How many marks did you get?

I used to be a Sweet Valley fan, the series of storybooks featuring the lives of identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and their friends in California, USA. I remember being initially unfamiliar with the term 'grade' which was used to refer to how the students fared academically. This was because in Singapore, we are more accustomed to the term 'marks'. For example, we will oft compare 'marks' with friends or not want to tell our parents our poor 'marks' for fear of getting punished.
Upon perusing the various online dictionaries, the Longman Web Dictionary provided me with the clearest explanation for the difference between 'marks' and 'grade', with 'marks', or 'mark' being used in this context mainly in British English (which Singaporeans are supposed to follow), and 'grade' being primed for the American English speakers to refer to the same meaning.

student's work

especially British English a letter or number given by a teacher to show how good a student's work is [= grade American English]

good/high mark

The highest mark was a B+.

Her marks have been a lot lower this term.

She always gets good marks.

pass mark (=the mark you need in order to pass an exam)

The pass mark was 75%.

full/top marks (=the highest possible mark)

cheers, mate!

Today's lesson brought to mind some of the different ways some words are primed for those English-users living in the UK (where I was on exchange). One example is the salutation, 'cheers'. In the Singaporean context, 'cheers' is used when toasting drinks as a way of wishing fellow drinkers good health and joy. You can imagine my surprise when I heard a hostel-mate say 'cheers' to me when I held the door open for him, or when I waved goodbye to a classmate.
I decided to check out the various dictionaries to discover if 'cheers' could be found with the observed usage attributed to it.
The Oxford English Dictionary was the natural first choice as I had observed its usage most widely in the UK. However, the word was non-existent!
On the contrary, the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary possessed the term with all three meanings recorded. (http://www.oup.com/oald-bin/web_getald7index1a.pl)
cheers /tz; NAmE trz/ exclamation

1 a word that people say to each other as they lift up their glasses to drink
2 (BrE, informal) goodbye: Cheers then. See you later.
3 (BrE, informal) thank you

The Longman Web Dictionary also produced similar results, indicating that the term was used specifically in British English. (http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/cheers)

cheers

1 used when you lift a glass of alcohol before you drink it, in order to say that you hope the people you are drinking with will be happy and have good health

2 British English informal thank you

3 British English informal goodbye

A search of the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary showed no results. I cannot explain why this term was found in one British English Learner Dictionary but not in another. Perhaps my dear readers can help me on this by commenting? I do think that it is not found in the more 'standard' Oxford English Dictionary and found in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, as it is an informal term that will probably not be used in formal speech but is still required for learners of the English Language to be acquainted with in order to possess sufficient Linguistic Capital to use the language effectively to communicate seamlessly with the native speakers.

Unrecyclables?

This one tickled me, as it probably meant that the Chinese, being non-native users of English overgeneralized the use of the prefix, 'un-', and simply placed it before any term to act as a 'multiple-negator', even though it may not be the case.

Bazaar employs people?

These signs were taken during our Christmas Break in December last year to Istanbul, Turkey. I uploaded both photos as the incidence of different priming is evident in the second picture but the 'it' in this is an anaphoric reference to 'The Grand Bazaar' in the first picture. To focus, here is the phrase which aroused my interest. 'The Grand Bazaar employs more than 30,000 people'. I guess in our community, we usually place a human or group of humans before the verb, 'employ', and not places, even though the meaning is quite clear, that the many shops housed in the grand bazaar provide employment opportunities for 30,000 people.

Rocks washed by the sea?

This sign was taken in South Wales on a road trip! We were understandably amused by this sign, which warns us not to 'walk or sit on rocks about to be washed by the sea'. I think they meant for us not to 'walk or sit on rocks about to be washed into the sea', probably a case of differing lexical priming whereby the Welsh are primed to use 'by' in ways where we use 'into', or could also mean 'into by', but is a short version of it (e.g. 'washed into the sea by the sea').

Lost in Translation

Yet another sign I encountered in Paris, this time in an elevator, which I suppose meant to warn users against allowing children to ride it without parental supervision. However, the English translation, 'Children with adult only', made it seem to us, like the lift only had a capacity for one adult if there were more than one child inside.

Also, on a side note, the symbols used seemed to say that only women and girls were allowed to ride in the elevator but not girls alone. haha. Perhaps they ran out of male stick person stencils!

catch no ball?

I find this sign amusing due to its vagueness. Perhaps, the term 'balls' are primed differently in this community, as literally and simply, spherical, inanimate objects, whereas in our community, this term has an alternative priming to refer to the males' testicles.

I just want my food.

Hey all, since food seems to be the topic of interest as I received the most comments on them, I shall continue with the theme for a while longer. One instance of the differences in which people of different communities are primed for certain lexical choices is the way people describe food which is to be eaten outside of the place where it is bought. Upon perusing Google Images, my findings include terms like:

• To goThis is primed mostly for the those in the United States of America (USA), as can be seen from the origin of this sign, which is taken at Arlington, Virginia, USA. (http://recruit.livejournal.com/)
  

• Take away This is what I am personally more familiar with, as are most Singaporeans, as we are more closely aligned to British English than American English. This sign originated from the United Kingdom (UK).
  
• Take outThis is once more found in the USA, another variation which is primed for the Americans, and not quite for Singaporeans.
• Carry outThis picture was found in the USA as well and indicates yet another variation of the term takeaway which we are more familiar with but is primed in this manner for the Americans. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/10707024@N04/3445141973/)

I would like to use these instances of different lexical primings for different terms with similar meanings to bring up my friend's experience of having her priming of this term develop to accommodate its other variations due to her encounters with the 'To go' version on her US Work and Travel Programme last summer. Upon her return, she found herself equally adept at ordering a meal 'to go' as well as to 'take away'. Hence, this supports Hoey's claim that priming need not be a permanent feature of a word, or term, and that words can be primed for someone when it was not previously so, due to encounters which contribute to the shift in the individual's priming of a word.

water contact!

What struck me as odd was the use of 'water contact activities'. Although it is relatively clear that it refers to activities involving coming into contact with the sea, whenever 'water' collocates with 'contact', it usually has to do with the state of waterproof-ness of an item, or type of material, or if water contact will result in a reaction of some sort. I feel that more common signs, or those we are more familiar with include those which simply say, 'Keep out', or 'Keep out of water', like the one on the immediate left.

Lawyers for breakfast

Jean's entry on Kate vegetable was really funny and it brought to mind yet another interesting
encounter in Paris--- Lawyer Salad! My law-student friends however, were not so amused.
I attempted to google lawyer salad but was unable to find out what kind of ingredient 'lawyer' was.
Then I chanced upon another photo entry of Lawyer Salad with the French term for 'Lawyer', which turned out to be 'Avocat', meaning either Lawyer or avocado in English (below).














This is indeed a case of being lost in translation(: However, I feel this is also a case of lexical priming as using the term 'avocado' to the Parisian French will result in incomprehension on their side, thus through these accumulated personal experiences, my own lexicon will develop to accommodate these new terms which I will now know how to use when interacting with various groups of people.

Hey you! Don't cut queue!

The title probably sounds more familiar to most of you than the term used on the left, as it did to me when I saw the sign at Alton Towers in the UK. A cursory investigation of the reasons for this unfamiliarity of the term 'Queue Jumping' was done through checking the top search results for 'cut queue'.
http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=cut+queue&start=0&sa=N

6 out of the top 10 searches were from Singapore or Malaysian based websites, which perhaps is telling of why we are more acquainted with the use of 'cutting queue' instead of 'queue jumping', hence the former is probably primed for Singaporeans (and largely Malaysians).