Language Log

First it was "The Netherlands Second". Now it's Switzerland making a bid: [fbvideo link="https://www.facebook.com/srf1/videos/vb.104971002870361/1464882490212532/" width="500" height="400" onlyvideo="1"]

Josh Solomon, "Largest heroin bust in Hernando history comes with image of Donald Trump", Tampa Bay Times, 2/3/2017: One pile of wax paper envelops that contained individually wrapped doses of heroin bore the name of El Chapo, the infamous Mexican drug lord. Another pile had envelopes with the name of Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. […]

Jack Maloney sent in a link to a talk at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute about "Plant Soil Microbiomes in Perineal Agriculture": Switching from an annual agriculture system to a perineal agriculture system that most closely resembles natural prairies will include changes to the way we manage soil, the lifespan of the plants, and […]

Donald Trump, conducting foreign policy by tweet, announced that "Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile." National Security Advisor Mike Flynn reiterated that point at a news conference, though press secretary Sean Spicer was unable to explain what "on notice" actually means in this context. Could be because in diplomacy, putting a […]

Annalee Newitz has a fascinating article on abstract Paleolithic notations in Ars Technica (2/1/2017): "38,000-year-old carving includes enigmatic 'punctuation' pattern:  New finding suggests that paleolithic Europeans shared a common set of symbols." reporting on this paper: R. Bourrillon, R. White, E. Tartar, L. Chiotti, R. Mensan, A. Clark, J.-C. Castel, C. Cretin, T. Higham, A. […]

This will always be funny to me 😂#newyorkersbelike pic.twitter.com/fd4YFPGWHo — Kelly (@KellyShahbazian) September 9, 2016 For more, see #newyorkersbelike …

The media (for example here, here) have noticed that there is something strange about Donald Trump’s use of the present perfect in a comment about Frederick Douglass at the start of Black History Month: Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice. […]

Over the past decade, I've noticed that Barack Obama's speaking style often involves short, definite-sounding phrases with steeply falling pitch. For an example, take this clip from his 2009 inaugural address: Your browser does not support the audio element. I tried to quantify — or at least visualize — some of the temporal aspects of this […]

I'm afraid the flaunt/flout distinction may be a lost cause. Yesterday in the UK parliament three Labour Party whips voted against the instructions they were supposed to be enforcing on behalf of the leader of their party, and three times already this morning (the radio has been on since 5:30) I have heard a parliamentary […]

In the Wall Street Journal article "Supreme Court Nominee Takes Legal Writing to Next Level," Joe Palazzolo writes that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, has elevated legal opinions to "a form of wry nonfiction." Not only that, "his affinity for language reveals itself in other ways. Poorly drafted laws tend […]

Jessica Taylor & Danielle Kurtzleben, "This week in Trump's 'Alternative Facts'", NPR 1/29/2017 Less than 24 hours after White House press secretary had spouted numerous falsehoods about inauguration crowd size and more, Kellyanne Conway went on NBC's "Meet the Press" to defend him. In the process, the counselor to President Donald Trump coined a phrase […]

Anne Henochowicz, who for years was a mainstay at China Digital Times, and whom I have often cited on Language Log, has decided to branch out from Mandarin and tackle another important Sinitic language, Cantonese. Check out her new blog:  "I'm Learning Cantonese:  Teaching Myself a Second Chinese Language".

Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen. We're going to need an acronym, in case we forget which are the seven countries on the blacklist. And Language Log is here for you: we have prepared one. Somalia-Iran-Sudan-Syria-Iraq-Libya-Yemen: SISSILY. We can refer to them as the SISSILY countries. And to convince you of the threat they […]