Language Log

From "The Harris-Trump debate will be a clash of speaking styles", The Economist 9/6/2024:

I’m still trying to figure out, in XJP rhetoric, when 中华 is used and when it’s 中国. How long has Zhongguo been used directly as an adjective this way, as opposed to 中国似的or 中国性？Is a 中国味different from a 中华味？Which smells better? pic.twitter.com/9CARnICZSu

— James Millward 米華健 (@JimMillward) September 4, 2024

In a comment on "Trump's rhetorical 'weave'", J.R. Brewer wrote:

This thread has had the side effect of causing me to learn (at least taking wiktionary at face value and not digging deeper into other reference sources) that the "weave" of "bob and weave" etc. is a homophone etymologically unrelated to the "weave" meaning "create fabric from fibers" rather than the former being, as I had naively supposed, a metaphorical extension of the latter that had somehow drifted semantically to the point that it was no longer particularly obvious.

Below, some etymological backup from the Oxford English Dictionary…

"UCSB Library Acquires Rare Chinese Language Audio Cylinder Recordings", UCSB Library Newsletter (September, 2024)

The UC Santa Barbara Library is excited to announce the recent acquisition of the Paul Georg von Möllendorff Chinese Cylinders, a collection of wax cylinders widely considered to be the first audio recordings from China. The cylinders, recorded in the late 1800s by linguist Möllendorff, contain sixteen recitations of a popular, celebrated poem "Returning Home"' by Tao Yuanming. Möllendorff recorded the poem in various Chinese dialects to document the differences in regional languages at the time. Today, the cylinders provide a rare glimpse into the history of Chinese language and include dialects that are considered critically endangered or extinct.

The bottle of body wash affixed to the wall of the shower in the Cheyenne hotel where I'm staying is labeled in French as "Savon Liquide pour le Corps".

English "body wash" is two words consisting of eight letters.  "Savon Liquide pour le Corps" is five words consisting of twenty-three letters.

We've discussed the phenomenon of French verbosity versus English brevity before.  See  "The genius and logic of French and English" 4/11/23) and "French vs. English" (8/2/15) — also about "soap".

Surely, I thought, the French do not have to be that loquacious just to say something so simple as "body wash".

"AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information, government trial finds:
A test of AI for Australia's corporate regulator found that the technology might actually make more work for people, not less."  Cam Wilson, Crikey (Sep 03, 2024)

Shawn McCreesh, "Meandering? Off-Script? Trump Insists His ‘Weave’ Is Oratorical Genius." NYT 9/1/2024:

For weeks, former President Donald J. Trump’s advisers have urged him to be more disciplined and to stop straying off-message.

But on Friday, while speaking at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., Mr. Trump insisted that his oratory is not a campaign distraction but rather a rhetorical triumph.

“You know, I do the weave,” he said. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

[This is a guest post by Meme Master Mark (MMM), who says he's honored that I call him that:  "3M is also from Minnesota" (see the first sentence).]

Having spent many of my formative years in Minnesota, "crab raccoon" makes perfect sense.

This was a pretty disturbing tattoo:

From the menu of a Chinese restaurant in Eden Prairie, MN:

From Lane Greene on bluesky:

This is an unusual transcript (of Harris/Walz by CNN), filled with "gonna", "wearin'", "I'll tell ya", "pulling outta the race".
These things are ubiquitous in speech, but most transcribers would change these to "going to", "wearing", "I'll tell you", "out of".
edition.cnn.com/2024/08/29/p…

[image or embed]

— Lane Greene (@lanegreene.bsky.social) Aug 30, 2024 at 7:06 AM

[Here's an image if the embedding doesn't work for you…]

"Japan’s autumn eggplant: Too delicious for your daughter-in-law"
By Elizabeth Andoh, The Japan Times (Sep 1, 2024)

Cooked properly, nothing beats an eggplant for succulence, softness, and savoriness.  It's so good that you almost want to keep it for yourself.

In Japan, eggplants reach their peak of flavor during a period of time known as zansho (literally "lingering heat"), the equivalent of mid-August through late September. Such aki nasu, or autumn eggplants, are especially tasty. And, because eggplant is thought to cool the body (probably due to an unusually high concentration of minerals and phytonutrients in late-harvest fruit), dishes made with them are particularly inviting on days when heat and humidity sap the appetite.

Most varieties of Japanese eggplants boast tender, deeply purple skins and juicy, pale yellow-green flesh. They are all nearly seedless, and some varieties, such as Kamo nasu grown around Kyoto, are bulbous and squat. Others, such as Hakata nasu grown in Kyushu, are long and slender. All true Japanese varieties have a dark calyx, not a green one. Most people think of eggplant and other members of the nightshade family such as tomatoes as vegetables because of their savory taste — botanically, however, they are fruit.

The transcriptions on YouTube are generally pretty good these days, but sometimes the results are weird.

A notable recent example is the transcription of Donald Trump's 8/31/2024 Fox interview with Mark Levin, where the system renders "Putin" first as "pollutant" and then as "pooch and".

It's been clear for a while that "large language models" can be prompted to fulfill writing assignments, and that LLM detection doesn't work, and that "watermarking" won't come to the rescue. There's lots of on-going published discussion, and even more discussion in real life.

As documented by the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI, the conclusion seems to be a combination of bringing AI explicitly into the class, and designing some assignments where students need to function without it.

In one recent example, Joe Moxley has posted the syllabus for his course "Writing with Artificial Intelligence – Syllabus (ENC 3370)".