Language Log

This new sign at the intersection of Cottman Avenue and State Road has gotten a lot of news coverage:

Do babies develop accents even before they can speak conventionally?

The short answer is yes… and these linguistic markers begin even sooner than you might think.

So many of you tagged me in this video yesterday featuring an infant that babbles with the same Scouse accent as… pic.twitter.com/EO5WJllRnE

— Dan Wuori (@DanWuori) June 22, 2024

Behold the Latin word sāpō (soap) and its many, many descendants which include the Mother of the Austronesian language family—the indigenous Formosan languages of Taiwan:

阿美語 Amis: safon
噶瑪蘭語 Kavalam: sabun
卑南語 Puyuma: sabun
鄒語 Tsou: savungu https://t.co/aYrp1a8bEl pic.twitter.com/YvbyQWTRI7

— Ted (@ted_huang) June 17, 2024

Opinion:  "These gaming terms are transforming slang. Do you know them? Even those not involved in gaming culture are becoming familiar with the new vocabulary." Washington Post, by Adam Aleksic (June 20, 2024)

…Dozens of video game terms have sneaked into everyday conversation over the past several years, particularly among younger people. For instance, it’s common to hear “speedrun” for completing a task quickly, “sidequest” to tell your friends about an unexpected adventure or “spawn” when you’ve made a sudden appearance. 

All of these come from gaming culture, where they’re used to describe virtual actions — yet they’ve transformed into offline slang. 

Since at least the early 2000s, millennials have adopted gaming words such as “noob” (short for “newbie”), “OP” (short for “overpowered”) and “gg” (short for “good game”) in real life. These terms reached such ubiquity online that they made intuitive sense when extended to analogous in-person interactions.

A week ago, I was in Gothenberg, Nebraska and went to the local historical museum.  I asked the volunteers there what was the most unusual, interesting, and important exhibit they had.  One of them, Barbara Fisher, thought for a moment, then said, "We have a unique collection of barbed wire fence downstairs, each strand of which is specific to the ranch or tract where it was used."  She must have read my mind and heart, for that is just the sort of thing that would captivate me.

So I dashed down the stairs and beheld:

In a country like China that is drenched in censorship, people who have opinions that differ from those of the government resort to any means possible to get their message across.

"Bookstores Become Sites of Subtle Protest Against Xi Jinping", by Alexander Boyd, China Digital Times (7/18/24)

The novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed at left, alongside “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

As someone deeply interested in the languages of Taiwan, I have long been preoccupied by the origins and expansion of Austronesian on the island circa six millennia ago and its spread from there around four thousand years ago throughout Southeast Asia, to Oceania and as far as Madagascar.  This new research article from PLOS ONE sheds light on how a part of that process occurred.

"Investigating Demic versus Cultural Diffusion and Sex Bias in the Spread of Austronesian Languages in Vietnam." Thao, Dinh Huong et al. PLOS ONE 19, no. 6 (June 17, 2024): e0304964. 

Elegant writing by hand has always been a trial for me.  The harder I try to make my handwriting presentable, the more it turns out looking like chicken scratches.  I'll never forget how my second grade teacher, Mrs. Kiefer, was in despair over my poor penmanship, almost to the point of crying.  "Vicky," she would say, "you are such a good student in all other respects, why can't you write better?"  It's the same way with my brother Denis.  Watching him write, and seeing the product as it emerges on the page, it is obvious that forming letters on the page is a kind of suffering for him.  And yet, both Denis and I prefer to compose whatever we really care about on paper — be it a poem, an essay, or just random thoughts.

I'm a super fast typist, and I can spew out things on a computer screen almost as fast as I normally talk.  It's easy as abc.  When I do so, however, I'm not thinking, I'm just gurgitating.

(…with a bit of philosophy and psychiatry in the mix…)

Dinosaur Comics for 6/17/2024:

The same day's xkcd — "Pascal's Wager Triangle":

"Mandarin Leaves a Manhattan Courtroom Lost in Translation:  Trial of Guo Wengui shows how linguistic issues can trip up China-related cases", by James T. Areddy, WSJ (6/18/24)

———

The New York trial of a Chinese businessman is Exhibit A for how language issues are gumming up federal prosecutions of Mandarin-speaking defendants.

Nearly everyone in the lower Manhattan courtroom appears frustrated by a halting process that requires translation of Chinese-language videos, documents and witness testimony.

It is one in a series of high-profile China-linked cases that are similarly getting lost in translation. Chinese-language evidence is piling up, unintelligible to attorneys. Translations are slow, and sometimes wrong. There is a limited pool of top-tier Mandarin court interpreters, and they can disagree on English translations. And for both sides in a trial, the work of interpreters provides ammunition for legal wrangling, from gamesmanship to courtroom objections and possible appeals.

Frazz for 6/17/2024:

imgur,  "On forms of address for non-binaries", by apolloendymion: