Language Log

"Talking animals: Miracle or curse?", 12/24/2004
"Seven fishes", 12/26/2008
"Ask LL: A paradox of words?", 12/30/2009
"Mele Kalikimka!", 12/25/2010
"Watch out for those talking animals tonight", 12/24/2013
"Reindeer talk", 12/24/2013
"Trigger warning: Talking animals", 12/24/2015
"Silent Night", 12/25/2016

Meme online from a Chinese forum (fortunately I have a screenshot). Hilarious, but sad, though, considering China’s reported covid conditions.

People get confused about languages, dialects, registers, and scripts — and when journalists try to help, they often make things worse. For a good recent example, see Mujib Mashal, "Where Romantic Poetry in a Fading Language Draws Stadium Crowds", NYT 12/18/2022:

That more than 300,000 people came to celebrate Urdu poetry during the three-day festival this month in New Delhi was testament to the peculiar reality of the language in India.

For centuries, Urdu was a prominent language of culture and poetry in India, at times promoted by Mughal rulers. Its literature and journalism — often advanced by writers who rebelled against religious dogma — played important roles in the country’s independence struggle against British colonial rule and in the spread of socialist fervor across the subcontinent later in the 20th century.

In more recent decades, the language has faced dual threats from communal politics and the quest for economic prosperity. Urdu is now stigmatized as foreign, the language of India’s archrival, Pakistan. Families increasingly prefer to enroll children in schools that teach English and other Indian languages better suited for the job market.

As you might expect, they mostly have to do with the pandemic.  Here are the top ten from Zhang Ru and Xie Anran, Sixth Tone, "The Chinese Online Slang That Took Over the Internet in 2022" (12/20/22):

1. tiān xuǎn dǎgōng rén 天选打工人

The chosen laborers

Derived from the Chinese term da gong ren — a self-deprecating slang term meaning “laborers” or “working people” — “the chosen laborers” refers to those workers whose residential compounds have not been locked down, allowing or forcing them to go to work every day. Some use the term sarcastically to express envy about their coworkers who can stay home, while other “chosen laborers” are just happy they can go out for a walk.

Krišjānis Kariņš has been in the news a lot recently, but this was special.

Naomi O'Leary, "The curious case of the Latvian prime minister’s Irish accent", The Irish Times 12/21/2022:

Subhead: Brogues to be found in unexpected places as Hiberno-English on the rise since the departure of Britain from the EU

On his entry to Prague Castle to join a summit of European Union leaders, Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins was accosted by the bank of waiting journalists.

“What do you think about the price cap?” one reporter asked him, looking for a comment on the issue of the day.

In an unmistakably Irish accent, Karins replied: “A price cap on gas, if that could be achieved, would be grand.”

I shared a clip of the incident on social media and it quickly took off. “If you close your eyes, he could be a school principal in Tipperary,” one user marvelled.

Here's the clip that Ms.O'Leary shared:

[This is a guest post by Bill Benzon]

On amazon.com yesterday:

\$33,634.25 for a book that's in 464 libraries, and is available on abebooks.com for \$17.76 (at least it's not \$19.84 :-) or \$49.00 plus shipping?

I've seen unreasonable amazon prices for out-of-print books before, but in the thousands of dollars, not the tens of thousands.

Is this an out-of-control re-pricing bot? Or a money-laundering scam? Or what?

Article by Vivian Salama and Jared Malsin in WSJ (11/27/22)

Turkey’s Push to Change How the World Pronounces its Name Causes a Flap

In part weary of bird comparisons, the country wants everyone to say ‘Tour-key-yeh.’ The rebranding has been a head-scratcher for many people.

In truth, I don't blame them, especially not since so many other countries and cities around the world have changed their names in recent decades.

Talking turkey is a pastime in the halls of government around the world. Yet what to call Turkey, the country, is something many can’t agree on.

[Mind-boggling post from Pinyin News (12/8/22)]

"North Korea cracking down on wussy given names that don’t end in consonants"

North Korea is a scary, scary, scary place. Fortunately, at least for those of us not living in that People’s Paradise, every so often the country also provides important linguistic tips, which I am duty-bound to pass along to you.

For example, did you know that names without final consonants are “anti-socialist”? The wise authorities in North Korea have reportedly come to that conclusion and are presently dedicated to the task of cleansing that evil. Since October, “notices have been constantly issued at the neighborhood-watch unit’s residents’ meeting to correct all names without final consonants. People with names that don’t have a final consonant have until the end of the year to add political meanings to their name to meet revolutionary standards,” a resident of North Korea’s North Hamgyong told Radio Free Asia.

In meetings and public notices, officials have gone so far as to instruct adults and children to change their names if they are deemed too soft or simple …, another source said….

The government has threatened to fine anyone who does not use names with political meanings, a resident in the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

As I observed in "Alexa down, ChatGPT up?" (12/8/2022), there's reason to fear that LLMs ("Large Language Models") like ChatGPT will force major changes in writing education, by offered a cheap and easy way to generate essay assignments. A small sample of the extensive published discussion:

Stephen Marche, "The College Essay is Dead", The Atlantic 12/6/2022
Daniel Lametti, "A.I. Could Be Great for College Essays", Slate 12/7/2022
Daniel Herman, "ChatGPT will end High School English", The Atlantic 12/9/2022
Beth McMurtrie, "AI and the Future of Undergraduate Writing: Teaching experts are concerned, but not for the reasons you think", The Chronicle of Higher Education 12/13/2022

Of course, various other forms of cheating have been common for hundreds of years, starting with simple plagiarism and ghost-written submissions. The internet has made it easier to find texts to copy or ghostwriters to hire — but modern technology has also brought us plagiarism-detection systems, which catch at least the simplest cases. Will we see effective LLM-detection software?

[This is a guest post by Bernhard "번하드" Riedel from Munich]

Glat perch

Label in a Chinese fish market:

[This is a guest post by Martin Woesler in response to this post:  "German lexicographic richness" (10/11/21)]

Let me share the language feeling of a German with you. As you may have assumed, if a German explains feelings, he does it with a set of rules:

German wordcraziness rule # 1: Yes, there is a German word for everything. Simply because if there was none before, there is one the very moment you think of it or say it. And no, it does not mean that it is the same as listing many words one after the other in English. You can still list words one after the other in German and it has a different effect than creating a new longish word.