Language Log

Ben Zimmer was recently in Pittsburgh, where he gave the keynote address at the American Copy Editors Society conference. He mentioned that one of the copy editors (Bill Walsh of the Washington Post) was confused by a sign for a new bar/lounge in Pittsburgh:

Social Tea House? Social Plus House? Social Unpronounced Symbol House? Social Thouse? #ACES2015 pic.twitter.com/fyoYNI3Lz3

— Bill Walsh (@TheSlot) March 28, 2015

In "A Sino-English grammatical construction", I wrote about "笑CRY", which consists of a Chinese character and an English word.  Today I'll write about xie死, which consists of a Chinese morpheme spelled with Roman letters and a Chinese character, sǐ 死 ("die").

As I was preparing a recent post comparing Pekingese and Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) sentences, I encountered an unusual (to me) expression that, at first, I didn't know how to interpret, namely "笑CRY".  The two morphemes (pronounced "xiàoCRY", one Chinese and one English, mean "laugh" and "cry".

In China (and around the world among China watchers), everybody's talking about this ungainly syllable.  "Duang" surfaced less than a week ago, but already it has been used millions and millions of times.

"The Word That Broke the Chinese Internet" (2/27/15) by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian

"'Duang' is Everywhere on the Chinese Internets, Here’s What It Means" (2/27/15) by Charles Liu

"Chinese netizens just invented a new word, and it's going insanely viral" (2/28/15) by Ryan Kilpatrick (English text part of the way down the page)

Most people seem to call it "homophonia" (25,000 ghits), but I'm not even sure what that means:   "Homophonia" (7/31/14).

Following this cartoon in Magic Coffee Hair (8/16/12) and Gretchen McCulloch's article, "What's the Difference Between Homophonia, Homophobia, and Homophonophobia?" (8/1/14) in Lexicon Valley, I'll go with homophonophobia (4,310 ghits), despite the fact that it is a forbidding mouthful, as being a more accurate term for what I want to describe:  an extreme, irrational fear of or aversion to words that sound alike.  In this post, we will discuss homophonophobia, particularly as it relates to Japanese, but also touching upon Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese manifestations of this type of anxiety disorder.

[The following is a guest post by Dr. Ian Morgan of the Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia and Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.  It is in response to "Chinese characters and eyesight" (11/12/14), which generated a lot of interest and discussion, and which references the work and views of Dr. Morgan.]

I came across your blog and the comments on the relationship between Chinese characters and myopia quite recently, and I thought it was worth a quick response.

Despite the efforts of the central government to clamp down on and diminish the role of Cantonese in education and in public life generally, the language has been experiencing a heady resurgence, especially in connection with the prolonged Umbrella Movement last fall.

"Cantonese resurgent" (12/11/12)

"Here’s why the name of Hong Kong’s 'Umbrella Movement' is so subversive" (10/23/14)

"Translating the Umbrella Revolution" (10/3/14)

"Cantonese protest slogans" (10/26/14), etc.

A government sponsored mural in Kashgar:

Nathan Hopson found this poster hanging up all over student bulletin boards at Nagoya University in Japan:

Just in case you hadn't seen this in the news, the winner of the Taipei mayoral election held on November 28, 2014 is Ko Wen-je (Kē Wénzhé 柯文哲), a trauma surgeon who ran as an independent.

"Pro-independence party candidate Ko Wen-je claims victory in Taipei mayor race"
The Straits Times (11/29/14)

There was an interesting article in the Economist a couple of day ago:  "Why So Many Chinese Children Wear Glasses" (11/9/2014)

Myopia is epidemic in China, and the percentage of those with this affliction is increasing each year.

The following diary entry by an elementary school student is making the rounds in the Chinese media and in the blogosphere:

On December 15, 2012, Jakob Leimgruber sent in the following photograph of an unusual sign in Montreal: