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. […]
Upon seeing that word for the first time, I had only the vaguest idea of what it meant, though I suspected that it was closely related to the dog breed name: schnauzer (n.) breed of terrier with a bearded muzzle, 1923, from German Schnauzer, literally "growler," from schnauzen "to snarl, growl," from Schnauze "snout, muzzle," […]
The war drags on, and once again one wonders how different Ukraine is from Russia, Ukrainian from Russian. This superb article will help us get a handle on what the issues at stake are: "A short history of language in Ukraine" Norman Davies, Spectator (2 October 2022) The article is so richly illuminating and timely […]
In a recent presentation, I noted that generic statements can be misleading, though it's not easy to avoid the problem: The limitations and complexities of ordinary language in this area pose difficult problems for scientists, journalists, teachers, and everyone else. But the problems are especially hard to avoid for AI researchers aiming to turn large […]
If I were a cruciverbalist, I might use that as a clue for "hammock", though it didn't turn up here: https://www.wordplays.com/crossword-solver/sailor%27s-bed nor here: http://crosswordtracker.com/clue/sailors-bed/ but it was first here: https://crossword-solver.io/clue/sailor%27s-bed/ With somer a-comin' — though spryng has barely sprung, at least not in these parts — it's time to drag out our dusty, trusty hammocks […]
#OldEnglish #WOTD: wundor-blēo, n.n: a wondrous colour. (WUN-dor-BLAY-oh / ˈwʌn-dɔr-ˌbleːɔ) Image: Panther in a bestiary; England, c. 1226-1250; @bodleianlibs MS. Bodley 764, f. 7v. pic.twitter.com/nHqwdYElVh — Old English Wordhord (@OEWordhord) May 5, 2022