Language Log

Michael Kaan poses a tough question about how to make cōngyóubǐng 葱油饼 ("green onion pancakes"; lit., "scallion oil pancakes"):

I was watching a recipe on YouTube for one of my favorite Chinese snacks, con you bing, and I used Google's translate function to get the recipe in English (I watched it in Chrome and right-clicked to get it). As you can see in the attachment with screen shots [VHM: copied below], the fifth step in the recipe is quite technically elaborate: you have to use the Jaws of Death to twist the dough.

[VHM: because I'm in China, I can't see this or any other YouTube video — YouTube is completely blocked by the PRC authorities.]

My cooking skills are limited and I really don't want to purchase Jaws of Death just for one recipe. Is there something in the original Taiwanese Mandarin that I'm missing?

Josef Fruehwald has an excellent post "On vocal fry". (For some background, see "Vocal fry: 'creeping in' or 'still here'?", 12/12/2011.)

He observes that the media coverage has been an intellectual "train wreck", and he promises to explore the whys and wherefores in a future post. I'll look forward to his analysis — but I came to my own conclusion a few years ago ("Bible Science Stories", 12/2/2006):

I've concluded that "scientific studies" like these have taken over the place that bible stories used to occupy. It's only fundamentalists like me who worry about whether they're true. For most people, it's only important that they're morally instructive.

What would the producers of CNN Headline News, NPR's "Wait, wait, don't tell me" or the BBC's "Have I got news for you" say, if presented with evidence that they've been peddling falsehoods? I imagine that their reaction would be roughly like that of an Episcopalian Sunday-school teacher, confronted with evidence from DNA phylogeny that the animals of the world could not possibly have gone through the genetic bottleneck required by the story of Noah's ark. I mean, lighten up, man, it's just a story.

Johanna Decorse, "Case of anti-white racism on trial in France", AP 12/14/2011:

TOULOUSE, France—As protesters massed outside, the spokeswoman for a movement representing immigrants from France's former colonies went on trial Wednesday for allegedly insulting white French in what may be the first anti-white racism case in France.

The verdict, expected Jan. 25, may turn on a hyphen.

The trial grew out of a legal complaint from a far-right group, the General Alliance Against Racism and Respect for French and Christian Identity, Agrif, against Houria Bouteldja for using a word she invented to refer to white French that she claims was misconstrued. She was charged with "racial injury" and, if convicted, risks up to six months in prison and a maximum €25,000 ($32,500) fine, though courts usually issue far lighter sentences.

In the tumultuous run-up to the momentous announcement of the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year (to be proclaimed on January 6, 2012), Language Log's own Ben Zimmer is the main point-man with the media.  See here, here, and here.

The Chinese, of course, are not to be outdone, so they have for the past few years been choosing a "Character of the Year."  This year, 2011, the character selected is kòng 控.  Everybody seems to think that kòng 控 means "control".  In this post, however, I'm going to question that assumption, and I'm also going to cast doubt upon the whole usefulness and validity of choosing a "Character of the Year".

Nadia Bakri, "Impatient Protesters Convulse Syria as Russia Offers New Resolution", NYT 12/16/2011:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group in London with networks of informants in Syria, said that at least 200,000 people went out in the city of Homs after Friday Prayer and called for the Arab League to interfere more aggressively to end bloodshed that, by the United Nations’ count, has killed more than 5,000 people.

In the course of checking out stimuli for an experiment, I came across an interesting word pronunciation. The speaker is a woman in her mid-20s who has lived all her life in central Ohio. Here's a short version — see if you can guess what the word is:

Note that the preceding clip includes the word in question and also the initial consonant of the following word…

Courtesy of Stephen Bullon in East Sussex, here's a headline to test your crash blossom mettle:

Bright sparks weather gala night power cut to party on

Stephen didn't send a scan, and the article doesn't appear (yet?) on the paper's web site, but apparently it was actually printed in the physical version. It took me four or five readings to figure out what (I think) it means.

Ben Zimmer was on NPR's Morning Edition today — "American Dialect Society To Choose Word Of The Year":

Lovers of the English language are coming together to select the coolest word or phrase. Last year, app was voted the word of the year by the American Dialect Society. Now that group of etymologists, writers, historians and other language experts are considering new words for 2011. Linguist Ben Zimmer talks to Renee Montagne to offer his picks for 2011.

I just heard a report on a Beijing radio station about a nearby town being turned into an English-only enclave.  Not believing my ears, I looked it up online and found that, sure enough, there is such a plan afoot.  This report from People's Daily Online (originally published In Shanghai Daily) (December 16, 2011) is succinct enough that I will quote the whole article:

I've received several messages with links to this NYT piece since its appearance online on Sunday. The piece is on Dothraki, a constructed language used in the HBO series "Game of Thrones" and invented by David J. Peterson, founder and President of the Language Creation Society and (as it happens) a former PhD student here in the Extreme Southwest Wing of Language Log Plaza. The piece also talks about constructed languages ("conlangs") and language constructors ("conlangers") a bit more generally, and most specifically with respect to their use in Hollywood. (That 'their' is purposely ambiguous.)

Today's installment of John Allison's web-comic short story "Murder She Writes" features the youthful amateur detective Charlotte Grote ("Lottie") using well as an intensifier of the adjective brutal.

This is a traditional usage — the OED's sense 16.a. for well, "With adjectives. Formerly in common use, the sense varying from ‘fully, completely’ to ‘fairly, considerably, rather’", has citations going back to the 9th century:

c888 Ælfred tr. Boethius De Consol. Philos. xxv,   Seo leo, þeah hio wel tam se,‥heo forgit sona hire niwan taman.
c900 tr. Bede Eccl. Hist. iv. ii. 258   Wæron her stronge cyningas and wel cristene.

But now well ADJ is rare except in the cases listed in sense 16.b. "In modern use esp. in well able, well aware, well worth, well worthy", a list that obviously doesn't include "well brutal". (Well is freely used as a modifier on past participles, as in "a well-cooked egg", but that's another matter.)

I've been struck for some time by the amazingly loose way the press uses the verb compare. You must have noticed the sort of thing I mean. Politician A reacts to some harsh policy or aggressive act advocated by politician B and says something like "Even Hitler didn't go that far", and the headlines say "A COMPARES B TO HITLER." I've seen dozens of examples of this (if you want to see a concrete example, take a look at this story about Hank Williams Jr. allegedly comparing Barack Obama with Hitler, something he clearly did not do). I thought it might be worth mentioning on Language Log at some point. But I have never seen such an outrageously careless instance as Evan McMorris-Santoro's claim on TPM that:

Obama senior strategist David Axelrod compared the former House Speaker [Newt Gingrich] to the ass end of a monkey.

Axelrod absolutely did no such thing (as Victor Steinbok pointed out in an email to the American Dialect Society's list). Asked about Gingrich's rising prominence (40% of Republicans now support him for president), Axelrod said this:

Just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt. So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.

This isn't comparing Gingrich with a monkey's rear end!

A note from Stephen Mouritsen:

I wanted to give you a heads up about a second judicial opinion (again by Justice Tom Lee on the Utah Supreme Court) that overtly relies on data from Mark Davies' COCA.  The opinion is here, and the discussion of corpus data is found in paragraphs 36 through 40.