Language Log

Here's a photo of a warehouse on Chongming Island, at the northern edge of Shanghai, which deals in various agricultural products, as listed on the two signs: (Source)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrung my hands on Facebook over the proliferation of commercial publishers' Handbooks of Linguistics. These are usually priced out of individuals' budgets, being sold mostly to university libraries, and the thousands of hours of work poured into them by dedicated linguists are often lost behind a paywall, inaccessible to many of […]

This is Yau Wai-ching 游蕙禎 (b. 1991), a member of the localist political group Youngspiration and a newly elected member of Hong Kong's Legco (Legislative Council):

Q:  How do you say "iPhone 7" and "iPhone 7 Plus" in Chinese? A:  "iPhone 7" and "iPhone 7 Plus".

Jess Row, "What Are White Writers For?", The New Republic 9/30/2016: It was around this time that I first realized something nonwhite writers learn almost by default: for a fiction writer to deny that fiction is in some way political—in the sense of existing in an inherently politicized world—is not only an act of bad […]

Nick Rossoll, "Giuliani Says Trump Better For US ‘Than a Woman'", ABC News 10/2/2016: Speaking of reports that Donald Trump claimed a $916 million loss on his 1995 income taxes, Giuliani said: “Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, […]

Today's PHD Comics::

The opening phrase of Donald Trump's speech in Mannheim PA, 10/1/2016, was sung on a single well-controlled pitch: Your browser does not support the audio element. The fundamental frequency of this monotone chant is about 238 Hz, to which the closest tempered pitch class, at concert A=440, would be the B flat below middle C […]

How do you write Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's names in Chinese? As it turns out, the answer may vary depending on whether the person you ask is from mainland China (ZH-CN), Hong Kong (ZH-HK), Macau (ZH-MO), Malaysia/Singapore (ZH-SG), or Taiwan (ZH-TW).

Alex Kantrowitz, "Racist Social Media users Have A New Code To Avoid Censorship", BuzzFeed 10/1/2016: Racist online communities have developed a new code for racial, homophobic and bigoted slurs in an attempt avoid censorship. The code, using terms like Google, Skittle, and Yahoo as substitutes for offensive words describing blacks, Muslims and Mexicans, appears to […]

Good morning. Your Republican nominee has been up all night rage-tweeting. pic.twitter.com/mL1ovBY1bm — pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) September 30, 2016 I'll leave the psychology and politics of rage-tweeting to others — my concern is its morphology.

Anne Henochowicz found this on the menu at Panda Gourmet, an incredible dìdào 地道 ("typical; authentic") Shaanxi restaurant in a Days Inn on the outskirts of DC:

Yesterday, Roger Lustig sent in a snapshot of the front page of the Princeton Packet, with the observation that Maybe free speech, even the political kind, is in greater danger than we thought! The online version of the headline is much longer, and not ambiguous in the same way: Philip Sean Curran, "PRINCETON: Police chief […]