Language Log

Complaint upheld against Belgian ticket inspector who said ‘bonjour’ in Flanders
Ilyass Alba also said ‘goeiedag’ on train in Dutch-speaking region but he breached country’s strict language rules
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels, The Guardian (16 Jul 2025)

Go figure!  The train was in Flanders and nearing Brussels, which is officially bilingual.

[This is a guest post by Barbara Phillips Long]

There is an interesting sidelight in commentary about an article in the New York Review of Books, which posits that the U.S. is two nations under one government, where the two entities exchange political power. The link to the NYRB (paywalled) article is here.

Trump’s favorite verbal tic is now 1,000 pages of legislation
He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
Monica Hesse, WP (5/29/25)

Everybody has what I call a kǒutóuchán 口頭禪 (lit., "oral zen", i.e., "favorite expression", kind of like a mantra).  Mine, in Nepali, is "bāphre bāph!"; Pinkie Wu's, in Cantonese, is "wah!"; a Harvard historian I know loves to say "precisely!"; and so forth and so on.  President Trump's is "beautiful".

In 1444, an associate professor (bujehag 부제학 副提學) in the Hall of Worthies, Ch'oe Manli (최만리 崔萬里; d. October 23, 1445), along with other Confucian scholars, spoke out against the creation of hangul (then called eonmun).  See here for the Classical Chinese text and English translation (less than felicitous, but easily available) of Ch'oe's 1444 protest against the reforms leading to Hangul.  As we all know, King Sejong (1397-1450; r. 1418-1450) nonetheless promulgated Hangul in 1446, so I wondered whether anything unfavorable happened to Ch'oe as a result (note that he died the year after delivering his protest and the year before the promulgation of Hangul).  Ross King kindly replied to my inquiry on this matter as follows:

From Mok Ling:

As I'm writing this (evening of 3 May), my friends across the Strait of Malacca in Singapore are eagerly awaiting the results of their most recent general elections. As I've found out, in Singapore, voting in elections is not only a civic duty but mandatory by law!

I happened to come across this image showing the reverse of a poll card issued to all voters:

The reverse of a poll card issued for the Singaporean presidential election, 2011.
The polling station in question was at the void deck of Block 115 Clementi Street 13
in the Holland-Bukit Timah Group Representation Constituency.  (source)

Caitlin Cassidy, "Spruiking, fake tradies and corflute stoushes: how to understand the Australian election", The Guardian 4/29/2025:

Australians pride themselves on their distinctive federal elections. It’s among a handful of nations that enforces compulsory voting, boasting a turnout rate of more than 90%. The preferential voting system, in theory, means no votes are wasted and choice matters. In recent years, Australians even have an emblem for their civic duty – a democracy sausage – the natural conclusion of voting on a Saturday at schools eager to raise funds.

Also unique is Australian campaign vernacular, which is, year after year, keenly adopted by the media and politicians alike. From donkey voting to corflute stoushes and spruiking, here are some of the weird idioms you need to know to keep abreast of what’s been happening in the lead-up to Saturday’s federal election

Ignore the super-slow video (if you can! — I watched it a dozen times).  Look at what is written on the man's t-shirt.

"Authoritarian attitudes linked to altered brain anatomy, neuroscientists reveal", PsyPost 4/19/2025:

A new brain imaging study published in the journal Neuroscience has found that authoritarian attitudes on both the political left and right are linked to specific structural differences in the brain. Young adults who scored higher on right-wing authoritarianism had less gray matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in social reasoning. Meanwhile, those who endorsed more extreme forms of left-wing authoritarianism showed reduced cortical thickness in the right anterior insula, a brain area tied to empathy and emotion regulation.

The research aimed to better understand the brain-based traits that might underlie authoritarian thinking. Previous studies have documented the psychological characteristics associated with authoritarianism—such as impulsivity, dogmatism, and heightened sensitivity to threat—but few have examined whether these traits are reflected in brain structure.

The cited paper is Jésus Adrián-Ventura et al., "Authoritarianism and the brain: Structural MR correlates associated with polarized left- and right-wing ideology traits", IBRO Neuroscience 5/24/2025.

April is Autism Acceptance Month:

Autism Acceptance Month celebrates and honors the experiences and identities of Autistic individuals. It emphasizes understanding, inclusion, and support, moving beyond awareness towards meaningful acceptance.

On April 16, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. put out this not-very-supportive set of claims about Autism:

[The news conference that this was taken from is here.]

Jean Nota Bene, the biggest French YouTuber (millions of followers) on historical subjects, recently focused on the Kushans.  He follows many of the same themes that we do on Language Log and Sino-Platonic Papers (including Greek-Indian-Chinese associations), so many readers of this post will be interested in what he has to say about the Kushan Empire (ca. 30–ca. 375 AD).  Although Nota Bene speaks in French, I think readers will be able to glean a lot of valuable information on this subject.  Plus his presentation is richly illustrated, so watch carefully and pause the video if you want to take a closer look.

Seldom does a matter of correct / precise translation go viral the way these words of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to American Secretary of State Marco Rubio did:  "hǎo zì wéi zhī 好自为之".  The set phrase ("chéngyǔ 成語") has been rendered scores of different ways, most of them dismissive or pejorative.

Why Wang Yi’s message to Marco Rubio may have been lost in translation:

There has been much discussion about how to interpret an idiom used by China’s foreign minister in talks with the US secretary of state

Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post (1/28/25)

Two colleagues noticed that the PRC government often rebukes other countries for lacking sincerity, and they asked me if Chinese had a different understanding of sincerity that permitted / encouraged them to do so.  "Sincerity" is so front and center in Chinese negotiations with other nations that one soon comes to realize, if you want smooth relations with the PRC, you must needs demonstrate to the Chinese representatives that you are utterly sincere, i.e., that you are willing to do exactly what they want you to do.  Anything less opens you to the charge of being insincere.

My colleagues asked me if there is something special about the Chinese conception of sincerity, i.e., does it have special Chinese characteristics" (jùyǒu Zhòngguó tèsè 具有中国特色)?  Just as it is an article of faith for the CCP that socialism in China comes with special characteristics (Zhōngguó tèsè shèhuì zhǔyì 中国特色社会主义).

With the changing of the guard at the State Department, the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and his counterpart in China's Foreign Ministry, Wang Yi, must needs have a dialog, a man-to-man conversation, so to speak.  As is customary with China's wolf warriors, however, Wang Yi was up to his old habits of giving young Marco a jiàoxùn 教训 (let's just call it "a lesson", not quite a "dressing down").

Here's how the most critical part (the final portion) of Wang Yi's communication was reported in an AP article on the event:

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.