Language Log

MM writes:

I would like to hear your take on the following:

In episode 8/2 of House, he recounts his prison experience to his colleagues: I wasn't raped. Well, perhaps I was raped, but not raped raped. Well, perhaps I was raped raped, but not raped raped raped.

This is not a simple intensifier (as in yes, yes, or really, really), but rather it seems to say: I'm not kidding, this is the real thing. Then the scriptwriter mocks it by embarking on an infinite series.

"Claude Lalumière: The Word for Yearning", Locus 1/8/2011:

I’ve had some people tell me things about my own writing, and after they’d told me I thought, ‘Oh, you’re right!’ Once I was taking a walk with another writer who had read most of what I’d written, and she said, ‘You know, the biggest emotion in all of your writing, no matter what you do, is yearning.’ She was right. Here’s an interesting thing: there’s no word for yearning in French. You have to use a whole sentence to describe the feeling, and even then you don’t get the whole range. Often, thinking about my characters in a story, I ask myself, ‘What do they want most of all?’ (Though it goes beyond want.) Germanic concepts like awe and yearning are central to my writing, in fact – all these words for a rich inner life!

With these words, Zarina Yamaguchi presents the following photograph, taken at Osaka's Shinsaibashi Shopping Street, on her Facebook page:

My daughter-in-law, Lacey Hammond, is from Willis, Texas, not too far from Houston (46 miles / 74.01 kilometers).  Her family on both sides has been living in that area for generations.  They are mostly Irish, I believe, but with a bit of German and American Indian (Native American) blood too.

Anyway, Lacey calls salad dressing "sauce".  I was gobsmacked when I heard her say this several times, and wondered whether it's dialectal or she herself simply doesn't make a distinction between "sauce" and "salad dressing".  Anybody have any idea about that?

Following up on various recent discussions of how Twitter and other new communications media may be affecting the English language, I'd like to draw your attention to a well-reasoned consideration of this issue from an earier era: Robert Lincoln O'Brien, "Machinery and English Style", The Atlantic Monthly 1904:

In every age since written language began, rhetorical forms have been to a considerable extent influenced by the writing materials and implements which were available for man's use. This is a familiar observation in studies of the past. Is it not, then, time that somebody inquired into the effects upon the form and substance of our present-day language of the veritable maze of devices which have come into widely extended use in recent years, such as the typewriter, with its invitation to the dictation practice; shorthand, and, most important of all, the telegraph? Certainly these agencies of expression cannot be without their marked and significant influences upon English style.

Were the effects of these appliances limited to the persons actually using them such an inquiry would not be worth making. […]

But, unfortunately, no man writes to himself alone. The makers of the popular vocabulary decree to a great extent the words which the recluse of the cloister must select. If the typewriter and the telegraph, for mechanical reasons purely, are encouraging certain words, certain arrangements of phrases, and a different dependence on punctuation, such an influence is a stone whose ripples, once set in motion, wash every shore of the sea of literature.

Sam B. writes:

I've noticed that the hashtag has bled out beyond its origin as a way of grouping similar messages on Twitter by topic (ie #TahrirSquare, #fukushima, #election, etc)

Now, they're sort of being used in a bizarre syntax of their own, as an aside at the end of a statement.

In these cases, the hashtag is just adding some parenthetical meaning, whether it's sarcastic or sincere. But it's being used in places where there's no character limit as there is on Twitter, so it's completely out of place and without function. It seems like a digital tic of sorts. Instead of just saying what we want to say, or saying what we think or feel, people are writing a statement and then adding a hashtag at the end and expecting that to have sufficient meaning.

Minru Li sent me this photograph which appears at the top of the China English blog:

Upon first glance, I was mystified because of the large space between the first three Chinese characters and three English words in red, and the last two Chinese characters and two English words in green. Within two seconds, however, I figured out what had happened to bring about such a hilarious translation, but was still curious what the missing top half of the first character was.

We're waiting eagerly for the English Word of the Year for 2011 (to be announced on January 6, 2012) and have already had the Chinese "Morpheme(s) of the year".  Now arrives the Japanese Kanji of the Year:  kizuna 絆 ("bond").

Don't get me wrong: I am entirely positive about octopus porn. Graphically depicted sex with our multiply-tentacled cephalopod friends is cool as far as I'm concerned.

Joel Martinsen writes:

Here's a comment I came across on Sina's microblog service today from someone reading various terms used by the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese media to report Kim Jong-il's death and inferring politeness based on the Chinese usage of the terms. Is there a name for this sort of phenomenon?

Johanna Decorse, "Case of anti-white racism on trial in France", AP 12/14/2011:

TOULOUSE, France—As protesters massed outside, the spokeswoman for a movement representing immigrants from France's former colonies went on trial Wednesday for allegedly insulting white French in what may be the first anti-white racism case in France.

The verdict, expected Jan. 25, may turn on a hyphen.

The trial grew out of a legal complaint from a far-right group, the General Alliance Against Racism and Respect for French and Christian Identity, Agrif, against Houria Bouteldja for using a word she invented to refer to white French that she claims was misconstrued. She was charged with "racial injury" and, if convicted, risks up to six months in prison and a maximum €25,000 ($32,500) fine, though courts usually issue far lighter sentences.

In the tumultuous run-up to the momentous announcement of the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year (to be proclaimed on January 6, 2012), Language Log's own Ben Zimmer is the main point-man with the media.  See here, here, and here.

The Chinese, of course, are not to be outdone, so they have for the past few years been choosing a "Character of the Year."  This year, 2011, the character selected is kòng 控.  Everybody seems to think that kòng 控 means "control".  In this post, however, I'm going to question that assumption, and I'm also going to cast doubt upon the whole usefulness and validity of choosing a "Character of the Year".

I just heard a report on a Beijing radio station about a nearby town being turned into an English-only enclave.  Not believing my ears, I looked it up online and found that, sure enough, there is such a plan afoot.  This report from People's Daily Online (originally published In Shanghai Daily) (December 16, 2011) is succinct enough that I will quote the whole article: