Language Log

Things are happening very fast with this "experimental" internet search tool.  I realize that it is a new technology, so naturally there are bugs and kinks that have to be worked out, and I don't want to be too harsh with it.  Moreover, at a certain level, it is already serving a yeomanly purpose.

For instance, I asked Google, "should ich be capitalized in the middle of a sentence".  AI Overview (henceforth AIO) promptly stepped in and provided the following straightforward response:

No, ich should not be capitalized in the middle of a sentence in German. In German, the first-person singular pronoun ich (I) is only capitalized when it is the first word in a sentence.

In English, the singular “I” is always capitalized when used as a first-person personal pronoun. This includes all contractions of “I”, such as “I'm” and “I'll”.

Other things to capitalize in the middle of a sentence include…. [details omitted here]

"Turkey’s döner kebab spat with Germany is turning nasty", by Daniel Thorpe, The Spectator (10/5/24)

Last April, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier decided to bring along a 60-kilogram döner kebab on his state visit to Turkey. It did not go down well. Turks found the stunt condescending; Germans were mortified. Ankara lodged an official request with the European Commission to make the dish a ‘traditional speciality’, thereby regulating what can be sold under the name ‘döner’ in Europe.

There's a chain of about half-a-dozen fast food restaurants called Gyro Shack in Boise, Idaho, where I find myself now.  They're cool little shops, just as Boise is a cool (big-)little city spread across a broad, flat plain (nearly three thousand feet in elevation) that lies at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Several things about gyros perplex me.  One is how the cones of meat on the vertical, rotating spit cohere and do not fall to pieces, but docilely hang in place oozing their mouthwatering juices waiting to be sliced off, layer after layer.  One traditional gyro meat recipe states:  "Processing the meat in the food processor and overworking it ensures that the proteins in the meat stick together, like sausage." (source)  I still don't get it, since sausage has a casing to hold it together.

Never mind about that physical matter for now,  What really bothers me (and lots of other people), is how to pronounce that four-letter word.

The Indeed Editorial Team explains to us ("What Is a Pre-Meeting? (Plus Benefits and How To Host One", 8/18/2024) that

A successful meeting engages attendees, achieves organizational objectives and allows professionals to make informed decisions in an allotted time frame. Before the actual event occurs, employees may gather for a pre-meeting to help them prepare. Reserving time for a pre-meeting can enable you and your teammates to strategize for the official meeting by answering questions, developing checklists and preparing venues for presentations.

A 9/16/2024 note from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy ("Strengthening our culture and teams") explains that

As we have grown our teams as quickly and substantially as we have the last many years, we have understandably added a lot of managers. In that process, we have also added more layers than we had before. It’s created artifacts that we’d like to change (e.g., pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings, a longer line of managers feeling like they need to review a topic before it moves forward, owners of initiatives feeling less like they should make recommendations because the decision will be made elsewhere, etc.).

I'm in the little (population about two hundred) town of Wamsutter in southwest Wyoming.  It's just west of the Continental Divide and bills itself as "The Gateway to the Red Desert".  It is the largest settlement, and the only incorporated town in the Great Divide Basin.

The name Wamsutter is intriguing, but it doesn't sound Native American, like so many other toponyms in Wyoming.  As a matter of fact, Wamsutter was originally known as Washakie (c.1804/1810 – February 20, 1900) after the formidable Shoshone chief, but was later changed to its current name due to confusion with nearby Fort Washakie. No great loss for the Shoshone leader, since so many other places and things in Wyoming are named after him, including the excellent student dining center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, in front of which stands a most impressive statue of the chief on his horse.  When the town decided to switch its name, at least they retained the initial "Wa" of the original designation, which reminds me of "The Good Old Song" of the University of Virginia, with its "Wah-hoo-wa" cheer, borrowed from Dartmouth.

"Let’s ‘Double-Click’ on the Latest Cringeworthy Corporate Buzzword:  You may want to examine or delve into the phrase, which has become pervasive in conference calls and grates on many; ‘It’s almost like a joke’", by Te-ping Chen and Nicholas G. Miller, WSJ (7/9/24)

One of the fastest-spreading corporate buzzwords in recent years, “double-click” is both polarizing and pervasive. Particularly on Wall Street, the figure of speech is now being used as a shorthand for examining something more fully, akin to double-clicking to see a computer folder’s contents. Some, like [Ruben] Roy, find the idiom obnoxious or twee. Double-click defenders say the phrase encourages deeper thinking.

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"Eddie Bauer changed its logo because Gen Z doesn’t read cursive" (Fast Company, Oct. 6, 2023)

Recently, we've had occasion to discuss how waitpersons in restaurants tend to say "perfect" no matter what we order (see, for instance, in the comments here).  Lately, I've noticed how the craze for perfection has spread to the grocery business.

I have a habit of carrying cash (my Chinese students barely know what cash is) around in a change purse (for coins and dollar bills) and a billfold for fives, tens, and twenties.  When it comes to paying, I have two general rules of thumb:

1. If possible, I like to pay the exact amount of the bill

2. I like to get rid of an excess of heavy change and bulky dollar bills that rapidly accumulate in my purse

To meet both of those desiderata, that sometimes entails fussing around a bit to count out the right amount.  It might mean that I end up giving the cashier slightly more than the exact amount.  Sometimes I even come up a penny or two or three short, in which case the cashier might make it up from the kitty.  No matter what, they almost always say "perfect" — especially  if I give them the precise amount owed, or close to it.

There seem to be a lot of people complaining about it these days, so maybe there's something to worry about here.  Francois Lang, who called this current wave of criticism to my attention asks whether academia is isolated from such horrors.

FWIW, here's what it's like in business:

"A look at the most annoying workplace jargon and why people are bothered so much"

NPR (September 5, 20235:15 AM ET), Heard on Morning Edition

I'll mention my favorite right off the bat:  "reach out to you".  I don't think it made the NPR list.

Joshua Benton, "If other media companies thought about brand equity the way Elon Musk thinks about Twitter’s (er, X’s)", Nieman Labs 7/24/2023:

In the spirit of Tronc, Elon Musk has decided to throw away more than a decade of brand equity by changing the name of Twitter to…the letter X. Imagine if more media executives followed his lead.

Benton offers several analogies, of which the first one is (in my opinion) the best:

NEW YORK, July 24, 2023 — The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) is proud to announce the new brand identity of its flagship news product: -.

The new glyph-driven name, to be pronounced “hyphen” or “The News Organization Formerly Known As The New York Times,” connects the company to its rich, 172-year-long history — in particular, the period from 1851 to 1896 in which it displayed its name as “The New-York Times.”

Ben Zimmer spotted this interesting street sign in the New York Times photo essay, "DMs from New York City" (June 26, 2023).

From the Twitter account of the famous popular science writer and muckraker, Fang Zhouzi / Fang Shimin:

先把外资都赶跑、吓跑了，再死皮赖脸地请回来？ pic.twitter.com/FepFOsJnpY

— 方舟子 (@fangshimin) February 20, 2023