Under the name "Arnold Zwicky" I have returned to the top of the list of Language Log authors, having spent some time in the guise "Zwicky Arnold" at the very bottom of the list. Let there be wild celebrations! Boundless e-Champagne and i-Bûche de Juillet for everyone!
A bit of silliness as the U.S. Revolutionary holiday winds down.
Facebook just suggested to me that I might want to friend Pullum Xhani. I was, of course, intrigued by the name, but found nothing illuminating in what Pullum Xhani was willing to provide on his page — nothing but name, sex, and a photo of anime characters. Pursuing things a bit further, I seem to have discovered that the name is Albanian, with Xhani being a reasonably commonly Albanian family name (well, in the top 100, though just barely) and that Pullum is an Albanian personal name. Geoff take note. (I say "seem to have discovered" because the pages I pulled up were all in Albanian, and though Albanian is an Indo-European language it's about as opaque to me as Mongolian or Aymara. So I could easily have misunderstood things.)
If I was going to go phishing, with English as my medium of communication in the ocean of dupes out there, I think I would first learn a little bit about the cultural practices of the English-speaking world. I like think that if I were a phisherman I would do a little better than this (received today; I quote the entire text):
From info@tnt.org Sat May 15 20:32:16 2010 Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 15:32:03 -0400 From: TNT COURIER Reply-to: servicescouriertnt01@9.cn Subject: bank draft X-Originating-IP: 41.220.68.2 To: undisclosed-recipients:;
You have a bank draft of $250,000.00 USD,Please Contact the TNT INTERNATIONAL COURIER for claims with your
Name,Address,Age,Occupation,Tel and Country.Contact person Mr.Ellen Hanson,Tel:+2347025919258 Email:servicescouriertnt01
9.cn
Mark Liberman reports oncare bomb (for car bomb). Where did that E come from?
Now we have an answer: from the extensive (but mostly subterranean) trading in letters. Note this E-less example from a posting today by Michael McGoff to the American Name Society mailing list:
Colleagues,
Please not the following important announcement from our colleague Wayne Finke
John McIntyre has once again wandered off into that parodic fantasy land where usage writers and linguists disport themselves as characters in hard-boiled detective fiction. This time, on the occasion of National Grammar Day, it's "Pulp Diction"; the complete serial is here. The climax of the tale comes in installment 4 ("The dark tower"), when Language Log saves the day:
With the thunder of many boots, a battering ram burst open the door. In strode Mark Liberman of Penn at the head of Language Log’s Modal Auxiliary Corps.
The four installments were posted separately, and you can add comments on McIntyre's blog.
At this page in the Daily WTF you may find a verbatim reproduction of an email in which an office worker told her colleagues:
Please be advised- I will be bouncing Nude in 5 minutes. Please let me know if this presents an issue.
Presents an issue? It sure does! Does this woman have no conception of workplace manners? I find it hard enough to concentrate when co-workers are just sitting around nude in the common room. When they start bouncing around, I really feel I have to draw the line.
One minute later, however, came a second email explaining that the word "Nude" had been — can you guess? — a cupertino. OK, everybody, false alarm. Debbie will not be bouncing nude after all. It's just some server called NewDev that will be bounced (i.e., taken down and quickly rebooted). Nothing to see here, folks; back to your desks.
Top story of the morning in the UK for the serious language scientist must surely be the report in The Sun concerning a children's toy mouse that is supposed to sing "Jingle bells, jingle bells" but instead sings "Pedophile, pedophile". Said one appalled mother who squeezed the mouse, "Luckily my children are too young to understand." The distributors, a company called Humatt, of Ferndown in Dorset, claims that the man in China who recorded the voice for the toy "could not pronounce certain sounds." And the singing that he recorded "was then speeded up to make it higher-pitched — distorting the result further." (A good MP3 of the result can be found here.) They have recalled the toy.
Shocked listeners to BBC Radio 4 this morning heard the presenters read this story out while collapsing with laughter. Language Log is not amused. If there was ever a more serious confluence of issues in speech technology, the Chinese language, freedom of speech, taboo language, and the protection of children, I don't know when.
It's been a while since we had a Noam Chomsky posting. Now, via the Stanford Linguistics Department's newsletter, the Sesquipedalian, a bit of silliness:
Today's Guardian offers 