Language Log

David Craig sent in this photograph and asked "What does it really say and why doesn't it?":

Matthew Kaminski, "Democracy may have had its day", WSJ 4/26/2013:

Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his "farewell lecture" here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece—whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War inspired comparisons to Edward Gibbon's Roman history—uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.

Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are "individualized, unfocused and scattered." On campus, he said, "I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness." Rare are "faculty with atypical views," he charged. "Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values." He counseled schools to adopt "a common core of studies" in the history, literature and philosophy "of our culture." By "our" he means Western.

J.R. writes:

Are you noticing more and more usage of "worsted" for "bested", in the sense of beating someone?  It seems to be a trend.  It's not consistent with getting the "best" of someone, and the orientation (focusing on the one who lost) is the opposite of topping someone, overwhelming them or surpassing them.  But it sure carries an extra bit of negativity, doesn't it?  But towards whom?  Winner or loser?

Here's part of a page from a Chinese exercise book for learning English, with a student's notations added in blue ink:

Correction of the month, from Henry Alford, "How I Became a Hipster", NYT 5/1/2013:

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the products sold at By Brooklyn. The store does not sell dandelion and burdock soda, lovage soda syrup, and Early Bird granola “gathered in Brooklyn.”

An earlier version also referred incorrectly to the thoroughfare that contains the thrift shop Vice Versa. It is Bedford Avenue, not Bedford Street, or Bedfoprd Avenue, as stated in an earlier correction.

Michael Martinez, "Marine investigated in videotaped road rage at Camp Pendleton", CNN 4/5/2013:

The Marine, whose name, rank or unit weren't being released, was cited for communicating a threat in the incident, but he wasn't charged as of Friday, said Sgt. Christopher Duncan, a Camp Pendleton spokesman.

The video, which went viral on the Internet, shows a young man yelling outside a truck, and he uses his hands and feet to wail on the truck whose driver sits calmly behind the wheel with the window rolled up. A woman passenger films the video.

The cited video is here, though 6,235 views seems short of "viral" status .

"MIT and Haiti sign agreement to promote Kreyòl-language STEM education", MIT News Office 4/17/2013:

MIT and Haiti signed a new joint initiative today to promote Kreyòl-language education in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, part of an effort to help Haitians learn in the language most of them speak at home. […]

The idea that more Haitian education should occur in Kreyòl is a longtime belief of MIT linguistics professor Michel DeGraff, a native of Haiti, who has contended that Kreyòl has been improperly marginalized in the Haitian classroom. DeGraff’s extensive research on public perceptions of Kreyòl, and on the language itself, has led him to assert that its perception as a kind of exceptionally simplified hybrid tongue, in comparison to English or French, unfairly diminishes the language.

The initiative is meant not to replace French, DeGraff added, but to help Kreyòl-speaking students “build a solid foundation in their own language.”

The technology-based open education resources, he noted, are meant to promote “active learning,” as opposed to drill-based rote learning techniques.

The initiative is being funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by MIT.

There’s a new blog, “History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences”, edited by James McElvenny at the University of Sydney. I’m the invited author of the third post in it, ‘On the history of the question of whether natural language is “illogical”’, which came out on May 1. For now, new posts are planned weekly. Here’s the blog address: http://hiphilangsci.com.

Let any interested friends know about it, because there is a desire for good discussion of the entries and for interesting new posts.

Ry Rivard, "Duke Faculty Say No", Inside Higher Ed 4/302013:

“This had more to do with the politics of telling the provost he didn’t consult enough with the faculty, which I feel was bologna,” [Professor of Physics Steffen] Bass said. “But, yeah, that’s how it went.”

I strongly suspect that Prof. Bass actually said "baloney", pronounced something like [bə'loʊ.ni]. I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the pronunciation [bo'loʊ.ɲjə] for the meaning "nonsense", though I sometimes see it spelled "bologna". But this word (or words) is (or are) an orthographic, phonetic, and semantic mess.

…has been featured in the last three Big Nate strips, starting with this one:

"Citizen Hearing On Disclosure: April 29 To May 3, 2013 – Washington, DC":

An event with historical implications will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC from April 29 to May 3, 2013. At that time as many as forty researchers and military/agency witnesses will testify for thirty hours over five days before former members of the United States Congress. […]

The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race will attempt to accomplish what the Congress has failed to do for forty-five years – seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time.

For this reason the motto for the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is "If the Congress won't do its job, the people will."