Language Log

Entertaining article in Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by Joe Pinsker (5/30/25):

‘Welcome In.’ The Two-Word Greeting That’s Taking Over and Driving Shoppers Nuts.
The phrase has spread to coffee shops and credit unions, and customers are wondering why; ‘like a slap to the ear’

The first thing I have to say is that I'm amazed this article doesn't mention the Japanese greeting "Irasshaimase いらっしゃいませ", a phrase meaning "welcome" or "please come in". It's a polite greeting used to welcome customers when they enter a shop or restaurant in Japan.

Last September, we had a lengthy, vigorous discussion about the "welcome in" greeting sweeping southwest United States, including a deep look at its Japanese "Irasshaimase" heritage which we examined in 2021 (see "Selected readings" below).

For at least the past few thousand years, people have been thinking and debating about what "education" should be like, what its goals should be, and who should get (what kinds of) it.

Among many other issues, there's the question of whether educational content is preparation for actual use in later life, or part of incorporation into a shared culture, or just an exercise to demonstrate adequate intelligence and discipline and attentiveness. Yesterday's Frazz:

"Why the president must not be lexicographer-in-chief", The Economist 5/30/2025:

ON MAY 28TH a specialist American court for international trade struck down many of Donald Trump’s tariffs. It did so on several legal grounds, including linguistic ones. As in so many cases, the two sides in the case presented different views on what several words mean. The next day another court temporarily stayed the decision. The tariffs remain in effect but the legal question remains.

Many of the tariffs rest on a law Congress passed in 1977, giving the president the authority to “regulate” aspects of American trade “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat”. The first court found that “regulate” did not include the power to impose tariffs. Tariffs are not mentioned anywhere in the relevant parts of the law. The Trump administration naturally disagreed. Under such a view “regulate” would mean what the president says it does, a worrisome precedent. […]

Reconsider “any unusual and extraordinary threat”. The “and” makes clear that both tests of “unusual” and “extraordinary” must be met. Are America’s trade deficits either? They are not: America last ran a trade surplus in goods when Led Zeppelin were at the height of their powers, in 1973. The worst years for the trade balance, as a share of GDP, were in the middle of the George W. Bush administration, two decades ago; the deficit has shrunk as a share of the economy since.

Hallelujah!  Julesy (julesytooshoes) to the rescue again!

"It’s Not Just Tones: Chinese ALSO Has Intonation" (two weeks ago)

This is a problem we've raised and discussed many times on Language Log, and I've always been dissatisfied with the results.  With the following video, I've finally found a scholarly, convincing approach.

Julesy, "How do you sing in a tonal language like Chinese?" (a week ago)

Trump’s favorite verbal tic is now 1,000 pages of legislation
He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
Monica Hesse, WP (5/29/25)

Everybody has what I call a kǒutóuchán 口頭禪 (lit., "oral zen", i.e., "favorite expression", kind of like a mantra).  Mine, in Nepali, is "bāphre bāph!"; Pinkie Wu's, in Cantonese, is "wah!"; a Harvard historian I know loves to say "precisely!"; and so forth and so on.  President Trump's is "beautiful".

The origins of language
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (May 9, 2025)

Summary:

    Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite generation of meaning by combining phonemes into words and words into sentences. This contrasts with the very few meaningful combinations reported in animals, leaving the mystery of human language evolution unresolved. 

Paul Krugman, "Is There a Dignified Legal Way, Preferably in Latin, to say 'Holy Shit'?", 5/28/2025:

A court just threw out Trump's whole trade agenda.

It will take me a while to digest this […]

Some more coherent thoughts in the morning, after a gallon or so of coffee.

A recent cartoon by Tom Gauld:

Japan sets rules on name readings to curb flashy 'kirakira names'
The Mainichi Japan (May 25, 2025)

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japan will impose rules on Monday on how children's names in Chinese characters are pronounced, amid growing concern over what are known as "kirakira names" — flashy or unusual readings that have stirred debate.

[This is a guest post by Rasmus Okasmets]

Analysis of Google search data for 2025 reveals the most misspelled words for each U.S. state and America.

National Spelling Bee begins at the end of May. The research is well timed.

America's most misspelled words:

1. Definitely – 33 500 searches.
2. Separate – 30 000 searches.
3. Necessary – 29 000 searches.
4. Believe – 28 500 searches.
5. Through – 28 000 searches.
6. Gorgeous –  27 000 searches.
7. Neighbor – 25 500 searches.
8. Business – 24 200 searches.
9. Favorite – 23 000 searches.
10. Restaurant – 22 500 searches.

In 1444, an associate professor (bujehag 부제학 副提學) in the Hall of Worthies, Ch'oe Manli (최만리 崔萬里; d. October 23, 1445), along with other Confucian scholars, spoke out against the creation of hangul (then called eonmun).  See here for the Classical Chinese text and English translation (less than felicitous, but easily available) of Ch'oe's 1444 protest against the reforms leading to Hangul.  As we all know, King Sejong (1397-1450; r. 1418-1450) nonetheless promulgated Hangul in 1446, so I wondered whether anything unfavorable happened to Ch'oe as a result (note that he died the year after delivering his protest and the year before the promulgation of Hangul).  Ross King kindly replied to my inquiry on this matter as follows:

Donald Trump's recent West Point commencement address has gotten plenty of media coverage. But what I noticed was something linguistic, which the commentariat unsurprisingly ignored, namely a violation of expected modifier order (in a passage around 45:46 in the cited recording):

I went through a very tough time with some very
radicalized sick people
and I say I was investigated more than the great
late Alphonse Capone. Alphonse Capone was a monster
he was a very hardened criminal
I went through more investigations than Alphonse Capone
and now I'm talking to you as president can you believe this
can you believe it