Language Log

Recent events invite a reprise of the famous Abbot and Costello skit — and Josh Johnson has obliged:

When you queue up, do you "stand in line" or "stand on line"?

This question was prompted by Nick Tursi who remarked:

Two of my colleagues are both from Brooklyn. They frequently say standing / waiting “on line” rather than “in line” when referring to queueing

It's unlikely that I ever would have written a post on the strange-sounding name "Punxsutawney" because it is so well-known worldwide for groundhog Phil who lives there and can predict whether winter weather will persist after he wakes up from his hibernation, although it is nestled in the wooded hills about 85 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

On the other hand, few have ever heard of Maxatawny, despite the fact that it is only 65 miles northwest of Philadelphia and situated on mostly flat land.

I never would have been aware of Maxatawny either, but for the miracle of the internet, because I happened upon it while surfing the www, which I have spent a goodly part of my life doing since its invention.  When I saw mention of Maxatawny pop up on my computer screen, I was instantaneously nearly catapulted out of my seat because of its obvious likeness to Punxsutawney.

AntC wrote:

In the last few years I've noticed a number of apps that can be used to figure out the proper terms to refer to your relations in Chinese.  Of course, this is a problem in all languages.  For example, who is your "second cousin twice removed"?  Some people care about these things and are good at figuring them out.  For Chinese, these are particularly important matters, but younger generations are becoming increasingly ill adept at using the correct, precise terms of address.  Hence the felt need for (digital) tools to assist one in determining the proper address for your relatives.

For example, what do I call "wǒ de māmā de dìdì de nǚ'ér 我的媽媽的弟弟的女兒" (my mother's younger brother's daughter")?  Answer:  she is my "jiù biǎojiě/jiù biǎomèi 舅表姐／舅表妹", depending on whether she is older or younger than me.

On the morning of Chinese New Year's Eve, WXPN (Penn's excellent radio station) had a nice program about the significance of the festival and some of the events that would be going on to celebrate it — including activities in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

WXPN did its homework, and most of the information they conveyed was correct, but one thing they repeatedly said stunned me.  They didn't call "shé nián 蛇年" "year of the snake" in English, which I had always and ever heard it referred to as.  Rather, they referred to "shé nián 蛇年" as "Year of the Wood Snake". So I searched for it on the internet and, lo and behold, it turned up quite often as "wood snake".

…at least not when simple properties of character-sequences are involved. For some past versions of this problem, see The ‘Letter Equity Task Force’” (12/5/2024). And there's a new kid on the block, DeepSeek, which Kyle Orland checked out yesterday at Ars Technica — "How does DeepSeek R1 really fare against OpenAI’s best reasoning models?".

The third of eight comparison tasks was to follow this prompt:

Write a short paragraph where the second letter of each sentence spells out the word ‘CODE’. The message should appear natural and not obviously hide this pattern.

It's a subject that won't go away.

When I was in high school, I concocted an embarrassingly sophomoric signature:

I wrote that iteration of my youthful signature on the front flyleaf of my beloved Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1960), which, from that year till today has been one of my most precious possessions.

When I went away to college in 1961 and ever since, I adopted a signature that was the exact antithesis of that early one:  

It was / is mechanical and measured, with no flourishes whatsoever.

Most people I know have one of three basic types of signatures:

1. extravagant, fast, illegible — these are usually "important" people who have to sign their signature scores of times each week; doctors; lawyers; executives; entertainers….

2. beautiful, well-composed, flowing, legible — my sisters, most women

3. crotched, cramped, crooked, angular, unesthetic, slow — my brothers and me, engineers, scientists, who write with what I call "chicken scratches"

[myl: This is an inaugural post from Chu-Ren Huang, a new LLOG contributor.]

The 29^th of January will be the first day of the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese zodiac. Of all the twelve animals representing the zodiac, the choice of the snake may seem to be dubious to our modern sensibility. Dragons and tigers are powerful and elegant, horses and bulls are strong and practical, monkeys are human-like and smart, and all others are familiar in a home or farm setting. But why was a snake chosen to be the sixth animal in the twelve-year cycle?

With the changing of the guard at the State Department, the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and his counterpart in China's Foreign Ministry, Wang Yi, must needs have a dialog, a man-to-man conversation, so to speak.  As is customary with China's wolf warriors, however, Wang Yi was up to his old habits of giving young Marco a jiàoxùn 教训 (let's just call it "a lesson", not quite a "dressing down").

Here's how the most critical part (the final portion) of Wang Yi's communication was reported in an AP article on the event:

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.

[This is a guest post by Don Keyser]

A true tale from nearly a half century ago … prompted by reading the mox nix posting to LL. 

A contributor to one of the series I oversee wrote to me as follows:

As always, feel free to edit as you see fit, and to use my name or not, depending on context. ("Mox nix" as the GIs like to say in Germany, showing off their German.)   

Although I had never seen "mox nix" written before, I instantly knew what he meant.

Curse tablet found in Roman-era grave in France targets enemies by invoking Mars, the god of war
Excavation of a Roman-era cemetery in France yielded nearly two dozen lead tablets inscribed in Latin and Gaulish.
By Kristina Killgrove, Live Science (January 15, 2025)

It's interesting precisely where they positioned the curse tablet:

A skeleton found during excavations beneath a historic hospital in Orléans, France,
has a curse tablet between its legs. (Image credit: Service Archéologie Orléans (SAVO))