Language Log

From Xinyi Ye:

I was on my way home from HKU (Hong Kong University) and was looking for a dinner place and found this handwritten menu:
(explanations and annotations below)

Xinyi is not a native of Hong Kong, but she has been living there long enough to know the folkways and even to be sufficiently familiar with the local lingo to be sensitive to the special flavor of the menu shorthand on display in the eateries there.

This signboard offers a cornucopia of delicious Hong Kong menu shorthand, starting with the first two items (N.B.:  not all items on the board are distinctively Cantonese, but plenty of them are):

1. dòufù 豆付 (lit., "bean pay") for dòufu 豆腐 ("tofu; bean curd")

2. jiāndàn 煎旦 ("fried dawn") for jiāndàn 煎蛋 ("fried egg")

The "words per day" thing has mostly gone quiet since it erupted in the media nearly 20 years ago — but here's a sensible replay:

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-sixty-seventh issue:

“Bai Xingjian and His Dream World of Sex and Love,” by Qianheng Jiang. 

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp367_Bai_Xingjian_Sex_Love.pdf

"Indonesia Volcano Eruption Sends Ash Soaring 11 Miles High", NYT 7/7/2025:

A volcanic eruption in Indonesia on Monday sent an ash cloud soaring about 11 miles high, far higher than a plume produced by the same volcano when it erupted last month.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, on the southeastern Indonesian island of Flores, spewed the ash when it erupted for about six minutes on Monday morning, the national volcanic agency reported. It erupted several more times later in the day.

That’s a lot of ash: The cloud was nearly four times taller than the three-mile-high one that Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki produced when it erupted last month.

Babbel's April 2025 Semicolon Survey looked at students' reactions to the obvious secular decline in semicolon frequency:

The semicolon once stood as a symbol of thoughtful, elegant writing, a punctuation mark beloved by literary greats like Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. But today, the humble semicolon faces an uncertain future.

New analysis from Babbel uncovers a stark decline: semicolon usage in British English books has fallen by nearly 50% in the past two decades. In fact, historical data shows this decline stretches back centuries. In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly every 90 words; by 2000, it had fallen to one every 205 words. Today, there’s just one semicolon for every 390 words.

And it’s not just in books. New survey data from Babbel reveals over half (54%) of UK students didn’t know when to replace a comma with a semicolon.

Babbel partnered with the London Student Network, a community of 500,000 students, to ask about their attitudes toward the semicolon and whether they actually knew how to use it. The quiz, co-written by Babbel’s linguistic experts and grammarian Lisa McLendon, tested students on real-world semicolon usage.

• • Based upon responses to the interactive quiz, 28% of young Britons don’t use the semicolon at all. 39% of students claim to rarely use semicolons; just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users of the semicolon.
  • Over half (54%) of young Britons don’t know the rules around semicolon usage (4 of the 5 most poorly-answered questions required respondents to identify when to replace a comma with a semicolon). UK students scored 49% on average on the semicolon quiz.
  • Although many don’t understand or use it, the Babbel survey revealed that 67% of young Britons still believe the semicolon has value.

The news has been full of the Musk-Trump feud. Among the linguistic aspects, there's an interesting amount of explicit or implied gender association — here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a memic clip widely linked on social media:

Following up on yesterday's "'Badass'" post, here's a recent and relevant article complaining that the word has been bleached into meaninglessness, especially as applied to women — Jackie Jennings, "We Need a Word Besides 'Badass' for Our Heroines", Jezebel 6/3/2024:

I am finished with the b-word. It’s been applied to every woman who has ever been publicly competent at anything. It’s been worked to death and rendered meaningless. Everyone from Courtney Love to Martha Stewart to Rosa Parks has been described as one and, at this point, it’s so overused that to call a woman this is a form of dada performance art. 

In short: We simply have to stop using the word “badass” to describe any/every woman on earth who has entered the cultural dialogue for something other than a federal crime. And, I’m not a language cop but just know that if you use “badass” and think it conveys anything at all, you simply must think again.

What was once patronizing and gendered is now maddeningly vague and borderline inscrutable. It’s a collection of AI-generated slay queen, #girlboss memes gathered into a single word. 

Screenshot of a post on Threads:

The internet has been in an uproar over the sacking by Xi Jinping of two of China's topmost military men.

Exclusive | "Was fallen Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe compromised by hostile force?  A rare form of words that the Communist Party normally only applies to those accused of betrayal was used in the indictment against him", by William Zheng, SCMP (7/10/24)

China’s fallen former defence minister Wei Fenghe may have been compromised by a hostile force as the peculiar wording of the official indictment hinted.

In an unprecedented move, Wei, along with his successor Li Shangfu, was officially impeached by the Politburo headed by President Xi Jinping on June 27. The duo were expelled from the party and could face further legal action.

[Since Wei and Li were in charge of the PLA Rocket Force, which gets into nuclear missiles and what not, the situation could not be more dire.  Maybe they did not accede to Xi's wishes regarding a launch.  Who knows?  No matter what, Xi was royally peeved.]

While Beijing has not revealed details of their offences, one particular phrase from the official impeachment against Wei caught the attention of seasoned Chinese experts.

Of the all top generals who fell in Xi’s war against corruption, Wei was the only one described as “zhongcheng shi jie” 忠诚失节 or “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity”.

In case (like me) you haven't been following the murder trial of Karen Read, this article provides the background: Kim Stelloh, "Karen Read is accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend. Here's what we know about the murder trial", NBC News 6/7/2024. The current media fever focuses on the testimony of (Massachusetts State Police investigator) Michael Proctor, forced on the witness stand to read some text messages that hit a trifecta of gender, regional, and vocabulary biases:

Proctor spells c u n t and AJ objects, Auntie Bev said they are your words, so use them.

Friend – "Is she hot"

Proctor – "She's a whack job cunt, yes she's a babe, weird Fall River accent though, no ass" pic.twitter.com/Vdx3wY9uPW

— FreeKarenRead (@Free_Karen_Read) June 10, 2024

—for Valentine's Day (belatedly)

The cuneiform tablet pictured below may include the first textual description of a kiss.

The Barton Cylinder, excavated in the ancient Sumerian
city of Nippur in 1899 and dating to around 2400 B.C.
Credit: The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The next event in the Salon Sanctuary concert series is "Victorious Secret: Love Gamed and Gender Untamed in the Sparkling Courts of the Baroque":

Before the bars of gender binaries caged the mainstream operatic imagination, a golden age of fluidity guided the vocal soundscape. Virility declared itself with the castrato’s clarion high notes, while femininity spoke in earthy tessiture that plunged to shimmering depths.

Texts of the period revel in ambiguity, unfurling genderless narratives of anonymous lovers and unnamed beloveds. Stories of active pursuit and passive reverie remain alike at loose ends, with neat resolutions many movements away.

Please join us for this special program in honor of Pride Month, as the music of the past reveals a golden underground of nonbinary riches, accompanying us in our witness to a new Renaissance.