Language Log

On first blush, I thought perhaps the person pictured had a double chin, and by cropping the photo this way they were trying to hide it.  On second blush, it was clear that they had misinterpreted the name of the famous 2nd c. statesman, general, and poet, Cao Cao 曹操 (ca. 155-220 AD).

Most of the population of China cannot afford or obtain a VPN (Virtual Private Network).  For the privileged portion who do manage to purchase and install a VPN, does that solve their global internet access problem?

Some people claim that, with a good VPN, you can see anything on the global internet in China.  But I don't think that's quite true.  Sometimes I direct my students (all of whom have VPNs) to various Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles, and they say, "Sorry, Prof. Mair, I can't access that in China" (blocked without warning or explanation twenty-some years ago*).  The problem is even more acute with YouTube.

YouTube has all sorts of stuff:  richly informative, inflammatory, educational, political, DIY, linguistic, etc., etc.  Practically anything one can imagine, except probably outright pornography.  The Chinese government is deathly afraid that its citizens might see YouTube content that is critical of Xi Jinping, the CCP, and so forth.  So YouTube is a no-no, and that means nature films, music, poetry, art, archeology, chemistry, physics, recipes, Chinese / Japanese / Indian / Iranian / etc. culture.  How impoverished the Chinese people are because of the benighted policies of their government!  The nearly 15 BILLION videos on YouTube are off limits to Chinese citizens.  And that's just YouTube.  Think of all the internet riches that are unavailable to the people of China.  No wonder so many of them are desperate to go abroad to study where they have free access to the internet.

This is an odd-looking word that I encounter fairly frequently, especially in my publishing ventures.  Since I don't understand how / why "queue" should be pronounced like "cue", which is also a variant spelling for the same word, I'm especially cautious about "queue" when I approach it.  Moreover, since I'm steeped in pinyin, I'm tempted to pronounce "queue" as "chyueyue" (!).  Consequently, I always have to slow down when I spell / type it:  "q-u-e-u-e", which I seldom have to do with other words except "Cincinnati", which I still haven't mastered.

Other than "its / it's", "queue" is probably the most frequently misspelled word I know of, even among educated persons.

I also am somewhat perplexed why "queue" means both "line" and "tail".

The word "queue" is used to mean a line, particularly in British English, because of its etymological origins. "Queue" comes from the French word "queue," meaning "tail," which in turn comes from the Latin word "cauda," also meaning "tail". This connection to "tail" makes sense when visualizing a line of people or objects, as they often form a linear arrangement reminiscent of a tail. The term "queue" is also used in computing to refer to a data structure where items are processed in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner, similar to how people are served in a line.

(AIO)

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.