Language Log

Sign on a Sino-Tibetan restaurant: (Source)

Just got off the phone with my 2nd-grader granddaughter, Samira.  She was in her dad's truck out on some errand with him.  She had a new cell phone and was excited to talk to me on it. Her dad got out to pick up some things he had left behind at a store.  Thereupon Samira […]

Ding Xueliang, a professor of PRC history and contemporary Chinese politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has called attention to the difference between Máo Zédōng sīxiǎng 毛泽东思想 ("Mao Zedong thought") and Máo Zédōng de sīxiǎng 毛泽东的思想 ("Mao Zedong's thought") Similarly, there is a significant difference between Xí Jìnpíng sīxiǎng 习近平思想 ("Xi […]

More than 2,400 researchers have now signed an "Open Letter to NIH Director Francis Collins" that starts like this: We are writing to request that NIH delay implementation of its policy that sweeps basic science into a clinical trials framework until adequate feedback about its impact is obtained from the affected scientific community. We wholeheartedly […]

In various areas of Edinburgh there are signs that say "Peripheral Controlled Zone." What exactly would you do if you encountered one of these signs? What would it mean to you? Not much? That's the hallmark of nerdview. What is peripheral to what? Who is controlling what? What is peripheral control? Why are you being […]

David Bandurski has done the world a great service by providing a point by point translation and valuable exegesis of the essentials of President Xi Jinping's "important speech" delivered in Beijing on July 26, 2017.  See his: "The Arithmetic of Party-Speak:  The 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is just around the corner — and […]

[This is a guest post by Jichang Lulu.] Imagine that a certain phrase could be potentially offensive to the authoritarian rulers of a country you would like to do business in. To promote that business, you intend to display images of certain professionals who work for you. One of these professionals has indelibly inscribed the […]

This is a guest post by Martin Haspelmath, building on our continuing coverage of Open Access in linguistics. By now, everyone knows that scholarly publication is serious trouble. The actual costs of disseminating content have plummeted drastically, and yet academic institutions are paying more and more to the commercial publishers. This feels deeply wrong — […]

Listen to this brief four-syllable phrase, and answer a simple question: once the eggs hatch Your browser does not support the audio element. Is the end of the last sylllable ("hatch") higher or lower in pitch than the start of the first sylllable ("once")?

China fired the first shot with this infamous Doklam video called "7 Sins of India".  It's all about a remote spot on the border between Bhutan and Tibet, where India is now confronting China in an attempt to preserve the territorial integrity of tiny Bhutan.  This is the same area through which China invaded India […]

Laurent Binet, La septième fonction du langage — The seventh function of language. This looks like an interesting book — pulp meta-fiction featuring Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Louis Althusser, Paul de Man, Jean-François Lyotard,  Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Morris Zapp, Gayatri Spivak, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Lacan, […]

From Elijah Z. Granet: I am an avid reader of Language Log, and am writing with a question that has puzzled me for sometime, and which, as far as I can tell, has never been addressed. I would be quite grateful if you could spare a moment of your valuable time to help me figure […]

The theme of today's post:  MSM chǎomiàn / Cant. caau2min6  trad. 炒麵 / simpl. 炒面 ("fried noodles"). When I was a wee lad growing up in East Canton (formerly Osnaburg; population about a thousand), Ohio, all that I knew of Chinese food came out of cans, and it was branded either as La Choy or […]