Language Log

This article (in Chinese) describes how China's netizens (wǎngyǒu 网友) are ridiculing President Xi for inappropriately quoting a poem by Kong Rong 孔融 (153-208), a 20th generation descendant of Confucius, in his New Year's address to the nation.

The first lines of the poem are:

suìyuè bù jū
shíjié rú liú

歲月不居
時節如流

The years do not stand still,
Time flows on like a river.

Today's SMBC:

The following is a guest post by Larry Horn, whose work on personal datives has been discussed on Language Log in the past. (See these posts from late 2009: "On beyond personal datives?," "Horn on personal datives," "Ditransitive prepositions?") It originally appeared on the American Dialect Society mailing list.

Elizabeth Warren is now being mocked left and (mostly) right on social media for her aside during her announcement for the presidency:  "I'm gonna get me a beer".

"I'm gonna get me a beer": Sen. Elizabeth Warren drank a beer on Instagram Live – and it received mixed reactions. https://t.co/0LT6dtXXBH pic.twitter.com/NtNqJ0VddZ

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 2, 2019

When Great Britain handed Hong Kong over to the PRC in 1997, the communist government promised to maintain the status quo of the colony's laws, educational system, human rights, language policy, and so forth for half a century, until 2047.  It has only been a little over twenty years, and already virtually all aspects of government, society, and culture are being reshaped along the lines that are operative in the PRC.  Naturally, the aspect of Hong Kong life that concerns us at Language Log most are policies governing language norms and usages.

From June Teufel Dreyer:

Anthony Clayden wonders whether there is "some visual pun going on with the Chinese characters" in the design of the symbol of the TRA, which "features a rail profile inscribed within two semi-circles."

The president of China recently gave a major address celebrating the 40th anniversary of China's "gǎigé kāifàng 改革开放" ("reform and opening-up"):

"Reading Xi’s Reform Anniversary Speech", by Qian Gang, China Media Project (12/18/18)

Unfortunately, during his speech Xi misread a number of literary expressions at key moments.

An audio ambiguity was recently posted on YouTube, like Yanny v. Laurel but more socially evocative. What Grover actually said was presumably

Move the camera! Yes, yes, that sounds like an excellent idea!

But you can also hear it as

Move the camera! Yes, yes, that's a fucking excellent idea!

Spotted by Anthony Clayden in Taitung, Taiwan:

Today's SMBC:

Viral meme in the Sinosphere:

Wǒ juédé bù OK 我覺得不OK ("I don't feel OK")

Variant:

Wǒ juédé hái OK 我覺得還OK ("I feel sort of OK")

A striking example of orientation-dependent visual ambiguity:

family noticed something about these Christmas candies

right side up: snowman

upside down: Edgar Allen Poe pic.twitter.com/O7y0wPNbs6

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) December 22, 2018

Since speech is effectively one-dimensional, the only direct forms of orientation-dependent speech perception are time-reversal and spectral inversion, which require technological intervention.

But in writing, orientation-dependent perception is easy to arrange, and has a name, namely ambigrams. I don't recall every having seen an accidental ambigram, that is, a piece of text that reads differently upside down without the creator being aware of it. At least, not one where the ambiguity depends on properties of the font or script design.

Photograph of a sign in downtown Taitung, Taiwan:

(Courtesy of Anthony Clayden)