{"id":164,"date":"2008-05-16T17:02:08","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T21:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=164"},"modified":"2008-05-16T17:06:07","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T21:06:07","slug":"taboo-mystification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"Taboo mystification"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one is beyond me (Stuart Elliott, \"Speaking Profanglish<\/a>\",NYT 5\/16\/2008):<\/p>\n

People who attended the Univision presentation were buzzing about a closing remark made by Joe Uva, chief executive at Univision Communications. He wrapped up the event with a jocular, four-word question that ended with the phrase \u201cAre you in?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first word of the question was a colloquial expression familiar to Puerto Ricans, which Spanish speakers at the presentation likened to the word bomb unleashed this week on WNBC-TV by the anchor Sue Simmons.<\/span><\/p>\n

The remark by Mr. Uva was greeted with nervous laughter from the audience members, either because they did not understand what he said \u2014 or because they did.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can guess a few Spanish words that the NYT would view as unfit to print, but none of those that come to mind would fit in the frame \"__ are you in?\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The NYT Sue Simmons story is equally allusive — in fact two words are left out, and we're not told where they go in the quoted string of four words, but the solution is easy to guess (James Barron, \"When an Anchor Curses on the Air, She Bcomes the Night's Top Story<\/a>\", 5\/14\/2008):<\/p>\n

Each night around 10:25, the anchors on Channel 4 tape a 15-second spot promoting the 11 p.m. newscast. Occasionally, it has to be done live.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Monday night, according to someone who works at Channel 4 and has direct knowledge of the situation, Ms. Simmons and Mr. Scarborough thought the spot was being taped. When they were cued, Ms. Simmons read her line: \u201cAt 11, paying more at the grocer, but getting less. We\u2019ll tell you how to get the most.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The station then cut to images for an upcoming story about a cruise ship, without any narrative from the two anchors.<\/span><\/p>\n

At that point, Ms. Simmons says, basically, What are you doing?<\/span><\/p>\n

But her question had two extra words.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you know what one-word \"colloquial expression familiar to Puerto Ricans\" Joe Uva used, please enlighten the rest of us. (Your contribution will be joining a long line of distinguished Language Log commentary on taboo vocabulary, some of which are linked here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

[Please *don't* tell us what Sue Simmons said; we all know that already, I think.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one is beyond me (Stuart Elliott, \"Speaking Profanglish\",NYT 5\/16\/2008): People who attended the Univision presentation were buzzing about a closing remark made by Joe Uva, chief executive at Univision Communications. He wrapped up the event with a jocular, four-word question that ended with the phrase \u201cAre you in?\u201d The first word of the question […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taboo-vocabulary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}