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January 13, 2019 @ 9:25 am
· Filed under Words words words
Jack Shafer, "Week 86: FBI’s Blockbuster Probe of Trump’s Loyalty Revealed", Politico 1/12/2018: Thanks to a redaction error made in a legal filing by convicted felon Paul Manafort’s lawyers, we learned that special counsel Mueller believes that former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort lied about passing, in spring 2016, political polling data to two Russia-aligned Ukrainian oligarchs he had […]
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December 23, 2018 @ 2:11 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Language and culture, Morphology, Phonetics and phonology
This is a piece that I've been meaning to write for a long time, but never found the opportunity. Now, inspired by the season and about to embark on extended holiday travel, I'm determined not to put it off for yet another year. The genesis of my ruminations on this topic are buried in decades-old […]
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November 1, 2018 @ 9:09 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Etymology, Reconstructions
Pamela Kyle Crossley wonders: Why, when mi– ma– words for “honey” are so widespread across Eurasia, do English speakers say “honey” instead of some modern form of medhu or meli (except when referring to mead, of course)? Turns out all the Germanic languages left the medhu theme early on, and instead went with variation of […]
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May 16, 2018 @ 10:20 am
· Filed under Language on the internets, Phonetics and phonology, Psycholinguistics, Speech technology
A peculiar audio clip has turned into a viral sensation, the acoustic equivalent of "the dress" — which, you'll recall, was either white and gold or blue and black, depending on your point of view. This time around, the dividing line is between "Yanny" and "Laurel." What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I — […]
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March 7, 2018 @ 9:22 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Historical linguistics, Language and archeology, Language and biology, Lexicon and lexicography, Writing systems
At the conclusion of "Barking roosters and crowing dogs" (2/18/18), I promised a more philologically oriented post to celebrate the advent of the lunar year of the dog. This is it. Concurrently, it is part of this long running series on Old Sinitic and Indo-European comparative reconstructions: “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions” (3/8/16) […]
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September 13, 2017 @ 11:38 pm
· Filed under Linguistics as a discipline, Linguistics in the news, The academic scene
[This post was written with input from Emily M. Bender, Claire Bowern, Andrew Garrett, Monica Macaulay, David Pesetsky, Leslie Saxon, Karen Shelby, Kristen Syrett, and Natasha Warner.] Many linguists, and probably also many regular Language Log readers, will have by now heard about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint recently filed by a set of […]
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September 9, 2017 @ 7:24 am
· Filed under The language of science
Terry Provost wrote to express interest in the topic of "citation plagiarism", linking to a couple of Bill Poser's LLOG posts ("Citation plagiarism", 6/15/2007; "Citation Plagiarism Once Again", 4/23/2008), and noting that "yours was one of very few mentions of the topic I found". Provost points to a somewhat more recent article on a related […]
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May 28, 2017 @ 8:40 pm
· Filed under Language and biology, Language and food, Multilingualism, Signs, Translation
Photograph of a sign at Sequim Bay, Washington taken by Stephen Hart:
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February 5, 2017 @ 11:35 am
· Filed under Language and politics, Phonetics and phonology
Graeme Orr asks: This relates to US-Australian relations, thrown into mirth if not disarray by a now infamous phone call. Afterwards, Mr Spicer mistook our PM's surname twice in a press conference. Australian social media heard Spicer as calling our PM Turnbull 'Trumble'. But I distinctly hear it as 'Trunbull', a simple transposition error of […]
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February 4, 2017 @ 6:30 pm
· Filed under Politics of language
Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.", 1751 [emphasis added]: 23. In fine, A Nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take away a Limb, its Place is soon supply'd; cut it in two, and each deficient Part shall speedily grow out of the Part remaining. Thus if you have […]
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December 16, 2016 @ 8:24 am
· Filed under Language and politics, Language on the internets, Neologisms
Starting around a year or two ago, the expression "Zhào jiārén 赵家人" ("Zhao family member") emerged as a coded reference for politically powerful and wealthy elites in contemporary Chinese society. See Kiki Zhao's penetrating post on the NYT Sinosphere blog: "Leveling Criticism at China’s Elite, Some Borrow Words From the Past" (1/4/16) For the literary […]
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June 23, 2016 @ 8:48 am
· Filed under False friends, Language and food, Language and travel, Lost in translation
At an excellent restaurant in Leipzig last night the server quickly identified me as an Auslander whose German might not be up to grasping every nuance of the menu, so I was given an English menu as well. (It was a bit humiliating, like having a bib tied round my neck. I have tried to […]
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