According to "10 scioglilingua bergamaschi (con tanto di guida all’ascolto)", Prima Bergamo 8/162018, the standard-Italian phrase sequence Andate a vedere le api? Sono vive le api? Go see the bees? Are the bees alive? come out in Bergamasco as "Ì a èt i àe?" "I è ìe i àe?" Your browser does not support the […]
A note from Neville Ryant: I was just reading Bradley Efron's original paper for the first time in years and couldn't help but chuckle at this gem in the acknowledgments: I also with to thank the many friends who suggested names more colorful than Bootstrap, including Swiss Army Knife, Meat Axe, Swan-Dive, Jack-Rabbit, and my personal favorite, […]
In our 1992 chapter "The stress and structure of modified noun phrases in English" (in Sag & Szabolcsi, Lexical Matters), Richard Sproat and I noted that in some informal styles, various phrasal categories can be freely used as prenominal modifiers, with an appropriately generic meaning. […] This usage permits free inclusion of pronouns, articles and […]
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? People actually did it in ancient India, and they still do it today. Here are some passages from the Wikipedia article about the Amarakosha, the most celebrated and most often memorized Indian thesaurus. Introduction The Amarakosha (Devanagari: अमरकोशः, IAST: Amarakośa) is the popular name for Namalinganushasanam (Devanagari: नामलिङ्गानुशासनम्, IAST: Nāmaliṅgānuśāsanam) […]
No, that's not a mistake. My son just called me about some Hindi books I wanted him to order for me. He asked, "Do they have to be in Romanization, or is it all right if they are in Devangari?" The way he said the word "Devangari" made me chuckle. Of course, with a name […]
That's the title of a new book (Oct. 7, 2020) from Routledge edited by Henning Klöter and Mårten Söderblom Saarela, with the following subtitle: Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices. I was present at the conference in Göttingen where the papers in the volume were first delivered and can attest to the high level […]
From the person who bought the hair clipper described in this post: "Card hair, and be careful to get an electric shock" (10/22/20) They now tell us: The hair clipper had to be returned. The report we are submitting (which was slightly more fun to write than it will be for them to read) says […]
With notes on 兑, 說 / 説, 悦, 銳, 脱. From Stephen Tschudi: A colleague was watching a tuōkǒu xiù 脱口秀 ("talk show") online today, and was shocked when a well-known actress did not pronounce "duìxiàn 兑现" (vb. "cash [a check]; fulfill / honor [a promise / commitment]") correctly. She was even more shocked when, in the […]
Two days ago, I was going through past issues of Sino-Platonic Papers, all the way back to the first one in 1986. I was pleasantly surprised to come across this one by my late, lamented colleague, Ludo Rocher: "Orality and Textuality in the Indian Context," Sino-Platonic Papers, 49 (October, 1994), 1-3 of 1-28. (free pdf) […]
From a correspondent in the Washington DC area who doesn't go out much and wanted to enjoy a haircut at home without wearing a mask: On the factory packaging for a new electric hair clipper that was just delivered by Amazon to an address in Virginia: SECURITY INTELLIGENT LIFE TREND OF THE CHOICE […]
Jonathan Silk wonders how this mistranslation from Latin to Dutch in Google Translate occurred the same way in English:
Like so many other good things in this annus horribilis, COVID killed it. For quite a few years now, I have reported on the national spelling bee (usually in May). This has been such a dismal year that I didn't make an effort to inquire about what happened with it this spring. Now, however, as […]
Alison Frankel, "Lexicographer (and Scalia co-author) joins plaintiffs’ team in Facebook TCPA case at SCOTUS", Reuters 10/20/2020: Can a lexicographer fend off the combined forces of Facebook, the Justice Department and the entire U.S. business lobby at the U.S. Supreme Court? What if said lexicographer is also the co-author, with Justice Antonin Scalia, of a […]