The late-night shows on Comedy Central both took a linguistic turn last night. First, on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart managed to give himself a "grammar wedgie" trying to explain how President Obama's now-infamous line "You didn't build that" has been willfully misconstrued by his critics. Then, on "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert crafted an […]
According to a recently published and very influential book, scientists have recently discovered some amazing things about the differences between boys and girls. For example, girls' hearing is said to be an order of magnitude more sensitive than boys' hearing. And this is a difference with major consequences in public as well as private life: […]
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As a result of some Language Log posts a couple of years ago, I get quite a few inquiries from journalists about Dr. Leonard Sax and his science-based arguments for single-sex education. It's in the nature of things that only a small fraction of such discussions wind up in the resulting articles. For example, for […]
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If we come upon a glyph that we don't recognize and can't find in any dictionary, especially if we have half an idea what it might mean or what it might sound like, we are apt to call it a "variant character" (yìtǐzì 異體字) or calligraphic form of some standard glyph. It happens all the […]
Continuing our series on dragons, this note and illustration come from Juha Janhunen, the Finnish linguist: Happy Blue Dragon Year to everybody! Below is the official flag (1889-1912) of the Manchu Empire (in the west misleadingly known as "China"), which happens to have a blue dragon on it. Manchu muduri 'dragon' still seems to lack an external etymology. […]
Sunny Jhatti wrote to me: "I didn't know what 'pimp slap' meant till I saw this." After witnessing her astonishing diatribe, Conal Boyce said: I felt like I needed to take a shower. (Adding insult to injury, google failed to elucidate 'Skims' for me. Had to look elsewhere to get an inkling of what that […]
This is a followup to "Japanese words that are dying out: focus on diabetes" (11/21/23). Because it's history of science / medicine for specialists and too technical for the majority of readers, I will not provide transcriptions for all but a few of the most common terms. [The following is a guest post from Nathan Hopson] […]
From Nathan Hopson: I have been reading some handwritten documents from the 1960s and 1970s, and have been reminded that even beyond abbreviations, there were still "nonstandard" kanji in use. I guess this took me off guard mostly because these are school publications. On the abbreviated side, the most obvious example is: 第 → 㐧 […]
The Differences between Old English, Middle English and Modern English By Danièle Cybulskie When people study Shakespeare in high school, I often hear them refer to his language as “Old English.” As far as the language goes, Shakespeare’s English actually falls under the category of “Modern English.” This may be a little hard to believe, […]
(see in particular the second item) If this isn't dictator status, I don't know what ishttps://t.co/A4guMzG4m1 — Bumboclott (@Bumboclott) June 29, 2023
Anemona Hartocollis, "Slashing Its Budget, West Virginia University Asks, What Is Essential?", NYT 8/18/2023: The state’s flagship school will no longer teach world languages or creative writing — a sign, its president says, of the future at many public universities. Christian Adams wants to be an immigration or labor lawyer, so he planned to major […]
Two nights ago, it was raining heavily, with lightning and thunder every so often. As I was peering out into the blackness of my backyard, all of a sudden, a bright light flashed on. At first I thought it was lightning, but then I realized that someone or something had set off the light. It […]