Language Log

Currently circulating political poster in the PRC:

Linguistics is in the most desirable quadrant according to today's xkcd: low likelihood of being a crucial tool for a supervillain, and low probability of anything breaking out of the research environment and threatening the general population. But I'm not at all sure that everything is positioned correctly. Molasses storage should be further to the […]

In all of the foofaraw about Rex Tillerson calling Donald Trump a "fucking moron", no one seems to have picked up on the fact the Mr. Tillerson may have endangered his immortal soul. (And not on account of the expletive.)

Philadelphia, this jawn's for you. https://t.co/e9Ux87wkA4 — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) October 4, 2017 See Ben Zimmer's jawn etymology interview, and also "Vaina == Jawn?", 8/12/2016.

While it is generally acknowledged that Manchu language is nearly extinct, with only a handful of elderly speakers in the original territory of Manchuria, a very close cousin survives in the far northwest of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the PRC.  This language is called Sibe (MSM transcription Xíbó 锡伯), and it is spoken by about 30,000 […]

Jonathan Benda posted this on Facebook recently: Reading [Jan Blommaert's] _Language and Superdiversity_ in preparation for my Writing in Global Contexts course in the fall. Does anyone else think the following conclusions about this sign are somewhat wrongheaded?

Donald Trump's "fire and fury" warning to North Korea, we now know, was unscripted, not the product of speechwriters and advisers. As some have suggested, Trump's aggressive language may have been (at least unconsciously) modeled on Harry Truman's announcement that the U.S. had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. Truman: If they do […]

"Supreme Court rules government can't refuse disparaging trademarks", ESPN: The Supreme Court on Monday struck down part of a law that bans offensive trademarks in a ruling that is expected to help the Redskins in their legal fight over the team name. The justices ruled that the 71-year-old trademark law barring disparaging terms infringes free […]

June Teufel Dreyer noticed that the People's Daily and other official outlets refer to Okinotori as a jiāo 礁, reef, which fits her understanding of the geology involved.  The Japanese, hoping for a larger Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), say it is an island. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) definition […]

From Hwa Shi-Hsia: I have a question for Language Log. My sister in Malaysia recently bought an MP3 player with a feature listed as "The fire cow charging". My father figured out that it meant a transformer or power adapter, but he couldn't come up with a plausible explanation. An acquaintance from Hong Kong responded […]

Earlier this week, I wrote a post titled "'Little Man' the eating machine" (5/22/17), in which I pointed out that "Man" here does not mean "(hu)man" or "male human", but that it signifies "(southern) barbarian", with extended meanings of “rough; reckless; fierce; rude; unreasoning; unruly; bullying”.  I also noted that this mán 蛮 has another […]

Yesterday's Dumbing of Age:

Until three days ago when I read the following article in the South China Morning Post, I had never heard of this expression: "Opinion: All you need to know about cheater’s stocks: its lures, its victims and the key opinion leaders" (Shirley Yam, 5/10/17) She calls these stocks LAO QIAN GU in Chinese, but since […]