Language Log

Christine Oh, "Wolf Humanities Center hosts linguist, columnist Ben Zimmer for lecture on 'keywords'", The Daily Pennsylvanian 10/11/2024:

The Wolf Humanities Center hosted Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer at the ARCH building for a talk titled “Lexical Sleuthing in the Digital Age: On the Trail of Keywords and their Cultural Worlds” on Oct. 9.

Zimmer — who was a research associate at Penn’s former Institute for Research in Cognitive Science from 2005 to 2006 — gave a presentation on lexicology and linguistics followed by a question and answer session with roughly 40 attendees. The event drew a crowd of linguists and language enthusiasts from Penn's campus and the Philadelphia area.

[N.B.:  If you don't have time to read through this long and complicated post, cut to the "Closing note" at the bottom.]

Lately when I do Google searches, especially on obscure and challenging subjects, AI Overview leaps into the fray and takes precedence at the very top, displacing Wikipedia down below, and even Google's own responses, which have been increasingly frequent in recent months, are pushed over to the top right.

AI Overview, on first glance, seems convenient and useful, but — when I start to dig deeper, I find that there are problems.  As an example, I will give the case of the name of the Snake River, and maybe mention a few other instances of AI Overview falling short, but still being swiftly, though superficially, helpful.

Yesterday's guest post by Andreas Stolcke, "English influence on German spelling", covered Duden's grudging admission that 's is allowed in certain restricted contexts, and noted the widespread negative reaction attributing this "Deppenapostrophe" (= "idiot's apostrophe") to the malign influence of English.

But Heike Wiese, via Joan Maling, sent a link to Anatol Stefanowitsch, "Apostrophenschutz", Sprachlog 4/26/2007, which offers a very different take.

Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu, "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally", NYT 10/8/2024:

The energy for Mr. Trump’s third White House campaign comes from his rallies. Since President Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris took the helm, Mr. Trump has held nearly 20 of them, speaking for about 90 minutes at each.

Like most politicians, he repeats things at every speech. Unlike most politicians, he offers a grim view of the country, makes up nicknames for his opponents and pledges to use the power of the government to punish his rivals.

To help readers experience what a Trump rally is like, we used video to break down the nine themes he consistently returns to.

Below is a guest post by Andreas Stolcke.

This is an item maybe worthy of a note on Language Log — Philip Oltermann, "Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval", The Guardian 10/7/2024:

A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar sticklers but triggered existential fears around the pervasive influence of English.

Establishments that feature their owners’ names, with signs like “Rosi’s Bar” or “Kati’s Kiosk” are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be “Rosis Bar”, “Katis Kiosk”, or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar.

However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe”) has become so widespread that it is permissible – as long as it separates the genitive ‘s’ within a proper name.

The current xkcd comic:

The current Dinosaur Comics:

[This is a guest post by German Dziebel, commenting on "PIE *gene- *gwen-" (8/10/23).]

I will strike a dissenting note here. The two roots in question – *g’enH1 and *gʷenH2 are likely cognates. There seems to be a non-random distribution of palatalized and labialized velars in IE stems with nasals – palatovelars are favored in stems with m, while labiovelars are favored in stems with n. E.g.,

nGʷ roots: *nogʷno- 'naked', *nogʷt- 'night', *snoigʷho- 'snow', *h₂ongʷo- 'anoint', *h1ngwni- 'fire', *negʷhro- 'kidney', *gʷenh₂ 'wife', *kʷoino- 'price', *penkʷe- '5', *h₁lengʷʰ- 'light', *gʷʰen- 'slay, strike', *sengʷh- 'sing', *neigʷ- 'wash' 

vs.

mG'-roots: *H3moiǵhlo- (assimilated to njegull(ë) in Gheg Alb), *meǵh₂s 'great', *meh₂ǵ- 'smear, anoint', *ǵheyōm 'winter', *dheǵhōm 'earth', *ḱoimo- 'household, family', *mreǵh-, *mosgho- 'brain', *h₂melǵ- 'milk', *smeḱur 'chin, beard', *deḱm̥ '10', *h1ḱm̥tóm '100' *h₂émǵʰu- 'narrow' (Hitt hamenk- 'tie, bind').

"Turkey’s döner kebab spat with Germany is turning nasty", by Daniel Thorpe, The Spectator (10/5/24)

Last April, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier decided to bring along a 60-kilogram döner kebab on his state visit to Turkey. It did not go down well. Turks found the stunt condescending; Germans were mortified. Ankara lodged an official request with the European Commission to make the dish a ‘traditional speciality’, thereby regulating what can be sold under the name ‘döner’ in Europe.

The use of the word lost in this recent story caught my attention — Pankaj Doval, "Google set to revive lost Indian languages", The Times of India 10/3/2024:

As it gets deeper into India with generative AI platform Gemini and other suite of digital offerings, Google has taken up a new task in hand – reviving some of the lost Indian languages and creating digital records and online footprint for them.

I'll say more later about Google's important and interesting contribution to an important and interesting problem. But first, what does the article mean by "lost Indian languages"? I started from the idea that languages that are "lost" are extinct, i.e. no longer spoken — and a web search for the phrase "lost languages" confirms that others have the same interpretation.

However, the Times of India article makes it clear that this is not what they mean:

The idea is to enable people to easily carry out voice or text searches in their local dialects and languages.

As the work moves towards completion, people in the hinterland and various regions can easily do voice search in their own languages to gain accurate and valuable information from, say, Google's Gemini AI platform or carry out live translations, harness YouTube better to target their communities.

The project has so far reached 59 Indian languages, including 15 that currently do not have any kind of a digital footprint and were rather declining in usage.

The project has so far reached 59 Indian languages, including 15 that currently do not have any kind of a digital footprint and were rather declining in usage.

Great piece on the materiality of language. Part of the difficulty in implementing jiantizi in Singapore was just this: for example, in 1983, years after Singapore had begun introducing jianti, the limited availability of type meant that only 70% of publishers used them. https://t.co/GB9JxiI2wD

— Chien-Wen Kung 龔建文 (@kchienw) October 4, 2024

I'll be right up front by saying that I always spell the name as "Uyghur" because doing so helps me pronounce the name more like the way the Uyghurs themselves say their ethnonym.  If I spell the name as "Uygur", it has more of a tendency to come out sounding like a slur on an American ethnic group.

"EXPLAINED: What’s the controversy over ‘Uygur’ vs ‘Uyghur’?  Beijing’s use of the former ignores Uyghurs’ preference and aims to sow division: experts" By Kurban Niyaz for RFA Uyghur (2024.09.10)

Recently, a China-based New Zealander who’s a columnist for the Shanghai Daily generated a stir when he declared on X that “Uyghur” — referring to the 12 million-strong ethnic group living in northwestern China — should be spelled in English without an “h.”

Andy Boreham, who has a history of using his social media platforms to propagate Beijing’s political messages, says the word should be spelled “Uygur,” per a Chinese government directive back in 2012.

Google has created an experimental — and free — system called NotebookLM. Here's its current welcome page: