Search Results
February 20, 2022 @ 9:55 pm
· Filed under Orality, Prosody, Slang, Style and register, Swear words, Translation
As a published translator myself, I certainly strive to make my translations worthy of being considered as art. But it isn't always an easy task. Witness "The Tricky Art of Translation and Maria Dahvana Headley’s Modern Beowulf", CD Covington, Tor.com (Mon Feb 7, 2022): It’s not very often that a thousand-year-old poem has a new […]
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January 16, 2022 @ 12:20 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Etymology, Language and food, Reconstructions
Stimulating, substantial article by Chang Che in SupChina (1/13/22): "China looks to the Western classics". Here are the first three paragraphs: A block east of Tiananmen Square, in a classroom last July, Chinese school children were singing the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” in Latin: “Donatus est agricola, Eia, Eia, Oh!” The students, […]
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January 15, 2022 @ 12:42 pm
· Filed under Linguistics in the comics
The most recent Questionable Content:
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December 9, 2021 @ 5:39 pm
· Filed under Idioms, Jargon, Memes, Neologisms, Slang, Word of the year
If you want to get an idea of what preoccupies Chinese people, one good way is to take a gander at current lingo. SupChina provides a convenient compilation from two authoritative sources. In the past, I've been disappointed by many Chinese words of the year lists because they seemed to have been blatantly chosen by […]
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April 30, 2021 @ 9:10 am
· Filed under Etymology, Language and medicine, Lexicon and lexicography
Prefatory note: In this post, I take the noun "vaccine" as the basic word under discussion, but also consider other cognate terms ("vaccinate", "vaccination"). Here's a standard dictionary entry for "vaccine": n. 1. any preparation of weakened or killed bacteria or viruses introduced into the body to prevent a disease by stimulating antibodies against it.2. […]
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December 10, 2020 @ 6:59 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Classification, Language change, Reconstructions
"Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis", NativLang (9/28/19) — video is 12:29; extensive discussion after the page break
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December 14, 2019 @ 12:04 pm
· Filed under Language and ethnicity, Language and politics
Many people have been asking me about the use of the term Guóyǔ 国语 ("National Language") for "Mandarin" in Xinjiang today. Here's an inquiry from Peter Moody: I have encountered what seems to be an anomaly in contemporary Chinese usage, and have been assured that you are among those most capable of addressing it. I […]
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November 8, 2019 @ 2:39 am
· Filed under Changing times, coordination, Grammar, Language change, negation, Syntax
Today in Seth Cable's seminar on Montague's Universal grammar, he gave out a problem set that included the task of adding "Neither Mitt smokes nor Barack smokes" to the little fragment of English that had been developed. And in the discussion of the problem set, it turned out that I was the only one in […]
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July 15, 2019 @ 11:19 am
· Filed under Etymology, Language and history, Language and the movies
There is much hullabaloo over the new "Mulan" trailer:
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March 29, 2019 @ 3:27 pm
· Filed under Diglossia and digraphia, Names, World language
I first heard about Beau Jessup (founder [2015] and CEO of Special Name) and her Chinese baby-naming business a couple of years ago. There was even a TEDx talk by her about it:
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December 20, 2018 @ 6:22 am
· Filed under Linguistics in the comics
The start of today's SMBC:
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November 20, 2018 @ 6:45 pm
· Filed under Humor, Swear words
Article in ABC News (Australia) today (11/20/18): "'Arsehole' geese become internet sensations as farmer writes honest for-sale post" All Leslie Du Preez wanted was to add a little tranquillity to her small southern Queensland farm. "We got these beautiful geese and thought they'd be a wonderful addition to our beautiful zen-like property," she said. It […]
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November 4, 2018 @ 7:12 pm
· Filed under Gender, Language and education, Language and fashion
Don Clarke has called to my attention a new bilingual, digraphic expression: “娘man结合”. That's "niáng man jiéhé ('woman man [the English word] combination')". It’s a women’s fashion style that combines femininity in one part of the outfit with manliness in the other — like wearing a colored print dress with an army jacket. Supposedly, “man” is read in the first tone. Don […]
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