For the last few weeks, the New York Times has been running a hyped-up, gushing series of lengthy articles under the rubric "China rules". On a special section in the paper edition for Sunday, November 25, they printed this gigantic headline in Chinese characters — and made a colossal mistake:
"Senate Bill 250 limiting free-speech rights in Ohio is unneeded and pernicious", cleveland.com 1222018 [emphasis added]: A pending Ohio bill […] seeks to turn the state's misdemeanor criminal trespass law into a felony if it involves knowingly entering a "critical infrastructure" site. […] The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio's Gary Daniels told the Judiciary […]
[This is a guest post by C K Wang] When we went to the primary school we were forbidden to speak Taiwanese in public. We spoke Taiwanese at home and when there were no strangers around. So people in my generation speak Taiwanese well—we have kept the mother tongue. I told stories from 西遊記* to […]
Mark Puleo, "'Monster' earthquake shakes Anchorage, Alaska; Widespread damage reported", Accuweather 12/1/2018: Gov. Bill Walker has issued a disaster declaration in Alaska in response to Friday’s earthquake, which was approved by President Donald Trump. It's true that Senator Murkowski disagreed with President Trump on climate change, but approving an earthquake seems like a bit of […]
David Brooks, "It’s Not the Economy, Stupid: How to conduct economic policy in an age of social collapse", NYT 11/29/2018: People, especially in the middle- and working-class slices of society, are less likely to volunteer in their community, less likely to go to church, less likely to know their neighbors, less likely to be married […]
Yesterday, I posted on "'How Millennials are Destroying the Philly Accent'" (11/29/18). Last night, before I went to bed, I wanted to add a comment about my views on the difference between "dialect" and "accent", but didn't have the energy to type it out. So I was pleased to find when I woke up this […]
Episode 35 of "The Vocal Fries" podcast: "This linguistics podcast breaks down Philly’s great, and changing, dialect: The hosts thankfully get way past 'jawn' and 'wooder ice'", by Adam Hermann, PhillyVoice (11/27/18) Philadelphia’s accent is unmistakable, and it’s often a source of pride among residents…. The podcast chatted with Betsy Sneller, who did her Ph.D. […]
A tasty visual pun found on Facebook: (originally posted by Wayne Hudson)
What good is a translation app that automatically censors politically sensitive terms? Well, a leading Chinese translation app is now doing exactly that. "A Chinese translation app is censoring politically sensitive terms, report says", Zoey Chong, CNET (11/27/18) iFlytek, a voice recognition technology provider in China, has begun censoring politically sensitive terms from its translation […]
This is one of the best, general, brief introductions to the challenges of the Chinese writing system I know of:
"Pilot misses destination by 29 miles after dozing off", Sky News 11/27/2018: A pilot in Australia is being investigated after they fell asleep in the cockpit and missed their destination by 29 miles. The pilot, who was the only person on board at the time, overshot the remote Tasmanian island where they were due to […]
In the latest The Atlantic, Michael Erard describes a fascinating linguistic phenomenon: "The Small Island Where 500 People Speak Nine Different Languages: Its inhabitants can understand each other thanks to a peculiar linguistic phenomenon". The article begins: On South Goulburn Island, a small, forested isle off Australia’s northern coast, a settlement called Warruwi Community consists […]