Language Log

[Preface:  The nitty-gritty questions about pronunciation discussed below are expressed in common spelling (not a phonetic alphabet) because the people who have written them down here are non-phoneticians.  What they have recorded are their best approximations of how they think they are saying "Canton".]

After reading "'Cant-idates'" (11/12/25) and "Can't even" (11/13/25), I submitted this comment:

As for "can't", there are quite a few "Cantons" in America. I'm from the one in Stark County Ohio, and some of the people there pronounce the name not as "Can-ton", but as "Cant-un".

This prompted Mark Liberman to ask:

Is that your way to representing [ˈkænʔn̻], i.e. the second syllable as a glottal-onset syllabic nasal?

In "Prepositionssss…" (9/2/2011), we quoted from the 1995 Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage,

Members of the never-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition school are still with us and are not reluctant to make themselves known…

This follows M-W's note that

…recent commentators — at least since Fowler 1926 — are unanimous in their rejection of the notion that ending a sentence with a preposition is an error or an offense against propriety. Fowler terms the idea a "cherished superstition."

And that same 2011 post ends with a list of links discussing the superstition's origin and progress, going back to John Dryden's 1672 attempt to demonstrate that "he is a better poet and playwright than Jonson, Fletcher and Shakespeare were".

Today I observed this superstition rising again from the grave.

Macquarie Dictionary is soliciting votes for its 2025 Word of the Year choice — the shortlist is here.

Yesterday's Dinosaur Comics:

After coming face to face with the unavoidable debacles inherent in mechanical Chinese typewriters (not to mention many other pitfalls of the writing system), Language Log readers will not be surprised to learn that sinographs were not well suited for telegraphy:

In the comments on "Cant-idates" (11/12/2025), there was some back-and-forth about how much phonetic residue Americans generally leave of the word-final /t/ in sequences where can't is immediately followed by a vowel-initial word.

In defense of the answer "not much", I pulled three examples of "can't even" (literally) at random from the NPR podcast corpus I've used in previous posts (and in teaching corpus phonetics).

This video begins with two Dutch sayings:

There's a saying in Dutch: "God schiep de Aarde, maar de Nederlanders schiepen Nederland".

Another saying in Dutch is: "Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten".

Today's program is about how the Netherlands picked a fight with the sea, and won.

All places in China have topolect terms, some more than others, and some are more influential outside of their own region than others.  One regional variety whose speakers create numerous memorable expressions they are proud of is Dōngběihuà 東北話 ("Northeastern topolect").  I was inspired to make this post after reading a collection of twenty Northeasternisms.

I showed the collection to Diana Shuheng Zhang, who is an authentic Northeasterner.  Diana not only translated and explained the entire collection, she added twenty more, for a total of forty, commenting, "Can't stop laughing. Hope everybody enjoys our native expressions. :)" 

Please note that I (VHM) have added all the pinyin romanizations and a few literal translations).  Because some of the characters are unusual and I'm not a Northeastern speaker, I cannot guarantee the accuracy, especially down to the tones (and their sandhi), of all the transcriptions I have supplied.  Pay attention to Diana's valuable phonological notes.

The "what we do" page for the  CANTWINVICTORYFUND starts by explaining that they "Run Cant-idates to lose spectacularly in gerrymandered districts".

The first part of this debate, "Abstand und ausbau" (10/28/25), was so spirited and prolonged, and has recently moved on to significant new ground, that I've decided to launch this part 2.

Before commenting here, please go back and review what was said in the previous o.p. and the subsequent comments thereto, some of which are quite substantial.  Here I copy one of the recent observations in the first thread that has not yet been adequately responded to there:

Frazz for 11/06/2025:

And for 11/07/2025:

“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: A young woman did not fart in her husband’s embrace.”

As quoted in Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History (W.W. Norton, 2025), by Moudhy Al-Rashid.  This is an excellent introduction to how much we can learn about ancient Mesopotamia from the thousands of cuneiform stamped tablets often just tossed away as building fill.