Mark Yong wrote:I guess part of the reason being my lack of incentive to find out the actual word, is what I call the "coffee shop barley-peng" phenomenon. When was the last time you used 薏米冰 i-bi-peng when ordering iced barley from a coffee shop in Penang? I tried it a few times, got a few blank stares from the coffee shop 阿姨 ah-ee, and eventually I gave up. And yet, the word is well-established, and used when referring to the barley drink when boiled at home... or anywhere else other than the coffee shop. For some reason, it's just not used in the specific case of iced barley sold in a translucent plastic cup at the coffee shop.
Yes, this is an interesting phenomenon. This ties into a concept which I used to try to convey to (h)ong and xng in the days when they were actively on the Forum. Namely, that language is simply what people say (i.e. the "descriptivist" position). One can use logic and say "but it shouldn't
be like that" (for any particular phenomenon which one objects to in the currently spoken language, as one finds it), but that doesn't help. If people say it like that, then people say it like that. This applies to terms such as you describe above, or slang, or "bad grammar", or "historically incorrect usage" etc. One can rant and rave against something as much as one likes (or, as in your case above, just find it slightly puzzling because it's not logical), but if that's how it's (widely) said, then that's how it's (widely) said. The prescriptivist school never seems to understand this issue. ***
Mark Yong wrote:For some reason, it's just not used in the specific case of iced barley sold in a translucent plastic cup at the coffee shop.
That's another change in the 40 years since I left Penang. In "the old days', barley-peng was almost always sold in large glasses, made from a very thick glass. They often were glasses with a sort of "fluting" (is that the term?) in them - i.e. there were 1-cm-wide "indentations", like little "furrows" running from top to bottom of the outside of the glass, all around the outside (to help the person grip the glass better?). The furrows were not very deep - just gently curving inwards about 1-2 mm - and wouldn't go all the way up to the top of the glass, but would end about 3 cm from the top - so the top part of the glass looked like a "normal" glass.
There was very little plastic in those days, and things were wrapped in old newspapers, banana leaves, "waxed" paper, etc.
***PS. That's not at all to say that there aren't things in English which I don't like, or which I wish were otherwise. It's just that I accept that it's pointless to "write letters to the editor", "post on blogs", etc about the fact that that is the case. For example, I don't like that American English doesn't make a distinction between "alternate" and "alternative". They can say "that is an alternate way of doing it". For me, "alternate" is closely related to "alternating" - i.e. 'taking turns' - so (sort of) 'that is a way of doing things which was only used every second time the situation arises', whereas "alternative" means "a different choice one can make". Now, that distinction
is made in more careful forms of British English, and it's a distinction I make, so American usage irritates me
every single time I see it. But, as a "descriptive linguist", I just have to accept that that distinction simply doesn't exist in American English. There's no point my trying to
make the Americans say it my way. For them "that is an alternate way of doing it"
means "that is an alternative way of doing it". If they want to say something like 'that is a way of doing things which was only used every second time the situation arises' (something which I admit very few people would ever want to say!), then they could simply say "that is an alternat
ing way of doing it.
If I had to use it, then: