Language Log

The office of US Vice President Richard Cheney has said that Russia's aggression against Georgia in South Ossetia "must not go unanswered". That and the mention of "serious consequences" sounds like another war. But no, it turns out otherwise (see the Associated Press):

Asked to explain Cheney's phrase "must not go unanswered," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "It means it must not stand."

I wish these people would just check with the Language Log 24/7 Semantic Inquiries desk before they talk to the press on linguistic topics. Here I sit, at two thirty in the morning at the Language Log offices in Philadelphia (I have been assigned the night shift again), and the phone has not rung in more than five hours. You are completely wrong, Mr Johndroe: "must not go unanswered" does not mean "must not stand." What on earth gets into the members of the current administration when they are asked semantic questions that relate to justifying war? Why are they so often driven into semantic incoherence? Call Language Log for a chat about this, Mr Johndroe. Your call will not go unanswered.

Paul Brians (Common Errors in English Usage) advises, under wile away/while away:

”Waiting for my physical at the doctor’s office, I whiled away the time reading the dessert recipes in an old copy of Gourmet magazine.” The expression “while away the time” is the only surviving context for a very old use of “while” as a verb meaning “to spend time.” Many people substitute “wile,” but to wile people is to lure or trick them into doing something—quite different from simply idling away the time. Even though dictionaries accept “wile away” as an alternative, it makes more sense to stick with the original expression.

I've been struggling with this one for some time for the Eggcorn Database — wile away might be seen as a replacement of the opaque (and, except in this idiom, obsolete) verb while by the somewhat more frequent wile — but the case turns out to be very complex. In particular, if this is an eggcorn, it has to be labeled "nearly mainstream".

Please note: Mark's passing along of today's Cathy comic should be seen before reading this post.                                                                                                                               We get amazingly few complaints about the organization and management here at Language Log Plaza, perhaps because currently we have no surcharges or extra hidden costs. In case you haven’t noticed, we actually have no charges at all. So we can’t be accused of having middlemen, speculators, price-fixing, lack of transparency, add-on fuel consumption charges, or less than full disclosure of our accounting procedures. In fact, it appears that we don’t even have any of these. Come to think about it, compared with utilities companies or, ugh, airlines, or the websites of many journals, Language Log can't be accused of being very cost conscious.

Today's Cathy:

(As usual, click on the image for a larger version.)

Here's another interview-as-blog-post. This time the interviewer is someone writing a book, who has read some of the Language Log posts linked here and here; and the subject of the interview is "the new fashion for biological determinism in debates about differences between the sexes".

From the New Yorker of 28 July, a cartoon by J.C. Duffy (p. 60), showing a man, working a cash register at a grocery store, who is addressing a shopper staring at the sign at his counter. The sign has "10 items or less" on it, with the "less" crossed out and "fewer" written in. Says the man:

“What can I say? I was an English major.”

Two things here: the usage of less and fewer in this context, which Mark Liberman took up here some time ago; and the stereotype of English majors as sticklers for "correct" grammar.

Language Log reader Jukka Kohonen has written to me about the Recency Illusion, the (often inaccurate) belief that a usage you have recently noticed is in fact a recent development in the language. Kohonen wondered whether anyone had studied its causes (and effects) systematically, and he had a specific instance in mind. I had to admit to a profound ignorance on the subject, and to considerable worries about how the topic could be studied systematically.

Those of us who have been avoiding the use of transitive verbs because we thought they were argumentative or prejudicial can now rest easy. According to Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley, they are not. He rendered his decision earlier this week, saying, “There is nothing inherently argumentative or prejudicial about transitive verbs.” This settles that long-standing linguistic controversy for good. If the Court decides it, it must be right. Right?

The war in South Ossetia reminded me of the disputed Sarmatian connection to the King Arthur legends — a good story, whether or not it's true. (More on this here.) And the Wikipedia article on the Ossetians says that "Joseph Stalin's parents are believed to have been ethnic Ossetians albeit assimilated into Georgian culture". I first learned about this in Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin, which I read not long ago. According to Montefiore, Stalin's paternal great-grandfather "was an Ossetian from the village of Geri, north of Gori". In a footnote on p. 21, Montefiore expands on this:

When Stalin's dying father [Vissarion "Keke" Djugashvili] was admitted to hospital, significantly he was still registered as Ossetian. Stalin's enemies, from Trotsky to the poet Mandelstam in his famous poem, relished calling him an "Ossete" because Georgians regarded Ossetians as barbarous crude and, in the early nineteenth century, non-Christian.

A couple of days ago, I tried to answer a journalist's questions about nonplussed ("Nonplussed about nonplussed", 8/6/2008). I wasn't entirely satisfied with one of my answers, and so I've tried again today.

Inspired by Geoffrey Pullum's plan to take Barbara her matutinal coffee at exactly 08:08:08 on the morning of 08/08/08, this morning at 08:08:08 a.m. I took 8 photographs of my wife standing next to our favorite orchid, which has had a total of 8 blossoms.

Yes, everything is coming up 8's today. The morning news made a big fuss over how the uniforms of the American Olympians consist of 8 pieces. And everybody (except perhaps Mark Spitz and a billion Chinese) is rooting for Michael Phelps to win 8 gold medals. And today, of course, is very special for New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee who, by the way, wrote an excellent article back in 2001 about the impact of computers on the ability of Chinese to write characters by hand.

The airwaves are full of instant pundits informing us how important 8 is for Chinese because BA1 八 sounds like FA1 发／發 and FA1, among many other things too numerous to list here, can mean "get rich, make a fortune, become wealthy." So as not to sound too crass, those who explain the Chinese attachment to 8 usually say that it signifies "prosper(ity)" — I guess a lot depends upon what one understands "prosper(ity)" to mean! One hears this sort of sentiment most often during Chinese New Year celebrations when people go around saying (and writing endlessly on greeting cards) GONG1XI3 FA1CAI2, Cantonese GONGHAI/HEI FAT CHOI 恭喜发财 ("Congratulations and May You Get Rich!").

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Army is so badly in need of Arabic interpreters ("linguists" in military-speak) that it is considering paying retention bonuses of as much as $150,000, on a par with what they pay members of the Special Forces. It's good to see some appreciation for language skills. Of course, the shortage would not be as great if they didn't keep firing interpreters who are gay.

Considering all of the unsavory, scatalogical Chinglish vocabulary that we have been examining lately, I find it particularly amusing that a very successful chain of restaurants in Taiwan has chosen to call itself Modern Toilet. Here is a novel theme restaurant if ever there was one.

The originator of the chain apparently got his inspiration from reading Japanese manga, and the Chinese name of Modern Toilet, BIAN4SUO3 便所, is actually a borrowing from Japanese BENJO 便所. That literally means "convenience place," hearkening back to our earlier discussions of the greater and lesser varieties of BIAN4 便.