Language Log

Carley De Rosa sent in the following photograph taken at the Niujie (Ox Street) Mosque (Niújiē lǐbàisì; simplified 牛街礼拜寺, traditional 牛街禮拜寺) in Beijing:

Reader and fan Will Thompson wrote to Mark Liberman, who passed his letter on to me, about a recent article by Ellen Barry in The New York Times, discussing a book by the Russian political analyst Nikolai V. Zlobin in which he explains weird/different American cultural norms to Russians.

Will notes that towards the end, the reviewer states:

He [Zlobin] devotes many pages to privacy, a word that does not exist in the Russian language[.]

And Will is suspicious of that claim.

Uptake by Andrew Sullivan, "Psychopaths All Around Us", 11/13/2012. This stuff sells.

If you're thinking about buying it, you should read "Psycho kids today" and "Is self-involvement really increasing in American youth?".

Following up on "Psycho kids today", here's a passage from Kali Trzesniewski and M. Brent Donellan, "Rethinking 'Generation Me': A Study of Cohort Effects From 1976-2006", Perspectives on Psychological Science 5(1) 2010:

Social commentators have argued that changes over the last decades have coalesced to create a relatively unique generation of young people. However, using large samples of U.S. high-school seniors from 1976 to 2006 (Total N = 477,380), we found little evidence of meaningful change in egotism, self-enhancement, individualism, self-esteem, locus of control, hopelessness, happiness, life satisfaction, loneliness, antisocial behavior, time spent working or watching television, political activity, the importance of religion, and the importance of social status over the last 30 years.

Kevin Dutton, "Psychopathy's Double Edge", Chronicle of Higher Education 10/22/2012:

[I]n a survey that has so far tested 14,000 volunteers, Sara Konrath and her team at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research has found that college students' self-reported empathy levels (as measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a standardized questionnaire containing such items as "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me" and "I try to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before I make a decision") have been in steady decline over the past three decades—since the inauguration of the scale, in fact, back in 1979. A particularly pronounced slump has been observed over the past 10 years. "College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago," Konrath reports.

As is all too often true for stories about results in social psychology — and especially stories about the Problems with Kids Today — this one is misleading in almost every particular.

Several times a week, I walk past the "All Wars Memorial to Penn Alumni", on the east side of 33rd Street in front of the Palestra, which features a group of statues surrounding a flagpole:

Behind these impressive figures there's a curved wall bearing the inscription:

The University of Pennsylvania

1740    To her sons who died in the service of their country    1950

A brood of sturdy men who stood for freedom and for truth

Within the last ten years or so, the concept of "Sinophone" (obviously modeled on "Francophone," "Anglophone", etc.) has come to be very much in vogue.  To the best of my knowledge, the term was coined by UCLA professor Shu-mei Shih, but it was soon picked up by many other scholars and quickly became one of the hottest topics of discussion in Chinese studies.

I've been in the thick of the Sinophone revolution and have mentioned it several times on Language Log (e.g., here), but now I've become acquainted with another new term, "Sinosphere," and wonder how they are related.

Zits for 11/7/2012:

But it's not just land lines — "In Constant Digital Contact, We Feel Alone Together", Fresh Air 10/18/2012:

Terry Gross: You had said before a lot of parents complain that their children will accept the parents' text message and respond to that, but they won't pick up the phone, they won't answer the cell phone.

Sherry Turkle: Yes.

Terry Gross: I'm sure you've spoken to children and teenagers about that. What's the explanation?

John McIntyre rules against "Frankenstorm":

Yesterday, I sent this message to the newsroom staff: We will not be using the word “Frankenstorm” in coverage of Hurricane Sandy, because the term trivializes a serious and potentially deadly event. It’s acceptable in direct quotes, but even there we shouldn’t overdo it.

Somehow, Language Log has yet to take notice of the international sensation that is "Gangnam Style," the deliciously weird Korean pop video that currently has more than 560 million views on YouTube. Here's a good opportunity to rectify that oversight: among the countless spoofs of the video is this one by enterprising MIT students, featuring a cameo by Noam Chomsky at 3:20.

From the November issue of Mental Floss (not online yet), under the title "The 25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years":

You don't need to turn on the TV to hear The Simpsons. Just chat with pretty much anyone. As University of Pennsylvania linguistic professor Mark Liberman wrote in 2005, "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases, and sundry other textual allusions."

Liberman's assertion sounds crazy — at least until you remember there's a Millhouse quote for every occasion, Even the hulking gatekeeper fo the language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has found a spot fo Homer Simpson's "D'oh!". Mmmmm … linguistic acceptance.

The Japanese may be forgetting how to write kanji ("Japanese survey on forgetting how to write kanji"), but, so far as their signatures are concerned, perhaps they don't really need to write them anyway, since they still rely heavily on seals for affixing their John Hancock to documents.  When I lived in Japan (around 1995), even I had to purchase a seal, or I wouldn't have been able to get properly registered as a resident alien.

Lately, we have discussed the Westernization of Chinese languages in several posts, but now, midst the nationalistic fervor of widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations and movements of ships around the Senkakus, comes news of government-sponsored de-Westernization.