Language Log

Recently in PHD Comics: My schedule is merely crowded over the next week or so, rather than insane, so I hope to be able to post a little more often.

This amazing song from Taiwan seems to have been inspired by some Japanese cultural practices, which we will explore later in this post.

  The Dangerous Speech Project.  

An introduction and guide to my series of posts "Corpora and the Second Amendment" is available here. The corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here. That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. Important: Use the "Download" button at the top right of the screen. New URL for COFEA and […]

Article by Orange Wang in the South China Morning Post (5/29/18): "In China’s gaming world, lucky ‘Europeans’ and unlucky ‘Africans’ expose racial stereotypes: While players say popular descriptors are not intended to cause offence, critics see them as ‘verbal microaggression’ and inappropriate" Complete with photographs of players in blackface and a "popular video [that] shows […]

Tiger Webb writes to point out what he calls "a particularly toxic variant of the 'no word for X' meme" — from Paul Toohey, "The fight to protect indigenous children from abuse and neglect", News Corporation Australia 5/28/2018: NO WORD FOR RAPE Youth workers who spend time with roaming kids say they would never ask them […]

Sign in the window at Green Pepper, a Korean restaurant at 2020 Murray Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA:

An introduction and guide to my series of posts "Corpora and the Second Amendment" is available here. The corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here. That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. Important: Use the "Download" button at the top right of the screen. New URL for COFEA and […]

Is nothing sacred?

At some point early in April, the LLOG Facebook page stopped getting automatically updated with links to new posts. Thanks to Ben Zimmer, this has been fixed, and at some point soon, we'll try to restore FB links to the missing posts.

[This is a guest post by Robert S. Bauer] HK’s Cantonese language continues to attract attention and be a topic of discussion. Two Mondays ago (May 14, 2018) I was a guest discussant on RTHK Radio 3's Backchat programme. The topic was "The Future of Cantonese" (in Hong Kong). In addition to the two main […]

Shahin S. sent this Instagram link, and asked "Is there a term for these affirmative/negative contradictions? I'd be delighted to learn about their history, similar cases elsewhere, or parallels in other languages." No yeah this is soooo true!! #cali #bayarea #california #goldenstate #westcoast #leftcoast A post shared by Danielle Garcia (@iam_dani) on Mar 5, 2018 […]

Alan Levinovitz, "Trump’s bizarre understanding of Capitalization is surprisingly Strategic", Washington Post 5/23/2018: On Monday, President Trump let loose a string of triumphant tweets about China that featured one of his strangest linguistic quirks: “On China, Barriers and Tariffs to come down for first time.” “China must continue to be strong & tight on the […]