2. outstation
“Outstation” exists in the English language, but not in the way some Malaysians use it. Some Malaysians say someone has gone “outstation” when he is out of town, even when he has gone to another town.
The OED defines the word as “a station at a distance from headquarters or from the centre of population or business”. In Australia and New Zealand, it is used to mean “part of a farming estate separate from the main estate”. (Concise OED)
The word was first recorded in 1844, when India was under British rule and “station” there, I suspect, referred to a colonial trading station. Let me give the first OED quotation: “Life in an Indian outstation is, indeed, as simple a one as can be imagined ... In outstation life there is ... more intercourse between European and native society.”
3. won
“Won” as the past tense of “win” is pronounced exactly like “one”, whether in British English or American English as recorded in the dictionaries.
The vowel sound in it is a short “a” whose phonetic symbol is an upside down “v”. It may be that in some Western (i.e. cowboy) movies, the actors speak a US regional dialect, in which the vowel in “won” is pronounced as an “o”, but I don’t know anything about US regional dialects.
‘Author’ and ‘writer’
WHAT are the differences between “author” and “writer”, “co-authors” and “co-writers”?
Can co-authors and co-writers be more than two persons? – Nordin Yusof, Subang Jaya
1. There is some overlap in meaning between the terms “author” and “writer” when it applies to work that is written.
An author is usually a writer of a published work, especially books, but one can also be described as an author of a report, article, play, poem, or short story, etc, that has been published.
The term “author” rather than “writer” is used in the copyright statement at the beginning of a book, e.g. “The right of So-and-So to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her ...”
However, while all authors are writers, not all writers are authors. If you have written unpublished letters or essays, you are the “writer”, not the “author” of those letters or essays.
2. & 3. When two or more people collaborate to write something, they are referred to as co-authors or co-writers. When the people concerned are authors, they are called co-authors; when they are writers, they are called co-writers.
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