Language Log

I downloaded rev.com's transcript of last night's vice-presidential debate, and did a bit of analysis — the most interesting stuff will come later, but to start with I did a couple of my standard simple-minded analyses, starting with the type-token plots:

A relative's new refrigerator magnet:

These are two premodern words for Chinese watercraft that have worked their way into the English lexicon.  Their etymology, however, is not as straightforward as it might seem.

"Language Matters | Where did English get the words ‘sampan’ and ‘junk’ from? Probably Cantonese and Javanese:  Scholars are split on the roots of ‘sampan’ and ‘junk’, with some pointing to Chinese and others to Old Malay and Javanese respectively", by Lisa Lim, SCMP (9/30/24)

Sampans – typically small, light, wooden boats with a relatively flat bottom, propelled by a pole, oars, or a single long stern sculling oar – have a long history in East and Southeast Asian coastal and river waters.

Usually open, with a shelter aft, they were – and still are – used as a means of transporting passengers and goods over short distances; fishing; or to get to larger vessels out at sea. They also constituted homes for sea-dwelling communities, including the Tanka or Séuiseuhngyàn “people born on or of the water”, of coastal southern China and Hong Kong and Macau.

A recent email from Jean Gallier to the members of Penn's Department of Computer and Information Sciences included this picture

…under the comment "Apparently the Greeks had already figured that there was a connection between wine and linear algebra." The connection to Linear A(lgebra) is provided by Jean's two-volume 2020 book Linear Algebra and Optimization with Applications to Machine Learning.

"A path towards freedom: the new route to Europe for desperate Chinese migrants
Revealed: a small but growing number of Chinese people are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU" Amy Hawkins," The Guardian (9/24/24)

In a sleepy Bosnian town, barely five miles from the border with the European Union, a crumbling old water tower is falling into ruin. Inside, piles of rubbish, used cigarette butts and a portable wood-fired stove offer glimpses into the daily life of the people who briefly called the building home. Glued on to the walls is another clue: on pieces of A4 paper, the same message is printed out, again and again: “If you would like to travel to Europe (Italy, Germany, France, etc) we can help you. Please add this number on WhatsApp”. The message is printed in the languages of often desperate people: Somali, Nepali, Turkish, the list goes on. The last translation on the list indicates a newcomer to this unlucky club. It is written in Chinese.

A couple of months ago ("A new Trump speaking style?", 8/10/2024), I gave an example to support my subjective impression that Donald Trump's speech is becoming less fluent. The clip included some cases of word-finding difficulties, as in this characterization of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz:

She picked a
radical left
uh
man
that is uh
he's got things done that he's-
he has positions that are just not-
it's not even possible to believe
that they exist.

In a more recent 9/28/2024 rally speech, after another spate of re-starts and pauses, Trump produces a phrase that seems to be the opposite of what he means:

A bluesky post linked to this reddit page showing a display of the "rack of consent badges at a furry convention":

Ben Yagoda's new book, Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English, is "A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms—for good or ill". The publisher's blurb:

The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America—from French fries to Awesome, man!—are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases—such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky—have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.

There's a chain of about half-a-dozen fast food restaurants called Gyro Shack in Boise, Idaho, where I find myself now.  They're cool little shops, just as Boise is a cool (big-)little city spread across a broad, flat plain (nearly three thousand feet in elevation) that lies at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Several things about gyros perplex me.  One is how the cones of meat on the vertical, rotating spit cohere and do not fall to pieces, but docilely hang in place oozing their mouthwatering juices waiting to be sliced off, layer after layer.  One traditional gyro meat recipe states:  "Processing the meat in the food processor and overworking it ensures that the proteins in the meat stick together, like sausage." (source)  I still don't get it, since sausage has a casing to hold it together.

Never mind about that physical matter for now,  What really bothers me (and lots of other people), is how to pronounce that four-letter word.

The first two panels of today's SMBC:

That'll be tough to explain…

[image or embed]

— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) September 25, 2024 at 6:00 PM

"Some idioms and terms pertaining to Japan's favorite grain", by Yuko Tamura, The Japan Times (9/25/24)

Rice is an essential part of the Japanese diet, so naturally it's also a part of the language. In fact, the word for "meal," ご飯 (gohan), also means "cooked rice." Before it's cooked, however, you'll see it referred to as 米 (kome). Below are a few terms and idioms that either use the kanji for rice or refer to it in some form.

• 朝飯前 (Asameshi mae): No sweat, a piece of cake. Something that can be done before breakfast. Ex., それくらい朝飯前だよ (Sore kurai asameshi mae da yo, That’s no trouble at all).
• 日常茶飯事 (Nichijō sahanji): Common, everyday things such as drinking tea or eating food that are a part of daily life. Ex., 彼の遅刻は日常茶飯事だ (Kare no chikoku wa nichijō sahanji da, His being late is a usual thing).

Elle Cordova offers an update from ChatGPT on the number of Rs in "strawberry":