Thursday, September 27, 2012

'X cum Y' construction

Many English speakers would be familiar with the construction 'X cum Y' (where X and Y are nouns) to designate something or someone with two different attributes that are combined , e.g. model-cum-actor or restaurant-cum-dining room. The word cum here comes from the Latin preposition meaning 'with' or 'together with'. In writing, the words are often joined by a hyphen.

In spoken English, it's not something I hear that often (at least outside South Asia), even if people know the construction. Few people I know would talk about an actor-cum-model, and would probably say something like actor slash model slash waiter (effectively spelling out the punctuation marks used to divide up the different categories) or just actor model waiter. It's also no surprise that when I was doing the crossword in one of the local papers here the other day, I was puzzled by the clue: sofa-___-bed (3). You guessed it, the answer was 'cum', but most people I know would just call it a 'sofa-bed'.

In South Asia, the 'X cum Y' construction is used much more ubiquitously than back home, and usually without the hyphens in writing. It's almost as if people here really want to emphasise that something has multiple functions - maybe it suggests you get more value for your money? Or perhaps it makes an event sound more impressive?

Here we have the sign at the Bamboo Pavilion (sic)at Kisama in  Nagaland, where the Hornbill Festival is held. There was an exhibition cum sale last year, and I imagine there'll be another one this year.

Bamboo Pavilion, Hornbill Festival 2011

The other weekend in Guwahati there was an awareness-cum-sensitization programme (here with the hyphens).


At the university, we also have a library cum seminar room.

Update: two more examples from around Guwahati


This is fine and good, but most English speakers are probably giggling just a little bit at the above examples, because unfortunately, cum is homophonous with a noun that means 'semen' and verb meaning 'to ejaculate'! This often leads to some unfortunate but highly amusing examples (which is probably why most English speakers outside of South Asia avoid using the construction altogether!)

For instance, a month ago I saw this sign for a mega loan cum exchange mela (a mela is a kind of fair here), with only the words mega loan in bold.


The other day my friend L. mentioned that she was walking through Diphu, she saw a sign for fast food cum restaurant. This is probably based on the use of fast food as the short form of 'fast food eatery / outlet'. (Update: I've seen a few of them around Guwahati as well.)

And just the other day I was rather slightly when I got a text message from a student saying she couldn't come to class because she had to attend a freshers' cum picnic! Amazingly (especially for a text message here), she used an apostrophe, probably to point out that  freshers' was simply short for 'freshers' day', i.e. an orientation day for freshmen / first years.

It's a rather popular construction in Indian English, that really doesn't seem to be going out of fashion anything time soon. So in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the humour-cum-amusement I get out of seeing these signs everywhere,

4 comments:

  1. I suspect you'll still find cum used in the Latin sense in the 'educated' use of English outside South Asia, although not as frequently as was once the case, precisely because of the homophony you describe. A complicating factor is the homography. For some reason pornographers historically preferred the 'cum' spelling over 'come', which was probably the intended meaning - (rapidly) approaching a destination.

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    1. Yes, I have no doubt about that - I still see it used in the odd newspaper article in Melbourne's The Age for instance. I reckon that most educated English speakers would be familiar with the construction.

      I should qualify my statement about the homophony though. While the two words in isolation would be pronounced identically, 'cum' used in the Latin sense never takes phrasal stress, so in spoken English it is still possible to produce a difference between the two (although listeners may hear what they want to hear).

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  2. Actually, I'd say that for a lot of English speakers I know it's not just a homophone, but a homograph as well.

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    1. Actually, I think it's the fact that it's a homograph which makes these examples disturbing / funny / disturbingly funny. (Especially when it's in capitals on a large sign.)

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