Language Log

In "Xi Jinping Brought Down a Notch by an Unlikely Agent: A Typo" (NYT, Sinosphere 3/14/16), Austin Ramzy details what appears to be a fatally embarrassing typographical error.  Instead of referring to Xi Jinping as "Zhōngguó zuìgāo lǐngdǎorén 中國最高領導人 (China's supreme leader)", an article by reporter Zhāng Zhōngkǎi 張鐘凱 from Xinhua, China's state news agency, called him "Zhōngguó zuìhòu lǐngdǎorén 中國最后領導人 (China's last leader)".

There is a designated staff member whose job at The Economist is to make the magazine (my favorite magazine) look ridiculous by moving adverbs to unacceptably silly positions in the sentence. She is still at work. This is from the December 12 issue, p. 58, in an article about preparations for a referendum next year on whether Britain should abandon its membership in the European Union:

Most pollsters reckon a later vote is likely to boost the leave campaign. Avoidance of delay was a big reason why the government this week pressed the House of Commons swiftly to overturn a House of Lords plan to extend the referendum franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds.

From the article "Trump brushes off widespread backlash" by Paul Koring, The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition), Dec. 9, 2015, p. A13:

And the inevitable correction (The Globe and Mail, Dec. 11, 2015, p. A2):

Just a few days ago we had this colossal blunder being trumpeted all over China:

Xí Jìnpíng huìjiàn Měiguó zǒngtǒng Àomǎbā 习近平会见美国总统奥马巴 ("Xi Jinping meets American President Omaba")

See "Xi Jinping meets President Omaba in Paris" (12/4/15)

Now Al Jazeera (12/6/15) reports another lollapalooza of a typo in China.  This time the tables were turned on their own president:

"China suspends reporters over Xi 'resigns' typo:  Two reporters and two editors punished for accidentally replacing 'zhici' with 'cizhi' in article on Xi's speech."

The headline blares:

Xí Jìnpíng huìjiàn Měiguó zǒngtǒng Àomǎbā 习近平会见美国总统奥马巴 ("Xi Jinping meets American President Omaba")

Funny headline on a Yahoo news story: "Ford stops using Takata air bag inflators in future vehicles". To me that says that they used to use Takata air bags in future vehicles. How did that work?

Stephen Halsey, who is spending the year in Taiwan doing research, observed an interesting linguistic phenomenon that shows the predominance of sound over symbol, even in the writing of Chinese, where the symbols are complex and semantically "heavy" in comparison to phonetic scripts like the Roman alphabet or bopomofo / zhuyin fuhao (Mandarin phonetic symbols), where the symbols are simple and semantically "light".

Making the rounds on Twitter is this discovery by @KingRossco, from the UK Kindle edition of The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot by Blaine Harden:

Eric Pelzl sent in this photograph of a bag from a lunch delivery that contains an interesting printing error:

From Matthew Duggan:

As a Tokyo resident, I take an interest in the failing ability of those in China and Japan to write and distinguish characters due to computer use. [VHM:  See, inter alia, here, here, here, here, and here.]

I could write 1,000 characters at my peak, but with constant computer use I’m down to my address and a few other common ones.

 In that spirit, I thought you might like this news story.

The story Matthew linked to is in Japanese, but it features these two (perhaps not so) revealing photographs:

Headline from the China Daily:

"China reigns in brutal police tactics" (9/9/03)

This hilarious misspelling causes China's widest circulating English-language newspaper accidentally to have a true headline.

I think I know how an unsuitable but immensely rich desert peninsula got chosen by FIFA (the international governing body for major soccer tournaments) to host the soccer World Cup in 2022.

First, a personal anecdote that triggered my hypothesis about the decision. I recently sent a text message from my smartphone and then carelessly slipped it into my pocket without making sure it had gone to sleep.

Outside a pub near my office in Edinburgh on the day of an important soccer fixture between Germany and Scotland there was a sign saying: "Free pint if Scotland win!"

Those with an eye for syntax will focus like a laser beam on the last letter of the last word. Should that have been "if Scotland wins"?