Language Log

That's part of a message from one of my students.  I knew right away what he meant, but — as always — I'm curious about what causes such off-the-wall typos.  It can't be because of a spellchecker gone awry.  So I asked the student, "What type of input system do you use?  I'm trying to think about how that was produced."

He replied, "I use the bog-standard* American English input that Apple has. I think I missed the 'h' and it grabbed it from there? Maybe an additional incorrect letter?

[*This was the first time I encountered this expression, and I didn't know what it meant.]

I followed up:

just regular keyboard?

not on iPhone?

no shortcuts?     swypes?

speech recognition input?

Recently I was doing some background research on Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), and one of the references that Google Scholar handed me was a Semantic Scholar page for J.A. Willeford and J. Burleigh, "Handbook of central auditory processing disorders in children", 1985, with the following abstract:

The handbook of central auditory processing disorders in children that we provide for you will be ultimate to give preference. This reading book is your chosen book to accompany you when in your free time, in your lonely. This kind of book can help you to heal the lonely and get or add the inspirations to be more inoperative. Yeah, book as the widow of the world can be very inspiring manners. As here, this book is also created by an inspiring author that can make influences of you to do more.

[This is a guest post by Conal Boyce]

Chris Chappell finally caught up with you on the nàge nàge nàge / nèige nèige nèige 那个 那个 那个 ("that that that") story from USC that you introduced to the public more than two weeks ago (see the second item in the list of readings below). (In case they don't say 'hominuh, hominuh, hominuh' where you are, that's something certain Minnesotans like to say, tongue in cheek, as a back-woods alternative to 'er, um, uh'.)

"Wowkie Zhang【Sunshine, Rainbow, White pony】"

Ed Silverman, "An unchartered situation for all of us’: From shipping containers to security concerns, a Covid-19 vaccine supply chain takes shape", STAT 9/8/2020 [emphasis added]:

The pandemic has prompted the U.S. government and others across the globe to secure huge numbers of doses from Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers, who are pushing clinical trial timelines like never before in order to get their vaccines ready for use as soon as possible. One or more of these vaccines may be approved by regulators here and abroad in the months ahead.

The effort to distribute those vaccines has accelerated just as quickly. Just as container makers are squeezing more out of their production plants, vaccine makers are busy modeling transportation routes and storage conditions in many countries. Wholesalers are lining up warehouse space and trucks. And freight forwarders and airport managers are expanding security for what will immediately become the world’s hottest commodity.

“I’m more than 30 years in the business and thought I’d seen everything, but it’s an unchartered situation for all of us,” said Larry St. Onge, global life sciences and health care sector president at DHL, which provides a range of transportation services for pharmaceutical products. “The scale of the challenge is going to be very large and there will be a pressing need to eliminate bottlenecks.”

Sok3 Kei1
索K
‘to inhale, ingest, take Ketamine, which is an illegal drug in Hong Kong’

["Ketamine is a medication mainly used for starting and maintaining anesthesia. It induces a trance-like state while providing pain relief, sedation, and memory loss. Other uses include sedation in intensive care and treatment of pain and depression." Source]

[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson]

This came across the transom:

"Your Global Mansplaining Dictionary In 34 Languages"

The Japanese in this "handy crowdsourced linguistic guide to a universal blight" is a bit off, as I'll mansplain below, and I'd love to know how the LL hivemind sees the other languages.

横柄な男の解説 (ōhei na otoko no kaisetsu) = “patronizing man’s explanation," as it says, but:

1. 横柄 is rare enough in conversation that I can't recall ever encountering it, though I definitely have heard it "mis-"pronounced as yokogara occasionally.

A more likely term for the patronizing aspect of mansplaining would be 上から目線で (ue kara mesen de), i.e. "looking down upon." I have also seen "mansplainer" rendered as 上から目線の男性  (ue kara mesen no dansei) or 上から目線男 (ue kara mesen otoko), which comports with my understanding.

The same meaning is produced in reverse by the verb 見下す (mikudasu), lit. "to look down upon," and I have seen that used in describing mansplaining as well.

偉そうに (erasō ni), meaning something like "self-importantly," seems equally likely.

The9 is a Chinese girl group hailing from different parts of the PRC.  Here they are playing the telephone / Chinese whispers game with their own topolects*, which they refer to as fāngyán 方言, almost universally mistranslated into English as "dialect".

*See The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, q.v.

Researchers looking at infectious disease transmission found that loud speech is more of a problem than coughing and sneezing, and this was true regardless of the language spoken (English, Spanish, Mandarin, or Arabic).

Aerosol emission and superemission during human speech increase with voice loudness

    Sima Asadi, Anthony S. Wexler, Christopher D. Cappa, Santiago Barreda, Nicole M. Bouvier & William D. Ristenpart

Nature, Scientific Reports, volume 9, Article number: 2348 (2019)

With 5 charts

Headline in Global Times today (9/10/20):

Since the colorful, eye-catching term "vicious smears" has been popping up elsewhere in PRC English language media these days, colleagues have been wondering where it comes from in PRC Chinese language media.  Tracking down the Chinese original of this Global times article, it seems that "full of errors, inconsistent with the facts, and full of vicious smears against China" in this article is translated from "cuòlòu bǎichū, yǔ shìshí yánzhòng bùfú, chōngchìzhe duì Zhōngfāng de èdú gōngjí mǒhēi 错漏百出，与事实严重不符，充斥着对中方的恶毒攻击抹黑", and thus the Chinese word they use for "smears" in this article is "gōngjí 攻击 ("attack") mǒhēi 抹黑 ("discredit / [bring] shame [on] / defame / blacken OR tarnish [someone's reputation]")"; and "èdú gōngjí mǒhēi 恶毒攻击抹黑" for "vicious smears". Without the reference to the original Chinese sentence, I would probably translate "vicious smears" as "èdú de huǐbàng 恶毒的毁谤" ("vicious slander") given this specific context.

A new kind of Artificial non-Intelligence? A subversive easter egg of human origin? I'm not sure, but in the course of researching preposition usage, I discovered an odd result of Google searches for terms in various languages for dish soap — a panel (in English), attributed to Wikipedia, explaining that

Dishwashing liquid, known as dishwashing soap, dish detergent and dish soap, is a detergent used to assist in boredom.

In response to the previous post, "More completely new sinographs from Hong Kong" (9/8/20), John Rohsenow remarks:

I can see that it would be easy to use these "new" characters on hand-written posters, but how does one do it on line, or in printed form?

One would have to "zao zi", (Lit. 'construct [a] character') out of various component parts, which is doable, but not convenient.

From @togetherfightingdisease on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🇭🇰 | 一齊打怪獸💛 (@togetherfightingdisease) on Sep 6, 2020 at 9:43pm PDT