Language Log

I've been reading countless reports about how Xi Jinping was made the "core" leader of China during the recently concluded meeting (6th Plenum) of the CCP, e.g.:

"China’s Communist Party Declares Xi Jinping ‘Core’ Leader", by Chris Buckley (NYT, 10/27/16)*

"China's Ruling Party Endorses Xi as 'Core Leader' After Meeting" (RFA, 10/27/16)

"Down to the core:  Xi Jinping gets a new label, but no more power: In China, a year of political infighting lies ahead" (The Economist, 10/27/16)

"China’s Xi Jinping Tightens His Hold on Communist Party:  Officials at conclave designate the president as the ‘core’ of the leadership, using title conferred on Mao Zedong " (WSJ, 10/27/16)

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*Notice, in the photograph accompanying this article (and many other articles), all the members of the Standing Committee, seated at the front of the hall facing us, raise their hands in exactly the same way (angle, height, position of thumb versus other fingers, etc.).  The other members of the Politburo, with their backs to us, also match the posture of the Standing Committee members, but not with such exactitude.

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There's a new article on linguistic borrowing by Jane C. Hu in Quartz (10/23/16):  "The genius and stupidity of corporate America are on display when companies rebrand for new countries".  The article originally had a better title:  "Phono-semantic matching is corporate America's best option when trying to rebrand for new countries".

We have already studied an old name for Singapore on the back of an envelope dating to 1901:

• "An old name for Singapore" (9/6/16)

Now, Ruben de Jong, relying on the works of Dutch scholars, has discovered several others.

How do you write Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's names in Chinese?

As it turns out, the answer may vary depending on whether the person you ask is from mainland China (ZH-CN), Hong Kong (ZH-HK), Macau (ZH-MO), Malaysia/Singapore (ZH-SG), or Taiwan (ZH-TW).

Here we go again:

"Samsung’s Galaxy On7 goes official" (Marketing-Interactive, 9/28/16)

It has come to my attention that many laypeople, even Language Log readers, are using incorrect plurals for flower names. "Geraniums" indeed! "Crocuses", for heaven's sake! Please get these right. There follows a list of 30 count nouns naming flowers, together with their approved grammatically correct plurals. Don't use incorrect plurals any more. Shape up.

[This is the third in a series of four planned posts on Hokkien and related Southern Min / Minnan language issues.  The first was "Eurasian eureka" (9/12/16) and the second was "Hokkien in Singapore" (9/16/16).]

Some names for Taiwanese language in MSM:

Táiyǔ 台語 ("Taiwanese")

Táiwānhuà 台灣話 ("Taiwanese")

Fúlǎo 福佬 / Héluò 河洛 ("Hoklo")

I received an exciting email this afternoon from Perry Alexis, the chief accountant for the Warren Buffett Foundation. It seems I have been picked to receive a $1,500,000 donation — not a grant for research or anything, but a donation. And I notice it came from an email address in Kazakhstan.

Strange happenings in the Jinhua zoo, Zhejiang, China:

"Has a Chinese zoo called a gorilla Harambe McHarambeface? Claim that poll decided animal’s name sweeps the web" (Daily Mail, 9/13/16)

• Confusion over the naming of a gorilla at a zoo after a 'huge public vote'
• Newborn 'christened' at Jinhua zoo in China's central Zhejiang province
• Total of 73,345 votes were cast for Harambe McHarambeface 
• Name is reference to gorilla killed in US after boy fell into its enclosure

At my hotel here in Brno, Czechia, the shampoo comes in small sachets, manufactured in Düsseldorf, labeled with the word denoting the contents in a long list of suitable European Union languages. I can't tell you which languages they picked, for reasons which will immediately become apparent. Here are the first four:

1. Shampoo
2. Shampoo
3. Shampooing
4. Shampoo

Just so you're sure.

This is the back side of a 1901 envelope sent from Hong Kong to Singapore:

(Source)

Venya sent in this photograph of an ice-cream parlor's sign taken in December 2014.  It was in the Anping district of Tainan, near the old Dutch fort.

The following article on an Australian website has a slip-up in the handling of an honorific in Indonesian / Javanese:

"Official Indonesian documentation has verified Mbah Gotho was born in 1870, making him the oldest person in the world" (SBS News, 8/31/16)

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At the reported age of 145, Mbah Gotho from the Indonesian island of Java could be the oldest person on the planet but he is not interested in celebrating.

“I only want to die,” he told Indonesian television station Liputan 6 in August in Sragen in Central Java.

… Mr Mbah said he has had a tombstone ready since 1992.