Language Log

On BoingBoing, Jason Weisberger posted this photograph under the title "Found Poem", but without any explanation:

A commenter on FARK noted this headline on the website for KMOV St. Louis:

Infant pulled from wrecked car
involved in short police pursuit

…adding, "No word on how far his short little legs took him before the police caught up with him."

The headline was quickly edited thereafter, and it now reads:

Infant pulled from car after police chase, crash

Victor Steinbok, who brought this to my attention, observes that "the updated headline is only marginally better."

Sima (long-term resident in China) from www.sinoglot.com writes:

I've been a regular Sina Weibo [VHM:  PRC clone of Twitter] user for some time and enjoy default news updates on my phone. Each update usually has two stories and, of late, almost invariably, one is about the outing of a corrupt official (cash, apartments, mistresses) and the second is about the latest 'play' over those rocks in the sea near Taiwan.

My latest update says:

我海监船再入钓岛拒绝日本抗议

[VHM: wǒ hǎi jiān chuán zài rù Diàodǎo jùjué Rìběn kàngyì
literal rendering of each syllable or word:  I / We sea surveillance ship(s) again enter Fishing Island reject Japan protest]

Whilst I'm used to expressions like 我国 [VHM:  wǒguó {"my / our country"}], which I wilfully employ when talking about 'my England', much to some people's disgust, and 我校 [VHM:  wǒxiào {"my / our school"}], which I actually write in articles and official documents relating to the school cricket team [VHM:  in China] (which I may have bored you about at some time), I'm not accustomed to such flexible employment of 我.

Do you know whether this use of 我校, 我国, etc. has a long history (i.e., pre-1949, or pre-1919)? Can 我 be freely applied? Is there a name for this phenomenon?

It reminds me a little of Western attitudes to sports teams; 'we won the world cup', when obviously said cup was won by eleven or so over-paid men who kick balls for a living, and not (usually) by the speaker himself.

Reader ESM sent in a link to David Weigel, "Democrats Say They Have the Votes for Filibuster Reform, and for the 'Nuclear Option'", Slate 1/22/2013:

…even if you're a reformer, do you think there's ANY filibuster reform that wouldn't be interpeted by the Rand Paul-Mike Lee-Tim Scott-Ron Johnson quartet as the hi sign to "blow up the Senate"?

and asked

I'm curious about the use of "hi sign." I've heard the phrase spoken, but always understood it as "high sign." A quick search online didn't turn up any meaningful commentary, even of the speculative or anecdotal variety.

The form and content of Barack Obama's Second Inaugural have stimulated even more than the usual amount of commentary, including some analyses of linguistic interest. For today, I'll limit myself to noting that one aspect of the president's performance gave Bryan Garner a case of the vapors:

Listening to the Inaugural Address now. Oh dear. President Obama said "tenants of our faith" this morning instead of "tenets."

— Bryan A. Garner (@BryanAGarner) January 21, 2013

In the current Italian election campaign, Mario Monti's slogan has been "L'Italia che sale":

Although Google Translate thinks that this means "Italy and salt", in fact it means "The Italy that moves up" or "The Italy that rises", or something along those lines. (The verb is salire, which can mean "rise", "come/go up", "increase", "grow", "advance", "progress", etc.)

The rumors are flying that Apple will introduce a new device called the "iPhone Math" in June of this year.  Since that is a highly improbable name for an iPhone (is this going to be some kind of fancy calculator?), skeptical minds have been trying to find the source of the rumors.  The earliest known occurrences of the expression "iPhone Math" are to be found in Taiwanese media, so one suspects that there was some sort of distortion of a hypothetical "iPhone Plus / iPhone +" (semantic garbling) or a hypothetical iPhone Max (phonetic garbling).  After jumbled translation or transcription from English to Chinese, then back again into English, either of those names might conceivably have come out as "iPhone Math", which would indeed be a weird name for an iPhone.

Far be it from me to pervert the noble institution of Language Log by exploiting it as a place to rant about the shortcomings of an unusably vile word processor. I know you wouldn't want that. This is Language Log, not Vile Word Processing Software Log. However, since the topic seems to have come up… Could I make a brief remark?

Having learned his lesson in 2009, today Chief Justice Roberts apparently had the oath of office written out on a sheet of paper in his hand, and thereby avoided any uncertainties about adverb placement:

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From David Denison:

Not sure where this fits in the misnegation scheme of things.  On Jazz Record Requests (BBC Radio 3, 19 Jan 17:00) the presenter quoted a listener's request as follows:

I think that not many listeners will be familiar with this track – and should be.

Conversations among linguists may sometimes be interesting to non-linguists for reasons that are not entirely the same as those that appeal to insiders. As an example, I present without further comment a recent back-and-forth on Facebook between Linguist X and Linguist Y, slightly redacted to preserve anonymity.

The 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held 2/14/2013 to 2/18/2013 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Section Z (Linguistics) is sponsoring or recommending eight of the many symposia featured at the meeting:

Michael Robinson was looking through this Flickr group dedicated to photos of Chinese restaurants outside China, "Chinese Restaurant Worldwide Documentation Project", which includes around 17,000 photographs, when he came upon this photo that was taken on December 23, 2012 in The Lanes, Brighton, England, GB: