Language Log

Here are two Chinese sentences that seriously mess with your mind, since they can also mean the opposite of what they seem to say:

Xinhua News Agency has published another list of banned words: Xīnhuá shè xīnwén bàodào zhōng de jìnyòng cí 新华社新闻报道中的禁用词 ("Forbidden words in news reports of Xinhua News Agency"). Since it is designated as 第一批 ("first batch"), we can expect that more batches will be issued in the future. You can find versions of the current […]

From dako-xiaweiyi: Some years ago I was hiking in a remote part of Inner Mongolia with some Chinese friends when we came into a larger than normal village with a larger than normal building with the sign in the attached picture:

Paul Manafort's lawyers misspelled Cyprus throughout his bail memo. pic.twitter.com/Ls9JI1WDbN — Sigh Hersh (@Ugarles) November 2, 2017

Tara Golshan, "Republicans are following the same strategy on taxes that doomed Obamacare repeal", Vox 11/1/2017: “I think it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest that if we had had a bunch of wins on a whole bunch of items at this point, we perhaps would have been a little bit more deliberate in our […]

Here's the opening to Dahlia Lithwick and Scott Pilutik's piece for Slate, "Lies My Client Told Me" (10/31/17), about a judge ruling that Paul Manafort is not entitled to attorney-client privilege: It’s not an overstatement to characterize the attorney-client privilege as the cornerstone of criminal law, an inviolable right that can and must withstand all manner […]

Currently circulating political poster in the PRC:

Is this Chinglish? Source:  "Lost in translation: Chinese government aims to reduce awkward English signs" (CBS News [10/28/17]), with several other prime examples.

In a number of posts about Donald Trump's rhetorical style, I've noted how seldom he uses filled pauses such as UM and UH in spontaneous speech, compared to other public figures. For example, in "The narrow end of the funnel" (8/18/2016), I noted that filled pauses were 8.2% of Steve Bannon's words (in a sample […]

At least, we're five months away from April Fool's Day… Lydia Wheeler, "Court rules request for 'lawyer dog' too 'ambiguous'", The Hill 10/30/2017: The Louisiana Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a man who claimed he told police during an interview to "just give me a lawyer dog,” with a justice saying the request was […]

“What is the difference between ‘reasonably necessary’ and ‘substantial need’?” asked Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (see this story in the New York Times). “I have been racking my brain trying to think of something that it is reasonably necessary for me to obtain but as to which I do not have the substantial need. […]

[This is a guest post by Jichang Lulu] After coverage of dotage and DOLtage, as diagnosed by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Victor Mair's latest Korean-themed post deals with a more serious condition: headlessness. Varieties of the ailment have been reported in, e.g., chickens and compound nouns, but the latter sense would be out of place in KCNA vocabulary; (at least South) […]

Jeff DeMarco writes: From a Facebook post (timeline) by a young woman in HK: 卡拉ok ing ……😂🤣 GT deftly translates it as karaoke ing.