Language Log

We have been discussing the "TCM approach to women's wellness" (7/28/16).  Jichang Lulu writes:  "On the topic of women's wellness, I'm reminded of Messrs Know your Bird, purveyors of Antibacterial Lotion of Woman."  Here's a picture:

(via Flickr)

Among many other accounts in English and in Chinese of Lu Gusun's 陆谷孙 passing on July 28, there are two articles in Shanghai Daily that are worthy of mention.  Yesterday, there was an initial, brief announcement,

"Noted English literature professor Lu Gusun passes away at 76" (7/28/16) by Chen Huizhi.

Today, there is a much longer article by Chen Huizhi and Wang Yanlin, "Lu Gusun, celebrated professor and lexicographer, dies aged 76" (7/29/16).

Yesterday's xkcd:

Mouseover title: ""Ok, I lit the smoke bomb and rolled it under the bed. Let's see if it–" ::FWOOOSH:: "Politifact says: PANTS ON FIRE!""

"Trump Jr. Says Obama Lifted Phrase From His RNC Speech", NBC News 7/28/2016:

Donald Trump Jr. suggested Thursday that Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia Wednesday night lifted a line from his Republican National Convention remarks, pointing out that both addresses contained the line "That's not the America I know."

I'm honored that POTUS would plagiarize a line from my speech last week. Where's the outrage? #DemsInPhilly https://t.co/sFQ7fblpLh

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 28, 2016

But as I pointed out in a post back in July of 2004), George W. Bush used the phrase "That is not the America I know" at least six times in 2001-2002.

Ben Mathis-Lilley, "Joe Biden Brings House Down at DNC With Raging Fireball of a Speech Highlighted by Use of Word 'Malarkey'", Slate 7/27/2016. Here's the passage:

According to Merriam-Webster's Trend Watch,

Malarkey rose to the top of our look-ups on the evening of July 27th, 2016, after Vice-President Joseph Biden used the word in a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

“He is trying to tell us he cares about the middle class. Give me a break. That is a bunch of malarkey.” —Joe Biden, quoted on Politico.com, 27 July 2016

Following up on Tim Kaine's mocking imitation of Donald Trump's phrase "believe me", CNN put up a comparison:

"Believe me." Tim Kaine's impression of Donald Trump vs. the mogul himself https://t.co/WpV3EgxtQz #DemsInPhilly https://t.co/q9ar1abkZW

— CNN (@CNN) July 28, 2016

[N.B.:  TCM stands for "Traditional Chinese medicine"]

Geok Hoon (Janet) Williams found these posters this morning at Clementi, Singapore:

In his Democratic National Convention speech, vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine broke out a Donald Trump impression that focused on a signature phrase: "believe me."

Over at this post — "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16) — last week we had a lively discussion on Eurasian words for "wheat".

I'd like to pursue the subject now on a slightly different, but related, tack.

BBC News has a nice article by Tzu-Wei Liu on "The politics of a martial arts book fair in Hong Kong" (7/26/16).  The article is accompanied by six photographs; I will focus on the two that interest me most (because they are both language related), the third and the sixth.

Here's the third photograph:

And what would it sound like? Patricia Murphy, "Hillary Campaign Plans to Shush Berniacs During Vote", The Daily Beast 7/26/2016:

In an email to Clinton's California Delegation, a Clinton staffer outlined a plan to drown out any sounds of descent from unruly Bernie fans.

The error has now been fixed — I'm sympathetic, since I make substitutions of that kind all the time in typing.

I was recently moved (screaming and struggling, as four strong men held me down by my arms and legs) to a new web-based university email system designed and run by Microsoft: Office 365. Naturally, it's ill-designed slow-loading crap, burdened by misfeatures and pointless pop-ups that I do not want popping up, and it fails to allow various elementary operations that I often need (every upgrade is a downgrade). But that is not my topic today. I want to note one special sad consequence of moving to an entirely new system: all my previous email system's Bayesian machine learning about spam classification has been lost. The Office 365 system has had hardly any data to learn from as yet, so I am seeing some of the stuff that would have been coming to me all along if it had not been caught by machine learning and dumped in the spam bin. And what has truly amazed me is the daily flow of advertising for spamferences and junk journals.

No matter where I go these days, I hear young people shouting to their friends, "I'm playing Pokémon Go", which they pronounce "pokey-mon go".  It would be an understatement to say that, for the past few weeks, Pokémon Go has been a veritable craze.  Yet most people who play the game probably do not realize that the name "Pokémon" is a Japanese portmanteau based on two English words:  poketto ポケット ("pocket") + monsutā モンスター ("monster"). 

"What's in a name — Pikachu, Beikaciu, Pikaqiu?" (5/31/16)