I was stunned when I read the following article in the South China Morning Post, both because it was published in Hong Kong, which is now completely under the censorial control of the People's Republic of China (PRC) / Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and because it raises some disturbing political issues and troubling linguistic problems. […]
Last month I learned a new word, shiesty — which rhymes with feisty, as if it were written "sheisty" — because shiesties have been banned on the local transit system ("SEPTA"):
Since about the 90s, pho has been popping up all over the place. It has been especially conspicuous after the turn of the millennium, and I think it adapted well to the pandemic as a quick and ready kind of street food. I've often wondered whether it had anything to do with French "fire" or […]
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 […]
Sign on the elevator doors of a Taipei department store:
What do a baker, a shepherd, and a drummer have in common? You can add an orchestra conductor, Harry Potter, and a drill sergeant. Hint: this is in French.
The diabolo, sometimes called a Chinese yo-yo, is a two-headed top controlled by a string manipulated by two sticks, one attached to each end. It is popular among jugglers. Diabolo, commonly misspelled as diablo, was formerly also known as "the devil on two sticks" (Juggling Wiki). In this post, I am concerned primarily with language […]
Although Google now has "about 27,700 results" for seacuterie, this word doesn't seem to have made it into any of the standard dictionaries yet. But already in 2017, Fine Dining Lovers announced ("Seacuterie, When Salami Rhymes with 'Sea-lami'") that "today’s latest craze is 'seacuterie'", and went on to survey the gastronomical metaphors involved at greater […]
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, has been big in the media recently, from the first-ever Spanish cover of Time Magazine, to headlining Coachella — against the background of literally millions of pages featuring his fashion choices and his sayings. According to a 2019 All Things Considered piece ("How Bad Bunny Skipped Categories […]
新时代祥瑞层出不穷 pic.twitter.com/bVm5Vn4XC4 — 方舟子 (@fangshimin) April 9, 2023
Our previous post was on "Hallucinations: In Xanadu did LLMs vainly fancify" (4/3/23). If you were wondering where such an evocative, exotic name came from, it has a direct lineage back to the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) of China where it was called Shàngdū 上都 ("Upper Capital") in Mandarin, ultimately from early Mandarin ʂaŋ` tū. […]
Around 60% of the people living in the San Gabriel area are Asians, and the largest proportion among them are Chinese. To attract the business of the local population, attorney Scott Warmuth decided to put up Chinese billboards in Monterey Park about a decade ago. How it happened is described in this article: "Column: Racial […]