Sunny Jhatti wrote to me: "I didn't know what 'pimp slap' meant till I saw this." After witnessing her astonishing diatribe, Conal Boyce said: I felt like I needed to take a shower. (Adding insult to injury, google failed to elucidate 'Skims' for me. Had to look elsewhere to get an inkling of what that […]
This is a followup to "Japanese words that are dying out: focus on diabetes" (11/21/23). Because it's history of science / medicine for specialists and too technical for the majority of readers, I will not provide transcriptions for all but a few of the most common terms. [The following is a guest post from Nathan Hopson] […]
From Nathan Hopson: I have been reading some handwritten documents from the 1960s and 1970s, and have been reminded that even beyond abbreviations, there were still "nonstandard" kanji in use. I guess this took me off guard mostly because these are school publications. On the abbreviated side, the most obvious example is: 第 → 㐧 […]
The Differences between Old English, Middle English and Modern English By Danièle Cybulskie When people study Shakespeare in high school, I often hear them refer to his language as “Old English.” As far as the language goes, Shakespeare’s English actually falls under the category of “Modern English.” This may be a little hard to believe, […]
(see in particular the second item) If this isn't dictator status, I don't know what ishttps://t.co/A4guMzG4m1 — Bumboclott (@Bumboclott) June 29, 2023
Anemona Hartocollis, "Slashing Its Budget, West Virginia University Asks, What Is Essential?", NYT 8/18/2023: The state’s flagship school will no longer teach world languages or creative writing — a sign, its president says, of the future at many public universities. Christian Adams wants to be an immigration or labor lawyer, so he planned to major […]
Two nights ago, it was raining heavily, with lightning and thunder every so often. As I was peering out into the blackness of my backyard, all of a sudden, a bright light flashed on. At first I thought it was lightning, but then I realized that someone or something had set off the light. It […]
[This is a guest post by Charles Belov] I pasted the following Thai, which I got from a YouTube channel, into Google translate. The results were mostly in English, but Google Translate injected some apparent Tamil as well and then just gives up and leaves some of the Thai untranslated. "ตลอดระยะเวลาการทำงานในวงการบันเทิงมันทำให้เราได้เรียนรู้ว่าจริงๆ เเล้วความสุขอยู่รอบตัวเราไปหมด เเล้วความสุขมันง่ายมาก จริงๆ บางทีความสุขมันก็ไม่ต้องมีเงินเยอะมากมาย […]
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. […]
Big news from China yesterday: "2,200-year-old flush toilet — oldest ever found — unearthed at palace ruins in China" Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald / YahooThu, February 16, 2023 at 5:37 PM EST What a gift to humanity! All the terms in the title of this post mean one or another kind of toilet, but function […]
David Owen, "The Objectively Objectionable Grammatical Pet Peeve", The New Yorker 1/12/2023: Usage preferences are preferences, not laws, and I sometimes switch sides. […] But some common practices are objectively objectionable, in my opinion. Here’s an example of a sentence type that I think no writer should ever use: A former resident of Brooklyn, Mrs. […]