Peter Beinart, "Trump’s Break With China Has Deadly Consequences", The Atlantic 3/28/2020: Now that COVID-19 is sweeping across the United States, cooperation between Washington and Beijing remains essential. “It’s hard to understate the importance of the U.S.-China relationship in getting through this,” Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns […]
It's not just California English:
According to the BBC, a police boat in London was playing Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life" for listeners near the Thames last week: The Police in London are trying to brighten the mood. The are going up and down the Thames in a police boat playing "Always look on the […]
From Jacob Reed: Inspired by Miss Gao's 小高姐’s latest video, I've been trying to track down how 酥 sū acquired its present, seemingly contradictory connotations of "crispy" and "soft / relaxed". Paul Kroll's Classical / Medieval dictionary lists that it originally comes from the Persian for kaymak / clotted cream. 汉语大词典* indicates that this meaning […]
In my Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS) seminar yesterday evening, Diana Shuheng Zhang submitted this translation: Even more there is the young Turk with flowing charm, who could take advantage of you with his coiled-up turban. His horse white, his robe blue, his wide-open eyes bright – Probably he is truly a debauchee at heart! gèng […]
With approximately six million native speakers centered on the capital of Hunan, the province just to the south of Hubei, where the novel coronavirus has been raging for the past three months and more, Changsha topolect (Chángshā huà 長沙話) is a significant form of Sinitic: Changsha dialect (simplified Chinese: 长沙话; traditional Chinese: 長沙話; pinyin: Chángshā-huà; […]
Anyone who learns Standard Japanese and then travels around outside of the Tokyo area will quickly come to realize how distinctive and numerous are the local forms of language once one leaves the metropolitan region of the capital. Some interesting aspects of this phenomenon are presented in a new article in nippon.com, "Linguistic Treasures: The […]
A few months ago, I posted about a talk I gave at an Alzheimer's Association workshop on "Digital Biomarkers". Overall I told a hopeful story, about the prospects for a future in which a few minutes of interaction each month, with an app on a smartphone or tablet, will give effective longitudinal tracking of neurocognitive […]
Here at Language Log, we are quite familiar with Singapore English, which comes in two registers: Singapore Standard English (SSE) and Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish). The term we are discussing today can be used in either register. This multipurpose expression is featured in connection with the COVID-19 crisis in two recent articles in The Independent: […]
On this morning's State of the Nation program, Jake Tapper asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this question: Negotiations are- are ongoing on an economic stimulus package chief White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow could be as high as two trillion dollars. Y- you suggested that's still not enough. If you were writing this bill how much would […]
By chance, I came across this interesting Uyghur word for "onion" that derives from Persian: Uyghur پىياز (piyaz), from Persian پیاز (source) It's piyoz (пиёз) in Uzbek also, which is closely related to Uyghur.
In the category of positive coronavirus effects, there's a new word I recently learned: munted. The OED gives two glosses: 1. New Zealand and (less commonly) Australian. Ruined, spoiled; damaged; (of a person) extremely tired, exhausted. 2. British, Australian, and New Zealand. Intoxicated by alcohol or drugs. The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English has adjective […]