Language Log

Like half of the U.S., I've been reading the first volume of Mark Twain's recently-published autobiography. I'm sure that there's some sociolinguistics in it somewhere, but for now you'll have to be content with this rumination about discourse structure, which I present to you just in case you're in the half that hasn't bought the book yet:

Paul Goble, "Another battle of the alphabets shaping up in Central Asia", Kyiv Post 11/16/2010:

A statement by a Kazakhstan minister that his country will eventually shift from a Cyrillic-based alphabet to a Latin-based script and reports that some scholars in Dushanbe are considering dropping another four Russian letters from the Tajik alphabet suggest that a new battle of the alphabets may again be shaping up in Central Asia.

Russian commentators have reacted by suggesting that this is yet another effort by nationalists in those countries to reduce the role of the Russian language and hence of the influence of Russian culture, but in fact the controversy over any such change is far more complicated than that.

Tad Friend, "Blowback: The great suburban leaf war", The New Yorker 10/25/2010:

Dr. Michael Kron, a Berkeley psychiatrist who had been canvassing studies on noise, addressed the problem's demographic valence. "Because we're not living in Oakland ducking the next hail of bullets, there's this idea that we're just some fat-ass fussy busses, rich white people in the suburbs, worrying about a little noise,", he said. "But noise is very powerful. We've used Britney Spears songs on Guantánamo Bay prisoners."

The actual noisiness of blowers is a vexed issue. The average new blower is rated at about sixty-nine decibels, only as noisy as a loud conversation. But that official rating is determined by measurements made fifty feet away in an open field. Those operating the blowers are subjected to considerably more noise, as are neighbors who live in cramped or reverberant terrain; Kendall had just clocked the Stihl BR 500, which is rated at sixty-five decibels, at ninety-eight decibels up close — nearly ten times as loud. Kron continued, "Children exposed to these noise bombs, it's a disaster: impaired concentration, impaired sleep, inability to learn to read and speak. Children in loud, loud places like East Oakland are the ones who grow up saying, 'Can I ax you a question?'" [emphasis added]

Jen wrote to inform me that today, being William Penn's birthday, is International Talk Like a Quaker Day. Jen explains that

I like to combine it with my pirate talk from International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  "Arrr, thee must give us all thy money to donate to the Friends Service Committee, or we will nonviolently board thy ship and elder thee."

And before you get on Jen's case for using thee instead of thou, that's her question too:

What I've never understood about Quaker plain speech is why "thee" is used in both the objective and and subjective cases.  I understand that early Quakers wanted to avoid honorifics and status distinctions, and so addressed everyone with the familiar pronoun.  But why isn't it "thou"?  And why is it "thee is" and "thee says" rather than "thee art" and "thee sayest"?

Is this just the opposite of the "who-whom" merger, with the subjective case being lost instead?  And was it unique to plain-speaking Quakers?

Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden are long-time collectors of arguments for the final serial comma. They're responsible for publicizing the most famous (if probably apocryphal) example, "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God", as well as the equally remarkable (and apparently real) "The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector".

Now Patrick Nielsen Hayden ("The return of the final serial comma's vital necessity", Making Light 10/21/2010) has posted another, describing the recent documentary about Merle Haggard: "Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall".

Yesterday, Nick Clegg made news in England by announcing a new spending program ("Clegg unveils 'fairness premium'", ePolitix.com 10/15/2010):

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has unveiled a £7bn 'fairness premium' to help disadvantaged children through the education system.

The plan, to be included in the comprehensive spending review, will contain an offer of 15 free hours of pre-school education a week to two year olds from poorer families in England.

In a speech at a junior school in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Clegg also confirmed the Lib Dem pledge of a "pupil premium" while they are at schools, and a new "student premium" to help them through university.

With the coming of email, a vital resource that once had a real cost became essentially free for everyone. Once it used to cost at least a few pennies to send a communication through the mail, but now it is free. And one of the awful results is a new kind of deviant linguistic behavior in our culture: the mass-mailing of unsolicited loony outpourings. It needs a name; I suggest calling it nutspam.

I have been receiving nutspam from several clearly deranged and annoying citizens. Probably none of them are doing anything that's against any law anywhere. They might even be protected by the First Amendment. One guy, in particular (a total stranger to me), seems to be ramping up. He sends out wild political (and occasionally personal) discontented ravings several times a day, from many different and frequently changing free email addresses he has set up. It's just ordinary email to valid email addresses that he has found on websites, and he isn't selling anything. But it's not just a few addresses that he mails to.

Jean Véronis went to see Beatrice Uria-Monzon in Carmen a few days ago, and connects the experience to recent political events in France:

How ironic in these times of French Roma-phobia: the world's most-performed French work tells a gypsy story. Just like the Mérimée short novel from which it originates, the opera reflects the Romantic fascination with Roma […] Following perhaps in the footsteps of Cervantes (Little Gypsy), Bizet, Mérimée, Hugo, Borrow, Liszt and many others were charmed by this people living on the fringes of society, freedom incarnate – free to be on the move, free from work, free from fitting into society; all elements found in Carmen.

If you haven't been following the situation that Jean refers to, you could start here or here or here.

In response to Tom McCarthy's novel C being shortlisted for the Booker prize, abebooks.com has posted "The A to Z of the Shortest Book Titles".  A surprisingly large number of the letters of the alphabet are still available. Even if we ignore punctuation and superscripts, only A, C, E, G, H, K, M, N, O, P, Q, S, V, W, X, Y, and Z are taken — if you get to work quickly, you have a shot at being the first to publish a work with the title B, D, F, I, J, L, R, T, or U.

A few weeks after John McWhorter and I participated in a "diavlog" on Bloggingheads, the site is hosting another language-y conversation between Joshua Knobe of Yale and Lera Boroditsky of Stanford. Whereas the previous diavlog touched briefly on neo-Whorfian arguments about the culturally determined relations of language to thought (responding to a New York Times Magazine article by Guy Deutscher), this one is a full-on Whorf-o-rama, delving into Boroditsky's research on language and cognition (see her Wall Street Journal article, "Lost in Translation," for more).

Yesterday, the world rejoiced at the news of Liu Xiaobo's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010.  In China, however, the cyber police and media censors swung into frantic action to prevent word of this important event from being communicated to its 1.4 billion citizens.  They cordoned off the area where Liu's wife, Liu Xia, lives, and then whisked her off to an undisclosed location so that the press and television could not interview her.  Liu himself may still not know that he is the Peace Prize laureate.  And anyone who celebrates the award or mentions Liu's name (certainly not approvingly) is likely to end up in prison just like him.  Even Han Han, China's most formidable blogger, who seems to be able to say more than anyone else about contemporary life in China (but always most subtly and indirectly), was extremely careful about how he broached the subject:  see here and here.  (You must look very carefully to see what Han Han wrote).

Barbara Wei told me about a kind of broad / lima bean crisps called "Only Puke."

When I tried to find out more about this unappetizing snack, I learned that it was featured earlier this year in a weblog post by that eminent linguist, Dave Barry ("Yum", 5/20/2010), following up on an article in the Daily Mail ("Fine Foods from Abroad", 5/20/2010). A bit later, Only Puke was the lead item in  an impressive catalogue of other bizarre product names  at the British web site Anorak News ("The World’s Worst Product Names, Presented By Only Puke Chips", 6/21/2010):

We now continue your look at nominative determinism in consumer goods with some more Sexy Foods and products. You will learn that Terror comes in a variety of flavours, an OAP tastes better in sauce, older boys love Oily Boy, Puke is served in bags and a Double Cock is a Keeper.

Ryan Y. wrote to ask about words for "the sounds instruments make". He points out that in English, "Drums go 'rat-a-tat' and 'bang,' bells go 'ding dong,' and sad trombones go 'wah wah'", but he notes that there are some gaps that he finds surprising:

Few instruments are as popular in the US as the guitar, but I have no idea what sound a guitar makes. There are gaps even for the standard high school band/orchestra instruments. What sound does a violin make? A flute? For that matter, what sound does an orchestra make? A rock group?

Is there a compelling explanation as to why we have words for the sounds of bells, trombones, and tubas, but not guitars? Why do we lack words for the sounds of groups of instruments? Do, say, Italians have a word for the sound a violin makes? Do the French have a word for the sound of a French Horn?