Language Log

Some people are apparently still puzzled by the pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull. So let's take it a bit at a time. This morning, we'll cover the unexpected (to non-Icelanders) pronunciation of the 'll' at the very end of the word. (I warn you in advance that I don't know anything about Icelandic, I'm just exercising some generic phonetics-fu with a little help from my friends…)

Today Franz Boas invited me to become his Facebook friend. Yes, that Franz Boas, the distinguished anthropologist and linguist. The Facebook profile has the facts right: hometown Minden [in Westphalia], Germany (it doesn't say that he was born there in 1858); current city New York, New York (well, that's where he died, in 1942, in Claude Lévi-Strauss's arms, at the Columbia University Faculty Club); political views socialist.

Boas's many students included anthropologists/linguists Alfred Kroeber and Edward Sapir and others well-known outside of linguistics (Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, and Margaret Mead among them).

The Facebook account is a little academic joke, which I'm happy to take part in. Among his Facebook friends are Heidi Harley, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Bill Poser, and Ben Zimmer of this parish, plus quite a few others (Brian Joseph, Dennis Preston, Jesse Sheidlower, Tony Woodbury, for instance).

I'd imagine that Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield will soon be getting accounts.

"Ministers mull volcano ash cloud flight chaos measures", BBC News, 4/18/2010.

This is from a little while back (I've been sick — a brief account of the crisis point, back in early February, here, but the condition has continued to dog me and consumes much of my life). It's a Zits combining two of our enduring interests on Language Log, the language of adolescents and language and gender, especially the latter:

Here we see the affectionate couple (with the girl breathlessly telling the story in detail, while the guy interrupts her with an eight-word summary) enacting a gender stereotype that's often been a focus on Language Log: the talkative, emotional female versus the laconic, bare-bones male. Plus another gender stereotype, of the relationship-oriented female versus the fact-oriented male (the hell with the cuddling and all that stuff, let's get on to the important stuff, the making out).

I've been playing with the idea of assembling a gallery of Language Log cartoons (many from Zits) on gender stereotypes, and maybe another one of strips on teenspeak, along the lines of the gallery of my academic "postcard collages", most on language-related themes, linked to here.

I have begun to accept that air travel across the North Atlantic is a thing of the past, at least for now. Europe is as distant a dream as it was a hundred years ago, a trip accomplishable only by a long sea voyage. I need to accept that I live in Boston now. I have been passing my time learning to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull properly, and rediscovering the pleasures of being back in the USA, and profiting from the kindness of strangers toward the bloggers they read. You Language Log readers in the Boston/Cambridge area and further afield: I really am touched by your generosity, thoughtfulness, and friendship. Elizabeth, Murray, Jan, Kathleen, Michael, Carla, Ryan, James, Steve: this means people like you.

The Australian branch of Penguin Books is in a certain amount of trouble for publishing a cookbook containing a recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto that includes "salt and freshly ground black people".

We've often observed how fond people are of noting (or rather, claiming) that language L has an interesting number N of words for some concept X. N may be zero, which is taken to mean that the L-ians are unable to grasp the concept X, or at least have some special difficulty with it. Alternatively, N may be unusually large, which is taken as evidence that X has an especially central role in L-ian consciousness. In such cases, the factual claims about the L-ian lexicon are almost always false; and even if the word-count claims were true, the logic of the argument is unsound.

Occasionally, someone makes both sorts of claims about a single language; and there's a fine (though unserious) pair of specimens in Georgia Graham, "What has Iceland done for Britain?", The Telegraph 4/17/2010.

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: