Language Log

Or not… Today's Dinosaur Comics:

Lorraine Boissoneault, "Genetic Mystery: The all-female salamanders of the Great Lakes", Great Lakes Now 11/2/2021:

Looking at them, you wouldn’t guess that the unisexual Ambystoma salamanders are any different than the other members of what was once considered their group.

These interlopers were previously grouped with five other mole salamander species: the tiger salamanders with yellow stripes; the blue-spotted salamander, marked as its name suggests; the brownish smallmouth salamander and Jefferson salamander; and the pale streamside salamander. All five species have lithe, wet bodies, bulbous eyes, and cutely smiling faces.

What sets the mysterious unnamed Ambystoma species apart is something that can only be seen by looking at their genetics. They’re an all-female lineage—and they steal genetic material from all five other species of salamander in their region, a feat that would seem impossible if not for the fact that these lady salamanders have been around for more than 5 million years.

“We often get asked, ‘What is the species name for these organisms?’ And the answer is that we don’t have one because they don’t play by the rules of what we would typically call a species,” said Rob Denton, professor of biology at Marian University.

Following on the hoofs of "Sumomomomomomomomo" (11/17/21), here's another good one, from rit majors:

(source)

A new (to me) word: transpoosion, meaning "fecal microbiota transplant", by way of blending poo and transfusion.

I'm not sure who invented it when, though it's clearly been around for a decade or more.

Are there other blends where a single syllable of a Latinate (or similar) compound is replaced by a monosyllabic word from ordinary language, differing only in a single consonant or vowel sound? It's easy to make up bad examples, like transpiguration, blending pig and transfiguration.

The online version of the Petit Robert French dictionary has added an entry for a gender-neutral third person pronoun, "iel", also spelled "ielle":

It's a concatenation of [i], the common reduced pronunciation of  the masculine pronoun "il", with the normal pronunciation of  the feminine pronoun "elle".

And the predictable storm of protest has erupted, among politicians as well as many mass-media commentators in France, along with more English-language coverage than usual for dictionary entries in other languages.  Amy Cheng's WaPo story ("A French dictionary added a gender-neutral pronoun. Opponents say it’s too ‘woke.’", 11/18/2021) provides a summary and links.

Commenting on "Educated (and not so educated) guesses about how to read Sinographs" (11/16/21), Chris Button asked:

I’m curious what you mean by “pseudo explanation”? The expected reflex from Middle Chinese times is xù, but yǔ has become the accepted pronunciation based on people guessing at the pronunciation in more recent times. Isn’t that a reasonable explanation?

To which I replied:

It's such a gigantic can of worms that I'm prompted to write a separate post on this mentality. I'll probably do so within a few days, and it will be called something like "Morphemes without characters".

Stay tuned.

Because of a scheduled power outage, Language Log will be unavailable all day today, from about 8:00am to 8:00pm.

Update — and we're back, by 4:00pm!

That's the name of a three-year-old filly who had a maiden win at a Tokyo racecourse on November 1, 2021, as described in "Japanese Tongue Twisters", by Richard Medhurst, nippon.com (Nov 17, 2021).

…

The horse takes her name from the following Japanese tongue twister: Sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi (スモモも、モモも、モモのうち), meaning “Both sumomo and peaches are kinds of peaches.”

A sumomo is a kind of plum (Prunus salicina), sometimes called the “Japanese plum,” although not to be confused with the famous ume. Botanically, it cannot really said to be a kind of peach (momo), which is only a close relation (Prunus persica). Still, the linguistic connection might be enough; at the word level, at least, we could say a sumomo is a kind of momo.

…but this time it's the second person, in an outtake from the Laura Ingraham show that's been widely discussed in the media, posted several times on YouTube, and apparently viewed millions of times on TikTok:

https://youtu.be/lOY23pOxFPI

Here is a painting that is being exhibited in Taipei now:

[This is a guest post by Mark Swofford]

I recently stumbled upon a slang term from World War I: "Chinese attack," or sometimes "Chinese barrage." Perhaps LL readers would be interested in this and might even have some info on its origins.

One website on the war gives the following definition of "Chinese attack":

"a faked attack. When a preliminary bombardment ceased, the defending troops would return to their trenches to meet the presumed attack, whereupon the artillery would start firing again and catch the defenders out of their shelters."

The term appears to have been adopted primarily by the British.

I haven't been able to discern, though, why "Chinese" was used, and if this was meant as a compliment or a slur to the Chinese — or perhaps was simply considered neutral.

Now it's getting interesting:

"China’s internet police losing man-versus-machine duel on social media"

Stephen Chen, SCMP (11/14/21)

    Hordes of bot accounts using clever dodging tactics are causing burnout among human censors, police investigative paper finds
    Authorities may respond by raising a counter-army of automated accounts or even an AI-driven public opinion leader

The relationships among these different types of knowing has always been something that intrigued me.  Now it's all spelled out diagrammatically: