Language Log

Alex Baumans sent in this photograph of the logo of a Korean food truck in Belgium, run by one San-Ho Park Correwyn:

Last month, in "Apostrophe in Hebrew" (11/22/16), we saw an "s" and an apostrophe incorporated in Hebrew writing.  Here, on top of a taxi, from left to right it says "taxi", and from right to left it says מוֹנִית ("taxi").

In my introductory undergraduate course on English words, and in most undergraduate introductory courses on linguistics, students are invited to reflect on language and identity—how the way you speak communicates information about who you are—which they are typically very interested in. This isn't my beat, professionally speaking, but as a linguist I have a duty to help my students think through some of these issues (and, if they get interested, point them in the right direction to get really educated). To get started, I often play this one-minute clip of a Meshach Taylor Fresh Air interview from 1990, which is usually a good starting point for some discussion.

But Fresh Air (yes I'm a Terry Gross fangirl) also recently ran an interview with the biracial South African host of the Daily Show, Trevor Noah, which contained this ten-minute motherlode of a reflection on multilingualism, language choice, racism, acceptable targets of mimicry, vocabulary size, Trump's communicative abilities, resentment of accented speech… whew. I'm just going to leave it here for your edification and enjoyment. Maybe one of our more sociolinguistically expert Language Loggers will provide some more detailed commentary later. For my part — well, I just invite you to think about what kind of 500-word essay you'd write for a Ling 101 class with this 10-minute clip as your prompt.

To hear the whole interview, or read the transcript, visit the NPR Fresh Air page.

We've already looked at the use of an apostrophe in Hangul.  Now Wendy Heller has sent in this photograph of a shop sign in Haifa, Israel:

Page of a phrasebook published in 1941 (click to embiggen):

The United States of America and Great Britain / United Kingdom are not the only countries in the midst of political crises.  South Korea has a nasty one of its own involving the undue influence of a shamaness over their President.

"Tens of Thousands Call on South Korea's President to Quit" (ABC News, 11/5/16)

I spotted this very impressive warning at Siesta Key beach in Sarasota, Florida yesterday morning:

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

Ryan of Singapore writes:

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 a guest post by Peter B. Golden.  It is a follow-up to this post and the discussion about trans-Eurasian communication in Turkic languages in the comments that followed it:  "The sounds of Eurasia " (8/1/16).]

I have long been fascinated by the question. The same issue arises with Slavic. There, I had the advantage of speaking Russian since childhood. Actually, the language I spoke with my grandparents and elders was a rural patois that consisted of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. In Belarusian this mixed [Russian-Belarusian] language is called трасянка / trasianka, lit. a mix of hay and straw. In Ukrainian the Russian-Ukrainian mix is called суржик / surzhyk, lit. a mix of wheat and rye). I have heard Muscovites and St. Petersburg folk use the word “surzhik” in reference to these mixed E. Slavic regional dialects overall.

I'm sitting in the San Francisco International Airport waiting for my flight to Taipei.  The guy next to me is happily chattering away on his cell phone to someone (or some people) at the other end of the "line".  What is curious is that one moment he is speaking in Taiwanese, the next moment in Japanese, then English, and then Mandarin.

I just returned from Hong Kong last night.  One of the strongest impressions I bring back from this visit is that the city is becoming even more multilingual than it was in the past.  Hong Kong is a global center of finance and business.  The number of different languages one hears being spoken on the streets, in restaurants, on buses and trains is simply astonishing.  The government has an official policy of three languages (Cantonese, English, and Mandarin) and two scripts (Chinese characters and the Roman alphabet), as discussed in these and other Language Log posts:

• "Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages " (9/25/15)
• "Hong Kong Multilingualism and Polyscriptalism " (7/26/10)
• "Is Cantonese a language, or a personification of the devil? " (2/9/14)

But the situation has become far more fluid and complex than that.

Hakka (Kèjiā 客家 ["guest families"]) is the name of a Chinese ethnic group and their language.  Their name refers to the fact that, although they came from the north centuries ago, they are now scattered in various locations throughout South China and, indeed, the world.

Although the Hakka amount to approximately only 4% of the total population of China, their influence on politics, the military, culture, and other spheres of life in the past two centuries has been disproportionately large