Language Log

Peter Meilstrup sends in this picture from his local hospital:

SC, a native reader of British headlinese, was baffled by the noun pile-up "Coin change 'skin problem fear'" on the BBC News web site, because he hadn't previously encountered the story.

Nick Edwards, "Analysis: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin", Reuters 4/14/2012.

"Escaped wallaby caught using huge fishing net", BBC News 4/13/2012:

A wallaby that was on the loose from a fishery near the boundary between Midlothian and the Scottish Borders has been found.

The 2ft Tasmanian wallaby was caught just after midnight using a fishing net after he was spotted feeding on a 40 acre estate.

This item was sent in by Tim McDonald, who wonders "why any wallaby with the intelligence to use a fishing net should have to do so clandestinely".

Last week, I came across what I thought was an artful headline in my local paper (Calgary Herald; 03/21/1012):

Police looking into death by Balzac

What reader wouldn't be lured into dipping further into this article, into wondering what human tragedy or comedy awaits in the finer print? Are we to be treated to the investigation of a lurid, long-unsolved murder committed by one of the fathers of literary realism? A horrible accident involving a tome flung from a high-rise balcony? Someone suffering an asthma attack after reading a suffocating passage of nineteenth-century French prose?

"Chinese cooking fat heads for Holland", DutchNews.nl 3/27/2012.

Today's crash blossom likely involves multiple aborted landings:

Romney wins mask lingering questions about his candidacy

Since the word wins occurs much more often as a verb than as a noun, you have a good excuse if you needed to take several runs at this one. Just what exactly did Romney win? A rubber Ronald Reagan mask? A mask-lingering contest? The right to ask or answer questions about lingering masks? It takes some untangling of the parser to get to the intended reading where Romney wins is the compound noun subject of the verb phrase mask lingering questions about his candidacy.

Bad enough as a headline, but CNN's website has a nasty setup. By the time you've finally sorted out the main headline, you then have to contend with the "Breaking News" headline in the embedded video:

"Does Donald Trump support matter?", Special Report w/ Bret Baier, Fox News 2/2/2012. John Crowley's reponse:

Well what's the alternative, thought I.  Denouncing matter?  Indifference to matter?   The Gnostics used to argue over it…

Crash blossom of the week: "Don't help old, blind council tells parking officers", The Age 2/1/2012.

Aspects of the Finnish language happen to have come up a couple of times in recent weeks on Language Log ("Rare Finnish Crash Blossom", 1/13/2012; "It's baaack . . . and upside-down!", 1/2/2012). Lauri Karttunen, from whom I learned a bit about Finnish when I was a grad student, sent in these comments:

I did not know the technical term "crash blossom."  The equivalent term in Finnish is "kielikukkanen" (language flower). They are not rare in Finnish. The monthly "Suomen Kuvalehti" always has a couple in their column "Jyviä ja akanoita" (Seeds and Chaff).

This one isn't ambiguous, as far as I can tell — it just doesn't mean what the headline writer wanted it to mean: "Buried Alive Fiance Gets 20 Years in Prison", ABC News 1/13/2012.

From Miika Sillanpää:

A Finnish tabloid presented this beautiful crash blossom today:

Disregarding the tragic subject, it can be read either as
"Father kills his daughter's dog with hammer"
OR
"Father kills his daughter with dog's hammer"

Well-tended crash blossoms such as this are exceedingly rare in the Finnish-language media, so it was a pretty delightful find on this grim and dark Friday the 13th. Though I wonder where the dog had gotten the hammer in the first place.

Google Translate presents another possibility (I think incorrectly): "The father of her daughter's dog was killed with a hammer".

Before reading further, consider the following newspaper headline, and make a mental note of what you think the article is about: