Language Log

PRC cyberspace authorities fight against bad memes and distorted pronunciation

October 16, 2024 @ 9:35 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Etymology, Language on the internets, Pronunciation

Judging from these alarming top level official government proclamations, one might think that the Chinese language is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's all because of the deleterious effects of the internet, strict policing of which is absolutely necessary.

Rénmín wǎng: Rénmín rè píng: Jǐnfáng hēi huà làn gěng de yǐnxìng qīnshí

Lín Fēng 2024 nián 10 yuè 13 rì 10:31 | Láiyuán: Rénmín wǎng-guāndiǎn píndào xiǎo zìhao jìnrì, zhōngyāng wǎng xìn bàn, jiàoyù bù yìnfā tōngzhī, bùshǔ kāizhǎn “qīnglǎng·guīfàn wǎngluò yǔyán wénzì shǐyòng” zhuānxiàng xíngdòng. Zhuānxiàng xíngdòng jùjiāo bùfèn wǎngzhàn píngtái zài rè sōu bǎng dān, shǒuyè shǒu píng, fāxiàn jīngxuǎn děng zhòngdiǎn huánjié chéngxiàn de yǔyán wénzì bù guīfàn, bù wénmíng xiànxiàng, zhòngdiǎn zhěngzhì wāi qǔ yīn, xíng, yì, biānzào wǎngluò hēi huà làn gěng, lànyòng yǐnhuì biǎodá děng túchū wèntí.

人民網：人民熱評：謹防黑話爛梗的隱性侵蝕
林風
2024年10月13日10:31 | 來源：人民網-觀點頻道
小字號

近日，中央網信辦、教育部印發通知，部署開展“清朗·規范網絡語言文字使用”專項行動。專項行動聚焦部分網站平台在熱搜榜單、首頁首屏、發現精選等重點環節呈現的語言文字不規范、不文明現象，重點整治歪曲音、形、義，編造網絡黑話爛梗，濫用隱晦表達等突出問題。

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (3)

AI Overview: bits and pieces (German "ich" and Starbuck WA)

October 11, 2024 @ 7:08 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Language and business, Language on the internets, Punctuation, Toponymy

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]

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (8)

AI Overview: Snake River and Walla Walla

October 10, 2024 @ 10:26 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Etymology, Language on the internets, Toponymy

[N.B.: If you don't have time to read through this long and complicated post, cut to the "Closing note" at the bottom.]

Lately when I do Google searches, especially on obscure and challenging subjects, AI Overview leaps into the fray and takes precedence at the very top, displacing Wikipedia down below, and even Google's own responses, which have been increasingly frequent in recent months, are pushed over to the top right.

AI Overview, on first glance, seems convenient and useful, but — when I start to dig deeper, I find that there are problems. As an example, I will give the case of the name of the Snake River, and maybe mention a few other instances of AI Overview falling short, but still being swiftly, though superficially, helpful.

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (8)

Internet IDs for China

August 19, 2024 @ 7:05 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Language on the internets

Permalink Comments (1)

'Tis the summer season for choking off VPNs

August 17, 2024 @ 7:04 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Communication, Language on the internets

"The mysterious slowdown of VPNs in China", Drum Tower, The Economist (newsletter), Gabriel Crossley (China correspondent) (8/15/24)

Every summer Communist Party bigwigs leave Beijing and go to recharge in the resort town of Beidaihe on the coast. This coincides with the silly season for China watchers. There is little hard news, so rumours fly. Some are baseless speculations about the health of Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader. Others are more well-founded, such as a report that Hu Xijin, a prominent nationalist commentator, has been muzzled on social media (probably for accidentally overstepping the party line). And some are true but harder to explain: like the fact that virtual private networks (VPNs) are getting slower.

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (3)

Internet as Russian dialect enabler

June 26, 2024 @ 6:45 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Dialects, Language on the internets

"Internet Not Killing Off Dialects within Russian as Many Suppose but Increasing Their Diversity, Moscow Scholar Says", Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia (6/7/24)

It is widely assumed that the Internet is contributing to the homogenization of languages and killing off both dialects and local variants; but in fact, a Moscow scholar says, a new survey of Russian as spoken in the cities of that country finds that in many places, dialects are unexpectedly expanding.

Ivan Levan, a specialist at the Moscow Institute of the Russian Language at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that he and his colleagues have recently found “about 2,000” new words that vary from city to city and were not recorded in V.I. Belikov and V.P. Selegey’s 2005 work on Languages of Russian Cities (yandex.ru/company/researches/2021/local-words).

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (6)

More wonders of Google

November 7, 2022 @ 9:43 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language on the internets, Pronunciation

I was trying to find an old post I wrote about a dictionary of Japanese pronunciations of Chinese characters and put this in the Google search engine: victor mair language log dictionary japanese pronunciation (no quotation marks). I was thunderstruck by the first result (out of 188,000):

victor mair language log –> ヴィクトル・メアの言語ログ

Vu~ikutoru mea no gengo rogu

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (2)

Subtleties of slapping

April 10, 2022 @ 6:47 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Gesture, Idioms, Language on the internets, Semantics, Slang

Lately I've been encountering this expression quite a bit on the Chinese internet:

dǎ liǎn 打脸

It seems transparently to mean "slap face", but my Chinese students and friends all characterize it as jargon and netizen slang, and they say that it has only been gaining currency within the last two-three years.

Here I rank "dǎ liǎn 打脸" numerically against other terms for "slap" that I've been acquainted with since I started learning Chinese more than half a century ago.

dǎ liǎn 打脸 ("slap face") 48,700,000 ghits — that was yesterday's tally; this morning it is 59,500,000

dǎ ěrguāng 打耳光 ("box [someone's] ear") 3,420,000 ghits

dǎ yī bāzhang 打一巴掌 ("strike with the palm") 2,300,000 ghits

dǎ zuǐbā 打嘴巴 ("smack on the mouth") 975,000

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (10)

Uncommon prosperity

December 29, 2021 @ 4:35 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Language and politics, Language on the internets

Even those who are not China watchers will remember the savage satire directed against the pathetic River Crab (= Harmonious Society) and the Grass-Mud Horse (= *uck your mother").

There's always something the censors have to block on the Chinese internet. It wouldn't be the Chinese internet if a large part of it were not being blocked. If I were to list all the Language Log posts that document the expressions that have been censored by the PRC authorities, it would soon swell to over a hundred items.

For the year 2021, here are some of the favorite targets of the internet police:

Clubhouse

February 8, 2021

Social audio app Clubhouse was blocked around 7 p.m. on February 8 in response to a spirited discussion about Xinjiang that had happened the previous weekend. (See Darren Byler’s column about the offending chat room). In addition, Clubhouse had hosted discussions about Tibet and Taiwan. Some Chinese users noted that their mainland China phone numbers could not receive verification messages to register for new accounts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (3)

Melon eaters and censorship in the PRC

December 8, 2021 @ 9:48 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Language on the internets

Because of the scandal surrounding the illicit, involuntary relationship between female tennis star, Peng Shuai 彭帅, and top CCP official, Zhang Gaoli 张高丽, which became a hot button issue around the world beginning about a month ago, the Chinese government went into overdrive to censor all trace of it from the internet (see here). The issue was particularly sensitive and embarrassing to the Communist Party because it rekindled the Me Too / #MeToo / #Mǐtù 米兔 ("Rice Bunny") movement (which the government had only with great difficulty tamped down a few years ago), led to the cancellation of the lucrative Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tournaments in China, and is even threatening to cause a boycott of the upcoming winter Olymics, which would be utterly disastrous for the PRC.

The gross disparity between the absence of all mention of l'affaire Peng Shuai et Zhang Gaoli in China (indeed the disappearance of the star herself) and the raging indignation over it outside China led me to inquire of my friends in China what they were hearing about it sub / sotto voce.

All responses in this post are from Chinese citizens who must remain unidentified for fear of harsh government reprisals.

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (17)

Your Pinky Heart

October 22, 2021 @ 5:38 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Censorship, Language and entertainment, Language and music, Language and politics, Language on the internets, Subtitles

Phenomenally viral song by the Malaysian hip-hop artist, Namewee, "It might Break Your Pinky Heart. Namewee 黃明志 Ft.Kimberley Chen 陳芳語【Fragile 玻璃心】@鬼才做音樂 2021 Ghosician" — premiered on 10/15/21, and it already has nearly 9,000,000 views:

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments (20)

Green needle vs. brainstorm

October 2, 2021 @ 7:25 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language on the internets, Phonetics and phonology, Pronunciation, Psycholinguistics, Speech technology

Remember "Yanny vs. Laurel", the viral acoustic sensation (28.2M views) of mid-May, 2018? It was covered extensively on Language Log (see the items under "Selected readings" below). Now we have another supposedly ambiguous recording that has gone viral (5.3M views [posted 7/3/21]):