Language Log

Mark Liberman recently asked, "What was the earliest use of mixed typographical symbols (as opposed to uniform asterisks or underlining) to represent (part or all of) taboo words?" The use of such symbols appears to have originated as a comic-strip convention. Comic strip fans, following Mort Walker's Lexicon of Comicana, have often called these cursing characters grawlixes, though I prefer the term obscenicons. In Gwillim Law's history of grawlixes, he lists examples of cartoon cursing going back to the Sep. 3, 1911 installment of "The Katzenjammer Kids." Here is the panel in question (which I found in the Washington Post archives):

Along with a sequence of asterisk-dash-exclamation point-dash-exclamation point, the speech balloon also features what appears to be a stick-figure devil firing a cannon, with three more exclamation points for good measure. As delightful as this example is, it's not the earliest use of obscenicons on the comics page. I found another "Katzenjammer Kids" strip using them, from two years earlier.

Latest xkcd:

In beginning Mandarin courses, teachers often use the four syllables mā 媽 ("mom"), má 麻 ("hemp"), mǎ 馬 ("horse"), mà 罵 ("curse") to introduce the four tones.  Since the four syllables in sequence do not make any sense, a very clever wit has proposed that we now replace 媽 麻馬 罵 with 通 同 統 痛.  Here is his reasoning.

I've gotten a lot of strange spam over the years, but this one wins some sort of prize:

Now you can control when the subject will have the opportunity to respond on a nose poke with the new Controlled Access Nose Poke Response Operandum. Like the Controlled Access Lickometers, a guillotine door prevents entry into the Nose Poke when closed and provides access to the Nose Poke when opened.

The photocell response sensor is included with the Controlled Access Nose Poke. A 3-position switch on the back panel of the unit provides settings for selecting a continuous output signal for the duration of the beam break or a short pulse at the onset of the beam break as well as introducing a delay in the response report. A stimulus light, located on the back wall inside the nose poke hole, is included.

Stan Carey at Sentence First links to an unusually campy usage fight between The Awl and The Paris Review, and offers a thorough survey of snuckological scholarship. Read, as they say, the whole thing.

The official name of Facebook in China, as it appears on the Chinese version of its Website, is simply "Facebook."  It is unofficially, but commonly, referred to as Liǎnshū 臉書 (lit., "face book").

Lately, however, Fēisǐbùkě 非死不可 has become a popular way of transcribing the name "Facebook."

From Jim Gordon:

My wife and I visited Boston a week ago, and after dian xin at the China Pearl (which is very little changed from 1973-74), we went to the shade across the street to plot our course for touring.  The  photo below is of a sign in the window there:

James Iry, who ought to know, has written "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages". I don't believe that there's anything similar for natural languages, although John Cowan's "Essentialist Explanations" offers a wealth of raw material.

Randall Munroe has  a great post on the xkcd blog that reports and discusses the results of an online color survey.  With 222,500 user responses, this was almost certainly the largest scientific experiment ever run by a cartoonist.

The most interesting result reported so far is an experimental test of the old stereotype about sex differences in color naming.

So far, it's been overshadowed by the big BP oil spill, the Times Square bomber, Greece's financial crisis, and other hot news items. But quietly developing in the background is what seems to be the best euphemistic explanation for a sexual escapade since "hiking the Appalachian Trail".

According to Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp, "Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with 'rent boy'", Miami New Times, 5/4/2010, the anti-gay activist Dr. George Rekers recently took a ten-day European vacation with a young man known as "Lucien", whom he met though a web site called rentboy.com:

The pictures on the Rentboy.com profile show a shirtless young man with delicate features, guileless eyes, and sun-kissed, hairless skin. The profile touts his "smooth, sweet, tight ass" and "perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)" and explains he is "sensual," "wild," and "up for anything" — as long you ask first. And as long as you pay.

In the Miami New Times article, Dr. Rekers is quoted as saying ""I had surgery, and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him."

According to Andreas Ulrich and Alfred Weinzierl, "German Trainers Describe Pitiful State of Afghan Police", Der Spiegel, 4/7/2010:

A functioning police force is seen as a prerequisite for a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. German trainers, however, paint a disastrous picture of the quality of Afghan security forces. Too many police, they say, can't read or write, can't shoot straight or take bribes.

Six of us — three philosophers, two linguists, and a mathematician — were having dinner the Café Noir in Providence last Thursday night, and when three of us decided on the excellent boeuf bourguignon, someone at the table told a story of a colleague who tried to include the phrase boeuf bourguignon in a word-processed file and found that the spell-checker recommended correcting the spelling to Beowulf Burlington.