Language Log

Another opinion piece for our passive voice file: Marie Murray, "The passive voice is the penultimate weapon of denial", The Irish Times, 7/31/2009:

The passive voice is especially useful where apologies are required: personal apologies for what people have done personally. Because instead of having to say, “I’m sorry”, the passive voice allows a culprit to say “It is regrettable”. Instead of saying “I made a mistake” the abstract term “mistakes happened” can be evoked.

From Iceland, via Thor Lawrence, a Zits cartoon (from a free daily newspaper) with Eskimo snow words in it:

As I reported here earlier this week, I used my most recent Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus to debunk a widely circulated myth about Walter Cronkite: that in Sweden (or Holland) news anchors are known as "Cronkiters" (or "Kronkiters"). I got the opportunity to talk about this linguistic legend on the NPR show "On the Media," airing this weekend and available online here. I also address the shaky claim that the word "anchorman" was coined for Cronkite in 1952, the topic of a recent piece I wrote for Slate. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to get a reputation as some sort of nitpicking Cronkite-hater, but I'd like to think Uncle Walter would appreciate my fact-checking of his mythos.

Mae Sander has passed on this fascinating story from the joint website of the Ghana Institute of Architects and the Architects Registration Council of Ghana. According to the story (attributed to Prof. Ablade Glover of the College of Arts of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi), every Ghanaian chief

has a linguist. He goes on errands to convey his master's ideas, or appears in public with him.

A publication agreement that was just presented to me for signature takes minimization of typographical clutter to a new extreme:

No rights shall revert if it is not possible to reprint or reissue the Work for reasons connected with any war strikes lockouts or circumstances beyond the Publisher's reasonable control.

The underlined part, clearly intended as a 4-member nominal coordination, is not a grammatical phrase at all.

For an update on the British Chiropractic Association's libel suit against Simon Singh, see Ben Goldacre, "We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine", Bad Science, 7/29/2009.  After noting the general freedom-of-speech issue, and the specific public interest in open debate about medical claims, Ben adds:

But beyond whether it is right, there is the more entertaining issue of whether it was wise, and here it is hard to contain a sense of schadenfreude as the chiropractors’ world unravels.

A recent "joke of the day" from Comedy Central:

A crowded flight is cancelled, and a frazzled agent must rebook a long line of inconvenienced travelers by herself. Suddenly, an angry passenger pushes to the front and demands to be on the next flight, first class.

The agent replies, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first."

The passenger screams, "Do you have ANY idea who I am?"

The photograph below, taken earlier this month in Beijing, shows some of the best English-language bloggers now writing about language and culture in China and Taiwan.

A reader asks why it is (as it seems to him) increasingly common for Americans to say "August seven" instead of "August seventh" or "August the seventh" for 08/07/09 ("Coming August seven to a theater near you!"). I have done no investigation on this (it would need intensive quantitative corpus study over dated corpora that do not have Google's propensity for collapsing common typographical variants). The reader may be wrong to think the practice has been increasing: the Recency Effect has not been repealed. So I offer nothing but the following observation. For some time there has been a trend toward abolishing typographical clutter in print ("Mr Jones" for "Mr. Jones"; even "ie" and "eg" for "i.e." and "e.g."), particularly though not exclusively in published American English; and American English also idiomatically eliminates various prepositions here and there (as in "See you Tuesday" for "See you on Tuesday"). If such abbreviatory practices led to writing "7" for "7th" or "the 7th", spelling pronunciation might be responsible for the resultant habit spreading in spoken American English.

… on Language Log and my blog, available here.

It's a trend: comix-ironic Whorfianism. Several readers have drawn my attention to the latest Diesel Sweeties:

Boko Haram has been in the news recently, e.g. Joe Boyle, "Nigeria's 'Taliban' enigma", BBC News, 7/28/2009:

They have launched co-ordinated attacks across northern Nigeria, threatening to overthrow the government and impose strict Islamic law – but who exactly are the Nigerian Taliban?

Since the group emerged in 2004 they have become known as "Taliban", although they appear to have no links to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Some analysts believe they took inspiration from the radical Afghans, others say the name is more a term of ridicule used by people in Maiduguri, the area where they were founded.

The group's other name, Boko Haram, means "Western education is a sin" and is another title used by local people to refer to the group.

Isa Sanusi, from the BBC's Hausa service, says the group has no specific name for itself, just many names attributed to it by local people.

If their name is uncertain, however, their mission appears clear enough: to overthrow the Nigerian state, impose an extreme interpretation of Islamic law and abolish what they term "Western-style education".

In "Xinhua English and Zhonglish," I discussed the phenomenon of a peculiar style of English that has developed in China.  Since it is not outrageously incorrect in terms of grammar or grossly unidiomatic, this type of English cannot be labeled Chinglish.  On the other hand, this particular style of English, which we may call Xinhua English or New China News English, is distinctive enough to be recognizable as an emerging dialect.

The latest instance (like the previous one) was brought to my attention by Victor Steinbok, who keeps a keen eye out for pertinent examples.  It is in today's headline from China View, an organ of Xinhuanet:  "China lodges solemn representation over Japan's permission for Rebiya Kadeer's visit."