That's the title of a new book from Routledge: John C. Wakefield, ed., Cantonese as a Second Language: Issues, Experiences and Suggestions for Teaching and Learning Readers of Language Log know that I'm an ardent advocate of this vibrant language and will understand why I consider the publication of Cantonese as a Second Language a […]
This post was prompted by the following comment to "The emergence of Germanic" (2/27/19): …while riding horses _in battle_ is post-Bronze Age (and perhaps of questionable worth at any time), I think riding in general is older, and probably (assuming the usual dating of PIE) common Indo-European. The domesticated horse, the chariot, and the wheel […]
On twitter a few days ago: Cat uses sign language to communicate with deaf owner pic.twitter.com/59cxOV3WgB — Akki (@Akki_J2) April 14, 2019 Today's Liberty Meadows:
A moment ago, I had occasion to use the word "schadenfreudeful" in a letter to someone. Wanting to see if anyone else had ever used this word, I did a Google search, and it yielded 149 ghits. I knew exactly how to say it, so didn't need any guidance in that regard, but I was […]
Eliza Strickland, "How IBM Watson Overpromised and Underdelivered on AI Health Care", IEEE Spectrum 4/2/2019 (subhead: "After its triumph on Jeopardy!, IBM’s AI seemed poised to revolutionize medicine. Doctors are still waiting"): In 2014, IBM opened swanky new headquarters for its artificial intelligence division, known as IBM Watson. Inside the glassy tower in lower Manhattan, […]
…despite being annihilated, no less — from "A meteor from another solar system may have hit Earth, and the implications are fascinating", CNN 4/17/2019: [h/t Bob Shackleton]
A headline sent in by Yoram Meroz: "Congressman Florida Man hired former Trump staffer fired after hanging around white nationalists", Daily Kos 4/19/2019. Yoram wrote "Here's a headline I could probably decipher, but I haven't tried." I tried and failed — I leave it to our clever commenters to solve the mystery. The references are […]
Sure, you may have heard that Pete Buttigieg, now on the presidential campaign trail, can speak a surprising number of languages. Now the Washington Post compiles the evidence in one video, under the appropriate headline, "Mayor Pete speaks a lot of languages, even when he's not fluent." In the video, Polyglot Pete shows off his […]
As promised, the results of yesterday's little experiment on "Coherence of sentence sequences" are here. A tabular summary: Question Correct Wrong 1 166 (98%) 4 (2%) 2 135 (80%) 33 (20%) 3 167 (99%) 2 (1%) 4 158 (93%) 12 (7%) 5 113 (67%) 56 (33%) 6 152 (90%) 17 (10%) 7 165 (97%) 5 […]
Here are two successive sentences from The Wizard of Oz, presented in two different orders: "How strange it all is! But, comrades, what shall we do now?" "We must journey on until we find the road of yellow brick again," said Dorothy, "and then we can keep on to the Emerald City." "We must journey […]
The company Oatly claims to have created a new Chinese word for plant-based milk by placing the grass radical above the character for milk:
Two days ago, I called the attention of friends and colleagues to this recently published book: Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, 1933-1947: A Selection of Documents (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. At 717 pages and with 184 primary documents in German, English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Chinese, and Russian, this big volume was edited by Irene Eber (1929-2019), […]
Paul Battley spotted this nice specimen of digraphia written inside the glass of one of those soft toy grabber machines in Taipei last week: