Language Log

Sarah Posner on Bluesky, linking to a kamalahq tweet and a kamalahq Instagram post:

In the thread below: a completely rambling, unhinged, incomprehensible quote from Trump at his Flint town hall with Sarah Huckabee Sanders that the Harris campaign distributed, then news headlines about same event.

Where is all the coverage that Trump is old and can't speak a coherent sentence?

I've been defending Donald Trump against similar accusations since my exchange with Geoff Pullum in 2015 — "Trump's aphasia" vs. "Trump's eloquence". Has anything changed?

There has been an enormous turbulence over the simultaneous explosion of Hezbollah pagers (some call them walkie-talkies) at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2024, involving as it does actors in regions as far flung as the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia.  No one could be closer to the center of the turmoil than the gentleman in the middle of the doorway in this photograph:

"Jingyuan Digital Platform: Font Making and Database Development for Shang Oracle Bones (Part 1)", Peichao Qin, The Digital Orientalist (9/17/24)

If you're wondering what "Jingyuan" means, it's a fancy, allusive way to say "Mirrored contexts [for thorough investigations]" ([gézhì] jìngyuán [格致]鏡原) (source), just a means for the creator of the platform to give it a proprietary designation.

A goodly proportion of Language Log readers probably have some idea of what oracle bone inscriptions are, but just to refresh our memories and for the benefit of new and recent readers who are not familiar with the history of Sinographic scripts, I'm going to jump right into the third paragraph of Qin's article, which is like a basic primer of oracle bone inscription studies.

From Josh E.:

I am a big fan of your posts on the Language Log and was wondering whether you often see semicolons used the way we might normally use commas to set off a dependent clause. Here is an example I just saw:

A Massachusetts family is demanding a full investigation after a state police recruit died after being injured during a training exercise late last week at the Massachusetts State Police Academy.

Police said Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, of Worcester was injured and became unresponsive during a training exercise Thursday on defensive tactics. He died the next day. […]

McGhee said he put about 400 to 500 recruits through the program without issue, and noted the academy has since trained thousands.

“While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened; injuries to this level are very rare,” he said.

When I started teaching a decade ago, I rarely saw this issue. Now, I see it all the time in both undergraduate and professionally published writing. Is there a term for this kind of flattening of punctuation distinctions? Or would Geoff Pullum put me up there with Strunk and White as being wrong in my basic understanding?

So says DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski.

"DeepL translation targets Taiwan as next key Asian market:  CEO says AI-based model is aiming to refine nuances, politeness", Steven Borowiec, Nikkei staff writer (September 16, 2024)

DeepL Write is one thing, DeepL Translator is another.  We've examined both on Language Log and are aware that the former is already deeply entrenched as a tool for composition assistance, but are less familiar with the special features of the latter.

The article by Borowiec, based on his interview with CEO Jarek Kutylowski, begins with some not very enlightening remarks about the difference between simplified characters on the mainland and traditional characters on Taiwan, attesting to the truism that CEOs and CFOs often don't know as much about the nitty-gritty technicalities of the products they sell as do the scientists and specialists they hire to make them.

An eminent Chinese historian just sent these two sentences to me:

Yǒurén shuō AI zhǐ néng jìsuàn, ér rénlèi néng suànjì. Yīncǐ AI yīdìng bùshì rénlèi duìshǒ

有人說AI只能計算，而人類能算計。因此AI一定不是人類對手。

"Some people say that AI can only calculate, while humans can compute.  Therefore, AI must not be a match for humans".

Google Translate, Baidu Fanyi, and Bing Translate all render both jìsuàn 計算 and suànjì 算計 as "calculate".  Only DeepL differentiates the two by translating the latter as "do math".

Yesterday, Alejandra Caraballo tweeted:

The editor in chief of the National Review just said the N word in regards to Haitians and Megyn Kelly ignores it.

Andy McCarthy responded:

Ridiculous. @richlowry (not tagged here, natch) obviously got crossed up between 'immigrants' (short i) and migrants (long i) — started mispronouncing "migrants" with short i; instantly corrected himself with no embarrassment because it was patently a mispronunciation. Geez.

And Rich Lowry agreed:

Yep, this is exactly what happened—I began to mispronounce the word “migrants” and caught myself halfway through

Ben Zimmer emailed me:

Got sent this from a friend, who was hoping to see some analysis of whether the initial consonant on the misspeak here is /m/ or /n/. (Since the previous consonant is the final /n/ in "Haitian," there may be some gestural overlap.)

"The Best New Book Written Entirely in Latin You’ll Try to Read This Year:  Why Donatien Grau, an adviser at the Louvre, decided to write 'De Civitate Angelorum,' a book about Los Angeles, the Roman way."  By Fergus McIntosh, New Yorker (September 16, 2024)

Since even elite schools like Penn and Princeton no longer have a language requirement in their Classics departments, I doubt that many people, other than a few extraordinarily conscientious lawyers and biological taxonomists, will understand much of what Grau has written.  Still, it's an interesting experiment to see how much of his book fluent speakers of French, Spanish, and Italian comprehend.

My debate analysis for The Economist included these charts:
:

Following up on "Trump as brass", I was curious about the relationship between the spoken pitch track and the score that Jase used to generate the trombone sounds. Here's his Xeet again, showing his score and playing his trombone synthesis overlaid on Trump's audio:

Donald Trump's 'Eating The Dogs' transcribed for trombone. pic.twitter.com/UpK4hNjNuR

— The Jase (@jasemonkey) September 11, 2024

Trombone, specifically:

Donald Trump's 'Eating The Dogs' transcribed for trombone. pic.twitter.com/UpK4hNjNuR

— The Jase (@jasemonkey) September 11, 2024

Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024:

An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative Catholic known for hobnobbing with far-right figures said on Monday that she hosted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife at her castle during a July 2023 music festival.

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis also told The New York Times that she viewed the justice as “a hero.”

Mark Swofford stumbled upon this church in Taipei: