Tuesday April 10, 2012
Snobbery in language
By FADZILAH AMIN
If we choose to use the word lavatory over toilet or condo over flat, will that reveal something about our social class?
Overheard somewhere in Malaysia:
“Do you live in a flat?”
“Oh no! I live in an apartment. And next year we hope to move to a very nice condo.”
The term “flat” in Malaysia seems to be associated with low-cost flats, rickety lifts, noisy neighbours and clothes hung out to dry on balconies.
Class-conscious Malaysians do not want to say they live in a flat, when an apartment actually means a flat. The dictionaries tell us that the word “apartment” is mainly used in North America, and “flat” in the United Kingdom.
A “luxury block of flats” may seem like a contradiction in terms in Malaysia. But such things do exist in the UK. For example, a news item on the BBC website (Dec 8, 2010), refers to “a luxury block of flats in Great Titchfield Street” (in the borough of Westminster, central London).
One can also find in London estate agents’ websites, many advertisements such as: “2 bedroom flat for sale £2,750,000 (RM3.34mil) Ennismore Gardens, South Kensington. This simply breathtaking two-bedroomed second floor flat is located in a desirable garden square ...”
So, an expensive residence in an exclusive area of London (where the late Princess Diana lived before she married Prince Charles) is still called a “flat”. Do note that the terms “flat” and “apartment” seem to be used interchangeably in the UK of late, especially by estate agents. “Condo” is of course short for “condominium”, the American term for a block of flats, or a single flat therein. The term “condominium” as a dwelling place, originates in the US, and is not used in the UK.
However, in Malaysia, it is considered prestigious to live in a “condominium”, because these are usually smart, well-finished and expensive flats with common amenities like a swimming pool and a gym.
We hear snobbery, too, when some people here talk about the houses they live in.
A “bungalow” is considered more prestigious than a “semi-detached house”, which is considered better than the mere “terraced house” that most urban families live in nowadays.
Even dwellers of terraced houses make a distinction between an “end house”, a “corner house” and an “intermediate house” with only a little bit of land at the front and back.
It is interesting to consider our use of the term “bungalow” to mean a large detached house that usually has more than one storey.
That is not what it meant originally, and of all the dictionaries I have looked up, only the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) has included our meaning of this term, saying that this is the meaning “in some Asian countries”.
In British English, a “bungalow” originally meant “a one-storied house (or temporary building, e.g. a summer-house), lightly built, usually with a thatched roof” (Oxford English Dictionary, OED).
It came from the Hindi word “bangla” (meaning Bengali) and was first used in 1676 when the British East India Company was trading in India.
In modern usage however, a “bungalow” in British English is “a house built all on one level” (OALD), while American English defines it as “a small house, usually built all on one level” (online Oxford Advanced American Dictionary, OAAD).
The smallness of a bungalow in American usage is implied in the 1947 song If I Only Had a Match, which has lines that go: If I only had someone like you, to come home to, each night / In a cozy bungalow, we’d know such sweet delight / We can have a family, and a little garden patch . . .”
“Cozy” is defined in OAAD as “warm, comfortable, and safe, especially because of being small”. Let me give you a link to a YouTube upload of this song as recorded by Don McLean (of American Pie fame) and the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley’s backing group). It’s really worth listening to for its old-world charm!(youtube.com/watch?v=g78tolQ8tHY)
To move from dwelling places to that little room we usually call “the toilet”, have you ever thought that there is snobbery too in what we call it?
There is also the use of euphemism, which has more to do with wanting to be polite, than to seem high-class.
In smart large houses in England, a toilet on the ground floor is often called a “cloakroom”, while a ladies’ toilet is often called a “powder room”. We won’t find any cloaks, nor do women powder their noses in such rooms!
The word “lavatory” was more commonly used than “toilet” in England, judging from the following quotation in the OED: “‘Loo’ is holding its own fairly well and most of ‘Toilet’s’ gains have been at the expense of ‘Lavatory’” (Dec 21, 1967, The Listener, a BBC magazine 1929-91).
“Loo” of course is the informal term for toilet, which is widely used now.
Before I went to England to study in the late sixties, a well-meaning English friend and colleague of mine, who had been educated in a private school and Oxford, told me never to use the word “toilet” in England but the more upper class word “lavatory”.
My university was not Oxbridge, but a provincial one, and when I asked a girl where the “lavatory” was, she broke into a giggle and said “You mean the toilet?” I never used the “l” word again, except for “loo”! In American English, the main euphemisms used for “toilet” are “bathroom”, “washroom” and “restroom”.
For a public toilet, American English has “comfort station”, while British English has “convenience.” However, “toilet” must be the main word to use now. Otherwise, why do we have such terms as “toilet paper”, “toilet training” and “toilet bowl”?
> For comments or queries, readers can contact Fadzilah Amin directly at fedela7@yahoo.co.uk
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