Language Log

If ever there is a question about the need to know a few foreign languages these days, see this BBC link about the embarrassed Irish cops who have been stymied in their hunt for a serial traffic violator who went by the name Prawo Jazdy. It seems that Mr. Jazdy is not who the cops thought he was. He wasn’t even a person. In Polish, the words mean, hold your breath, “driver’s license.”

Hat tip to Ruth Morris.

Most translators only have to worry about being criticized for errors, but in Afghanistan the mere act of translation can get you twenty years in prison. An appellate court has upheld 20 year prison sentences for Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, who translated the Qur'an into Dari, one of the two major languages of Afghanistan, and Mushtaq Ahmad, a cleric who endorsed Zalmai's translation. It appears that no errors have been found in Zalmai's translation: the objection of Muslim clerics is that the Dari translation does not appear alongside the original Arabic text. The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty. Although the court did not impose the death penalty, Chief Judge Abdul Salam Azizadah agreed that it might be appropriate.

Lucky for Zalmai and Ahmad that Afghanistan now has a democratic government controlled by moderate Muslims rather than the Taliban and other members of the tiny minority of intolerant extremists, hunh?

Three freedom-of-speech updates on various language-related shock- horror- scandal- probe episodes in the UK this morning.

(1) Prince Harry is being sent away to an equality and diversity training course where perhaps he will at last learn that the royal family should avoid any use of offensive epithets for ethnic minority groups in the population over which they have hereditary rule.

(2) The Dutch far-right-wing politician Geert Wilders has been denied the right to enter Britain to attend a screening of his anti-Muslim film Fitna (it reportedly juxtaposes shots of the 9/11 attacks with quotations from the Qur'an), which a member of the House of Lords wants to screen for parliamentarians. The refusal of entry is said to be because Wilders poses a danger to the public through the ferocity of his extreme anti-Islamic views (at least 79 preachers deemed to preach "hate" have also been denied entry to the UK under the same European Union law). Wilders plans to fly in anyway, daring the authorities to "put me in handcuffs".

(3) The twentieth anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa condemning novelist Salman Rushdie to death for disrespecting Islam is causing some renewed discussion of the case. At the University of Bristol broadcaster Kenan Malik and Professor Tariq Modood will debate limits on free speech in a multicultural society — both attacking the liberal left, but for different reasons (Malik thinks liberals have been complicit in gagging free speech; Modood them liberals of inconsistency and double-standards for not extending protection from offensive speech to religious minorities).

Life struggles on in this peaceful but frozen country. Rowan Laxton is on bail. Here in Edinburgh a light snow is falling outside, and as I sit at the laptop over breakfast in my kitchen posting about possible threats to linguistic liberty, so far the heavy footfall of police has not been heard on the stairs outside our apartment. Wait a minute, there's someone at the door…

If the stars are in the right alignment and if you live long enough, you too can become a victim of stereotype and prejudice. I’ve been a semi-privileged, middle class, male Caucasian all of my life, but now, thanks to The New Old Age I’ve discovered that I too am a card-carrying member of a group that is besieged by politically incorrect language.

A stylebook for the media now shows how writers and broadcasters can avoid being sued for discrimination by, uh, well, er, whatever we’d rather be called (hint: it isn’t the e word). I’ll bet that this book will be cited in a slew of forthcoming lawsuits on age discrimination. Elderly is out, along with senior citizen, golden years, feisty, spry, senile, and grandfatherly.

As I understand ageism these days, I’m even supposed to be offended if someone says that I’m seventy-eight years young. Okay, I know about the more obvious ageist words, like codger, old fart, geezer, old goat, and fossil, but the insult of adding years young to my age mystifies me. For some reason I kinda like it. Maybe I need to get out more.

American readers are likely to be truly amazed to learn what has just happened to a senior British diplomat, Mr Rowan Laxton. He was on an exercise bike at a gym in the Regent's Park area of London, and he got angry as he watched film of the destruction in Gaza, and shouted: "Fucking Israelis! Fucking Jews!" — adding that they should be "wiped off the face of the earth."

Mr Laxton is head of diplomatic policy in South Asia at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK government. He reports directly to brief the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. (In one of those twists that fiction has to avoid on grounds of implausibility but real life allows, Mr Miliband is Jewish.) But he was not merely reprimanded, or sent for anger management, or removed from his post, or dropped from a BBC talk program over this. The police came and arrested him. He faces a criminal charge of inciting religious hatred, which can carry a seven-year prison term. (For a newspaper account, see this report in The Times.)

We have previously discussed the claim of the Attorney General of Kentucky and a trial court's acceptance of that claim, that the domain names of internet gambling sites are "gambling devices" and therefore subject to seizure under Kentucky law. I am pleased to report that the Kentucky Court of Appeals has ruled that domain names are not gambling devices and on this basis has issued an order of prohibition barring the trial court from enforcing its seizure order. The majority held that:

…it stretches credulity to conclude that a series of numbers, or Internet address, can be said to constitute a "machine or any mechanical or other device…[sic] designed and manufactured primarily for use in connection with gambling." We are thus convinced that the trial court clearly erred in concluding that the domain names can be construed to be gambling devices subject to forfeiture under KRS 528.100.

A set of previously-rejected absentee ballots in the Minnesota senatorial election have now been counted. Some background on the process that led to this event can be found in the affidavit of Tony P. Trimble (12-31-08), which includes as Exhibit A "Rules for Processing Improperly Rejected Absentee Ballots for US Senators", which in turn includes point 15:

Several Language Log readers have asked me what a linguist might be able to do with the undercover tapes in the escalating case of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. The simple answer is, “I don’t know; I haven’t heard them.” That puts me in the same predicament with his lawyer, Ed Gensen, who faces the problem of having to defend the governor on charges that, so far at least, have not been accompanied with the hard evidence allegedly on the tapes. But hey, that’s how the system usually works. Prosecutors wait as long as possible before revealing their best evidence. Among other things, this helps to delay the defense from preparing as quickly as it could.

The December 15, 2008 issue of Newsweek contains an article called, “Desperate Housewares”, a catchy title that plays off the name of a popular television program called “Desperate Housewives” (full disclosure: I’ve never watched this program but I do subscribe to Newsweek). In the article was this sentence:

Shoppers seem inured to the relentless Christmas spirit.

From this I’d guess that most readers understand that shoppers are accustomed to and even accept this relentless Christmas spirit and that it’s not a good thing– except perhaps for the retail trades. Inure, that is, conveys something negative here. Hold that thought while I describe a very different use of inure.

Mark Liberman’s post about the phone call that has caused people to try to determine who was responsible for the Mumbai attacks highlights a problem in the current practice of forensic linguists who do authorship analysis these days. His post was about speaker identification (or nationality/ethnicity of speaker), so I’m stretching things a bit here, but whether the evidence is spoken or written, the process of narrowing down a list of suspects, much less finding the right one, has many of the same problems.

Back in January I discussed the claim by the Federal Communications Commission that the buttocks are a "sexual or excretory organ". To my amazement and dismay, this nonsense continues. The matter has now reached the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Here is ABC's brief and here is the FCC's response.

I don't find the FCC's response at all persuasive. It consists in large part of the claim that in the rule the phrase "sexual or excretory organs" should be interpreted as meaning what they want it to mean, as "body parts whose public display is deemed offensive by prudish people" rather than as what it actually says. It will be interesting to see what the Court makes of it.

A report from Languge Log's Rocky Mountain desk, where folks out here now fight over words rather than cattle rustling.

The Planning and Zoning Board of the Missoula Montana city government is having one of those ding-dong, small-town lexical battles, this time over what constitutes a parapet. Montana Lil’s has purchased the defunct 4 B’s Restaurant at a busy (by Montana standards) intersection and wants to turn it into a casino (yes, we have lots of these out here and we probably don’t need any more, but that’s how it goes out here in the new Rocky Mountain west).

The new owners want to erect a big video sign on the old restaurant’s roof, which has four equal sized, triangular sections that come to a point at the center. Current signage rules allow for parapet signs but they prohibit any signs on roof tops. No problem, say the new owners. Their new sign will be placed on a parapet that they’ll construct as a small, box-like structure on top of the building’s existing pointed roof. Unfortunately for them, their proposed construction is way too far from the edge of the outer wall of the building, where parapets normally are located. City officials say this doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of a parapet. They have a point.

In this earlier post, I was critical of the FCC's claim that the F-word "inherently has a sexual connotation" no matter what the context. (The Supreme Court took up this question yesterday.) However, my post doesn't offer any suggestions for how to get a clear look at what the F-word does contribute to a discourse. Though I don't have results for the F-word in particular, I do have results for more mildly-taboo items, including English damn and the Chinese intensive tama(de). (I'm hoping that this follow-up post allays any fears Geoff Pullum might have that I now see language as a big bag of words…)