Language Log

OK, how do YOU pronounce Eyjafjallajökull?

What does a Language Log blogger who currently lives in Edinburgh do when stranded in Boston, the wrong side of a continent-sized plume of volcanic ash? Some would just hang out in bars, sinking beer after beer and boring fellow customers with increasingly self-pitying descriptions of their plight ("D'you know, I'm a famoush Languidsh Log writer; thish shouldn't be happening to me; there should be shpecial arrangementsh; you shee, I have to get back to Ebbingbr… Edimbr… Edingbrg…"). But not me. I like to work. There is no way I can get out of here with the whole of the north Atlantic area and northern Europe in paralysis, so I'm going over to give a lecture on English grammar at Boston College, 3:30 today (Friday). Title: "The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style; location: Lyons Hall, room 202. Be there. The lecturing will give me something safe and socially useful for me to do, and it will enable me to continue the campaign.

NASSLLI 2010 is a week long summer school that offers 15 superlative graduate level courses and workshops on Language, Logic and Information from leading scholars, plus pre-session tutorials to bring you up to speed. And the price is incredibly low, just $150 for the entire week if you're a student and register by May 1.

"Second best"? We'll come to that.

Today the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) finally dropped its disgraceful libel suit against the science writer Simon Singh, because Singh had won a Supreme Court judgment that restored his right to use the most obviously fair defense: that what he said was fair comment by a journalist stating his opinions on a matter of public concern. See the details in this article in The Times or this article in The Independent. We should celebrate this victory; but no one should think that it means things are now all right regarding freedom of speech for journalists in England. Singh is quite likely to lose about $90,000 of his own money, as well as the 45 weeks of his time, that he spent preparing a defense against the BCA's shameful lawsuit. The English libel law is still a crock, and desperately needs reform. In fact Singh is not the only science writer or scientist facing a libel action right now: Peter Wilmshurst still faces a suit by a company whose heart device he said was not safe.

Eyjafjallajoekull: the name says it all, doesn't it? No, of course it doesn't. It looks like a kitten walked across your keyboard. It's the name of the glacier covering the volcano in Iceland that just woke up and remembered that its job description says "Spew hot lava ash across northwestern Europe". I'm at Boston's Logan Airport, where the lights are going out one by one on the board showing international departures to Europe. Airspace is shutting down, flight by flight by flight.

The title is from the subject line of a message sent to me a few days ago by Anne Henochowicz.  Anne was puzzled by the expression ruǎn Q (軟Q) that occurs on a package of "Japanese style" cakes (mochi) made in Taiwan:

There's an old headline-parody that involves posing a disjunctive question between two functionally equivalent alternatives, and "X: Threat or Menace?" is the most familiar form of this joke. We've used it more than once here on Language Log, for example in Geoff Nunberg's post "'Still unpacked': Threat or Menace?", 5/17/2005.

Sasha Aikhenvald on the Linguistic Typology mailing list, April 13:

Ernie Grant, a notable elder of the Jirrbal [earlier known as Dyirbal] tribe, will be honoured by an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from James Cook University on 17 April 2010.

Attached is the statement of his achievements leading to this award. [click here; then, to see the statement, double-click on the filename in the download box]

It is worth noting that Ernie is the son of Chloe Grant, Bob Dixon's first and great teacher of Dyirbal. He is one of the last remaining speakers of the language.

In the history of (native-speaker) language consultants (also known as informants), they have been treated as everything along the scale from experimental subjects to language teachers to research collaborators. In Grant's case, it was his mother who primarily served as a language consultant, while Grant himself grew to perform a wide range of significant services to his community — for which he's now being given this honor.

From Kenneth P. Vogel, "GOP operatives crash the tea party", Politico 4/14/2010:

As for the bus tours, [Sal] Russo said “they work for us. It’s a great vehicle to go to a lot of places and get a lot of people involved and engaged. I am proud of what we do. Who else goes out there and motivates people and insinuates involvement and activity and actually is making a difference in what is going on?”

A few days ago at the Guardian, David Marsh brought out the stuffed body of George Orwell and propped it up in the pulpit ("Election 2010 – vote for the cliche you hate the most", 4/9/2010):

George Orwell, in his brilliant 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote: "When one watches some tired [political] hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases … one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy." He memorably argued that "if thought corrupts language, language can often corrupt thought" and proposed six rules of good writing:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The result was shocking.

Dan Bilefsky, "Hungarian Right, Center and Far, Make Gains", New York Times 4/11/2010:

Hungary’s center-right opposition party won first-round parliamentary elections here on Sunday, while a far-right party, whose black-clad paramilitary extremists evoke the Nazi era, made significant gains.

Following on Barbara Partee's posting on vwllssnss, here's today's Zits:

Nice conceit about dispensing with vowels in speech (as well as vowel letters in writing).

According to Andreas Ulrich and Alfred Weinzierl, "German Trainers Describe Pitiful State of Afghan Police", Der Spiegel, 4/7/2010:

A functioning police force is seen as a prerequisite for a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. German trainers, however, paint a disastrous picture of the quality of Afghan security forces. Too many police, they say, can't read or write, can't shoot straight or take bribes.