Language Log

Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content "is an internet comic strip about romance and robots". One current romance features Faye Whitaker, described as "Sexy, snarky, and endearingly combative", and Bubbles, a "Big scary combat AI. Actually quite shy." In the past few strips (starting here), Faye works up the courage to introduce Bubbles to her mother, expecting some issues over Bubbles' gender and species.

After the initial shock wears off, the interaction goes well — but Faye is surprised to hear Bubbles accommodating to her mother's dialect.

Those who followed the origins of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will remember that it was often connected with a Wuhan "wet market" called Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.  Now another wholesale market is suspected of being the point of origin for a second wave of the coronavirus, this time in Beijing.  Here is a report on the different interpretations of the name of the market from a born-and-bred Beijinger:

People in Beijing are getting disquieted again these days, because there have been 51 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases reported within 4 days in this city, which are all linked to the most important wholesale market in Beijing. This wholesale market, "Xīnfādì 新发地"*, although very well-known to the locals, is not very familiar to people in other provinces, and it's interesting that some have thus misinterpreted the name of this wholesale market "Xīnfādì 新发地" as "[Xīn] guān bào[fā] de [dì]fāng【新】冠 爆【发】的【地】方"** (a possible abbreviation for "the location of the outbreak of Novel Coronavirus"). People here had been almost lulled into a sense of security since there had been no newly registered domestic cases in Beijing for about 2 months, and now it seems that there could be another outbreak on a smaller scale.

[VHM:

* My original supposition was that the "fā 发" of this name likely derives from "pīfā 批发" ("wholesale").  "Xīn 新" means "new" and "dì 地" means "place" = "New Wholesale Place".  But see below for the actual derivation, which is both quite surprising and quite appropriate for the latest usage.

**  Again, "[xīn] 【新】" means "new; novel", "  "guān 冠" means "crown; corona", "bào[fā] 爆【发】" means "erupt; explode", "de 的" indicates that what precedes this particle is a modifier,  and "[dì]fāng 【地】方" means "place", hence "place of the new eruption of the coronavirus".]

Below is a guest post by Bob Ladd:

The post “Whither, whence, whatever” of June 7 was prompted by the phrase whence [she] was exiled (from a book review in the Guardian), which I sent in to Language Log Plaza.  The context made it clear that the intended meaning was ‘where she was exiled to’, but if you assume the basic meaning of whence as it existed in ordinary English for a good few centuries (‘from where’), then it actually meant ‘where she was exiled from’.  To convey the intended meaning, whence should have been whither (‘to where’).

In his post, MYL showed that both words have been falling out of use since about 1750, and suggested the lapse might have been a “Fay-Cutler malapropism”, in which a word is replaced by another that sounds like it.  However, an early commenter on the post (Andrew Usher) suggested a different explanation: “perhaps, the original wording was ‘to whence’, which was then mis-corrected?”  This made no sense to me at the time, because to whence is even worse than just whence – at least, if you think whence means ‘from where’. I figured that Andrew had made some sort of slip in his comment and at first I thought no more about it.  But then I wondered, what if people really do say to whence?

Chris Waigl is a longtime friend of Language Log — among her many accomplishments is the creation of the Eggcorn Database in 2005 (with contributions from Arnold Zwicky and me). These days she conducts post-doctoral research in the Boreal Fires team of the Alaska EPSCoR Fire and Ice project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and she also teaches in the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics. Recently on Facebook, Chris shared an article from the Anchorage NBC affiliate, KTUU Channel 2, about the team she works with at UAF. The headline for the article is striking: "Alaskan-developed satellite technology helps fire managers in COVID-19 era."

As Vadim Temkin asked Chris on Facebook, "Why are you firing poor managers?"

If you didn't know it already, "ABC" means "American-born Chinese".  There's no reason why ABCs should necessarily speak Chinese, no more than why ABGs (American-born Germans) should speak German or why ABVs (American-born Vietnamese) should speak Vietnamese, etc.  In this video, ABCs explain for themselves why they can't speak Chinese.  This is a long (23:14) podcast.  Feel free to watch all of it if you are so inclined, but for efficiency's sake I will guide you through it in instructions below the page break.

"10 REASONS WHY CHINESE AMERICANS CAN'T SPEAK CHINESE! | Fung Bros"

From a Penn graduate student who recently returned to his home in Beijing, of which he is a born and bred native:

I'm now back at home in Beijing after a 14-day self-quarantine in Tianjin, which was designated as one of the 12 cities to receive all diverted international flights to Beijing because of imported coronavirus concerns. It was an unforgettable journey and a special experience to get back to China this time. I was surrounded by passengers wearing coverall medical protective suits and had been tested body temperature countless times, which, together with all other temporary measures by no matter travelers, crew members, or customs staff, reminded me of how the ongoing pandemic has changed the world and every single person's life. I have been tested negative for the coronavirus twice as required after I arrived in China, and everything has been going well.

[This is a guest post by Mark Metcalf]

Recently read a short story by Chinese sci-fi author Ma Boyong (translated by Ken Liu) entitled "City of Silence" (Jìjìng zhī chéng 寂静之城) — a tale about a highly dystopian future in ("not") China. The story was referenced in an article in Wired.

Haven't been able to find an English translation online, so I got the Kindle version in a compilation – Invisible Planets. A thought-provoking story that describes a State in which the government controls people's thoughts by monitoring all of their communications in order to detect the "misuse" of language. The following excerpts from the book explain how the process evolved. Very disturbing, with echoes from recent history that are even more disturbing.

Of the hundreds of pandemic memes that come to me, this is one that I didn't fully understand when I first received it:

Stunning speech (7:49) by Achille, a graduating student from Burkina Faso at the NTU commencement on June 6:

A favorite expression of Dōngběi rén 東北人 ("Northeasterners") is zhóu.  It means "mulish".  The adjective zhóu describes a person who is stubborn, but not in an obnoxious, offensive way, rather in a cute, amiable, charming, or naive manner.

Despite its relatively high frequency in Northeastern speech, there is no known Sinograph / Chinese character that corresponds to this morpheme.  It is customarily or conventionally written as "zhóu 軸" ("axis; axle"), but that is only a borrowed makeshift.

[This event has been postponed to Saturday 6/13/2020 in accordance with the call to #ShutDownSTEM]

Nick Montfort, "'Peaceful Protesters' but no 'Peaceful Police'", 6/7/2020:

About four million Google hits for “peaceful protesters,” only about 55,000 for “peaceful police.” Anyone who has been reading the news will have seen the phrase “peaceful protesters” again and again—and probably will not have seen this other phrase. Does that mean peaceful protesters outnumber peaceful police 80 to 1? Or at least that we think and speak as if this is the case? […]

The phenomenon here is that of markedness, having a default form and a marked form. “Actor” can be a generic term for anyone who acts, but “actress” is used only for the special, marked case—women. As Edwin L. Battistella discusses in The Logic of Markedness, there are exceptions: “male nurse” is the marked case for this profession, because of “the social fact that nurses are most commonly female.”

“Peaceful protesters” is the marked case. It’s understood implicitly that “protesters” are not generally peaceful.

So when the news media speaks or writes about “peaceful protesters,” they are using the marked case. It’s understood implicitly that “protesters” are not generally peaceful. The exceptional ones are the peaceful ones, like the small percentage of male nurses. This is quite evidently false, but doesn’t prevent journalists from using the phrase again and again.

A lament for the passing of Pekingese (Běijīnghuà 北京话) —  for those who don't understand Mandarin, just listen to a bit of what the presenter is saying for the flavor, then skip down to the explanations below the page break to find out what it's all about: