Language Log

I'm in Ames, home of Iowa State University.  The next town down the road is Nevada.  What?  Yes, but it's /nəˈveɪdə/ nə-VAY-də, not /nɪˈvædə/ nih-VAD-ə; Spanish: [neˈβaða], and the locals I've met know the difference.  The same thing holds for Madrid, which is on the other side of Ames; it is /ˈmædrɪd/, not /məˈdrɪd/ mə-DRID, Spanish: [maˈðɾið].

From what they told me, Iowans do the same thing with many other exonyms.

Last weekend, I was in Omaha for the annual Berkshire-Hathaway Shareholders Meeting.  Not that I am a shareholder of Berkshire-Hathaway, but simply because I was curious to see two nonagenarian financial wizards hold forth in front of 20,000 enthusiastic fans for a whole day.  I wasn't disappointed, though I must confess that I didn't understand half of what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were saying about value investing.

Since I was staying in Council Bluffs and the meeting was held at the CHI Health Center across the river in Omaha, I had to go back and forth across the Missouri River several times, so I became curious about the relationship between the two cities.  I asked a taxi driver from Council Bluffs, who was born and grew up there, what local people thought of the twin cities.  "We're the one with all the problems," he said.  "So much so that they call us Counciltucky.

[This is a guest post by Scott Mauldin]

I recently visited Marrakesh and was fascinated by the signs that I submit in the attached photographs. Ostensibly these were originally a kind of business sign that artisans and professionals could hang on their businesses or homes to advertise their profession, but they have evolved into something slightly different for touristic consumption as they now sometimes feature the faces of celebrities or even items.

They're interesting in themselves as a cultural item, but if you look closely at the photos the truly fascinating bit are the "errors" and deviations from standard French spelling. These signs are often made by artisans without a formal education in French and sometimes are phonetic renderings that encode Maghrebi French pronunciations.

Sign in Hong Kong:

A recent Dinosaur Comic features a passionate investigation into alleged philosophical plagiarism:

Sign on the elevator doors of a Taipei department store:

The hotel where I'm staying in Morgantown, West Virginia kindly gave me a complimentary rectangular packet of freshmint toothpaste.  At the top right corner of the packet, there was a dotted, diagonal line with the words "TEAR HERE" printed above it.  Alas, no matter how hard I tried, I could not tear it open.

Then I thought that maybe I could RIP it open by pulling on the serrations along the upper edge of the packet.  No luck.

Then I tried to BITE and GNASH the packet with my teeth.  Abject failure.

Of course, I've been through all of this countless times before, and not just with toothpaste, but with packets of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and all sorts of other things.  It is especially dismaying when — after making a supreme effort — the packet bursts open and the contents spurt all over the place, including your clothing.  The worst case is when soy sauce flies out and drips everywhere.

Here I am in the middle of Missouri, Macon, to be exact (not precisely the geographical center, but not very far from it either, and certainly not near the edges of the state), and I still don't know the origins of this authentic Doggyism:  "Move out of Missouri!"

As I explained in "How to pronounce the surname 'Mair' and other Doggie talk" (2/17/22),

My basketball coach at Dartmouth was a very colorful character known as "Doggie Julian" (1901-1967).  Doggie was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and, in his 66 years of life, held an incredible number of positions as professional athlete and coach (football, basketball, and baseball) at one high school, many colleges, and one professional sports team.  He coached the legendary Bob Cousy (b. 1928) at Holy Cross and with the Boston Celtics.  It's difficult for me to imagine how he could arrange and sign for so many jobs, let alone move to such a large number of locations and coach thousands of games, but he had a steel will and dogged tenacity.

From 9 Chickweed Lane (4/28/23):

(source)

A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with one of my former students at a tea/coffee shop (that's what I call 'em because I don't drink coffee very often, almost never).

We were talking about a controversy in Mongolian historiography.  It was a question of whether it is ever suitable to use a certain term to describe the social organization of the Mongols.  He kept saying a word that sounded to me like "shribe".  Since I didn't know that word, I asked him to elucidate various aspects of the problem, and he kept saying "shribe" this, "shribe" that, e.g., that one side of the debate says you can't use the word "shribe" with regard to Mongolian history because "shribes" can't form states, but then that would be to deny the possibility of state formation to the Mongols.  The other side says that "shribes" can form states, so the Mongols could form states even though they had "shribes" in their social organization.  Or something like that.

And no dabbling either (see "Selected readings").

Frazz for 4/25/2023:

Or should we call it "Delphic AI"?

Alexy Khrabrov suggested both possibilities a few days ago, in "Reasonable AI — the Golden Age of AI Programming":

The emerging techniques are all around the way you construct the prompts and also chain them. Effectively, we’re plotting dialogues.

I call it the Age of Socratic AI, or Reasonable AI. We are engaging in conversations with AI that elicit meaning. We make the most basic assumption that it has the information we need and can provide it in the form we need, e.g. as an explanation or a how-to plan of action. We consider it an imperfect oracle that has to be assuaged, and asked questions in very specific ways to get the reply we need.