Language Log

Mongolian gets 97 points for singing "Amarillo by Morning" on US TV show but didn't understand a word he was singing. His pronunciation was perfect.

[VHM:  The YouTube video linked to here is currently unavailable, but our resourceful Language Log readers have elsewhere found this song sung by Enkh Erdene and others by him as well, some of them captioned.  See the comments below.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuTWBXyDA4Y

Happy and healthy year of the Pig!

From Anand Mahindra's Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/anandmahindra/status/1090479366235213824

Sign in Beihai Municipality, Guangxi Province that is circulating on WeChat:

When human beings hear others speaking but are unable to comprehend what is being said, to what do they compare such speech?  We will gain one common characterization from this article about a prematurely dying Iraqi dialect:

"Iraqis amid Mosul's silent ruins fear the loss of a dialect", by Sam Kimball, SFGate (2/1/19)

It begins thus:

For centuries, residents of Mosul have spoken a unique form of Arabic enriched by the Iraqi city's long history as a crossroads of civilization, a singsong dialect that many now fear will die out after years of war and displacement.

Much of Mosul's Old City, where speakers of the dialect are concentrated, was completely destroyed in the war against the Islamic State group. Thousands of residents were killed in months of heavy fighting, and tens of thousands fled, taking with them the city's local patois and memories of its more cosmopolitan past.

Photo taken in the reception area of a hospital:

(Source)

President Trump meets with the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, in the White House:

We haven't written about tattoo fiascos for awhile.  Here's a humdinger on Ariana Grande's left palm, in Japanese:

Sign at the high-end Chinese hotpot chain Haidilao:

There's a new attitude wave in China, and it's called the "Fó xì xiànxiàng 佛系现象", which looks like it means "Buddha system / series / department phenomenon".  Unfortunately, that doesn't really make much sense on its own account, and it certainly doesn't fit with the way the expression "Fó xì 佛系" is employed in current parlance, as described in this Chinese newspaper account.  The closest parallel I can think of in American contemporary speech would be “whate-e-e-ver".

So why are they taking the name of the Buddha in vain?

Two images of Chinese takeaway packages in Beijing from Teresa Norman:

The title of a post at MedPage Today echoes the widely negative reaction to obviously blown calls in the recent NFL conference title games — "Is Journal Peer-Review Now Just a Game? Milton Packer wonders if the time has come for instant replay":

Many believe that there is something sacred about the process by which manuscripts undergo peer-review by journals. A rigorous study described in a thoughtful paper is sent out to leading experts, who read it carefully and provide unbiased feedback. The process is conducted with honor and in a timely manner.

It sounds nice, but most of the time, it does not happen that way.

For some comments about the process from the perspective of editors, reviewers, and authors, see the rest of Packer's post. His experience is in the biomedical field, but the situation is similar in other fields. Amazingly bad stuff is often published in respectable and even eminent journals, and genuinely insightful work can be delayed for years by painfully slow interactions with inattentive and dubiously competent reviewers.

How many redundant letters are there in the English Alphabet? What would be the ideal of a perfect alphabet, and how far does the English Alphabet fall short of that ideal?

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) January 30, 2019

[h/t Stan Carey]