Language Log

Following up on the DP's April Fools "AI-yatollah" article, an Ayatollah pun from Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret.:

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— Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. (@admiralstav.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 7:57 PM

From "Everyday Politics in Russia", The Eurasian Knot 4/6/2026:

The podcast starts with a message from listener Amanda, who has been reading all of Dostoevsky for a workshop in Russia. In addressing the podcast's host Sean Guillory, she says (starting at 4:21.5):

I sympathize with you, Sean, that you just couldn't get into him,
but I've personally never felt that way about Dostoevsky.
I remember trying to read the Lord of the Rings series,
and I couldn't stand it.
I couldn't stand ten pages describing a meadow.
And ever since them I've thought of fiction writing in terms of
meadow-writing and non-meadow-writing.
No wonder I love Dostoevsky —
he has nothing whatsoever to say about meadows.

Following up on Tuesday's DP link, today we have Wyatt G. Croog, "Harvard Launches 'Strategic Authenticity Initiative' to Help Students Seems Normal", The Harvard Crimson 4/1/2026:

In an effort to address growing concerns that its students are “deeply unsettling in conversation,” Harvard University announced Monday the launch of the Strategic Authenticity Initiative, a university-wide program designed to help students convincingly simulate being regular people.

The initiative, funded by three grants and one concerned parent, will offer workshops on:

1. Making eye contact without turning it into a networking opportunity

2. Having hobbies that are not a startup

3. Telling a story that does not end up in a LinkedIn article

Penn's student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, traditionally publishes an April Fool's issue every year, generally a week or so before April 1. This year's version has not (so far) been put out as a paper version, or even in the standard online form, but only as a set of images.

As editor of Journal of Chinese History, Sarah Schneewind asked me if I would do a review of this book:  Documents géographiques de Dunhuang.  Having done over three hundred reviews during my career, I try to decline them as much as possible at this stage.  However, I succumbed to her offer because it was about Dunhuang and was by a French author, for both of which I have soft spots in my heart..

Jokingly, I wrote back:  "In honor of your surname in these arctic times, Sarah, I will do the review."

She replied, "Vielen Dank, Victor!  Ganz schön, dass meine Name etwas gilt!"  ("Thank you very much, Victor! It's really nice that my name means something!")

In the comments on "Final prepositions again", AntC alerts us to Elle Cordova's latest, part III in the Grammarian Saga: "Grammarian vs Errorist showdown at the secret L'error".

This video begins with two Dutch sayings:

There's a saying in Dutch: "God schiep de Aarde, maar de Nederlanders schiepen Nederland".

Another saying in Dutch is: "Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten".

Today's program is about how the Netherlands picked a fight with the sea, and won.

“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: A young woman did not fart in her husband’s embrace.”

As quoted in Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History (W.W. Norton, 2025), by Moudhy Al-Rashid.  This is an excellent introduction to how much we can learn about ancient Mesopotamia from the thousands of cuneiform stamped tablets often just tossed away as building fill.

FAKE ACCENTS | Stand-up Comedy by Niv Prakasam

[This is a guest post by Diana Shuheng Zhang]

Lois Beckett, "Perky Maxwell House viral ad takes on housing crisis as ‘Maxwell Apartment’", The Guardian 10/1/2025:

Housing in the US has become so unaffordable that a coffee company has based a viral marketing campaign on the idea that almost nobody can afford to buy a house.

Maxwell House coffee, a 133-year-old brand, recently launched a marketing campaign rebranding themselves as “Maxwell Apartment coffee”.

“Maxwell House? In this economy?” a narrator asks in a video ad, promising that Maxwell Apartment is “the same affordable coffee you love, now with an even more affordable name”.

People who don't know any Chinese characters will think the four glyphs pictured above are just typical Chinese characters, but won't be able to make any sense of them at all.

People who are minimally / partially literate in Chinese characters will recognize components of the four glyphs, but not one of the glyphs as a whole.

People who are moderately literate in Chinese characters will "sort of" recognize parts of the four glyphs, but will not be able to extract meaning from the sentence as a whole.