Language Log

From Jeff DeMarco: I hit the translation button for this Facebook post and this is what I got!

From a Taiwanese colleague: In the struggle against Wǔhàn fèiyán 武漢肺炎 ("Wuhan pneumonia"), Taiwan has to fight the war on three fronts: (1) trying to stop the virus at its borders; (2) trying to join the WHO for world-wide collaboration and disease information; and (3) fighting against the Communist Chinese dictatorial linguistic policies.  The linguistic […]

February 21st is International Mother Language Day, proclaimed by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1999 and celebrated every year since, aimed at promoting linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. In honor of the day, the following is a guest post by Alissa Stern, the founder of BASAbali, an initiative of “linguists, anthropologists, students, and […]

From IAS: Institute for Advanced Study; Report for the Academic Year 2018-2019, p. 8:

Stuart Luppescu saw this restaurant sign in Saitama, Fukaya:

Today's SMBC:

The OED 1989 edition glossed yid as "A (usu. offensive) name for a Jew." The 2019 edition has 1. A Jewish person. In non-Jewish usage offensive and chiefly derogatory. 2. British. In extended use: a supporter of or player for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (traditionally associated with the Jewish community in north and east London). Originally and frequently […]

The Op Notes for my gallbladder removal, a couple of weeks ago, included this sentence: A 24-French Blake drain was then placed in the gallbladder fossa with a concern for duct of Luschka leak given the raw surface of the liver at the time of closure. This led me to wonder who Blake was, and […]

We here at Language Log know our Ossetians: "Blue-Green Iranian 'Danube'" (10/26/19) "Sword out of the stone" (8/9/08) And we know our Scythians, who are closely linked to the Ossetians, too: "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18) "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19) "Of armaments and Old Sinitic […]

As part of our research on the dictionary of Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS) that Zhu Qingzhi and I have been working on for more than two decades, I was tickled by this quaint poem (below on the second page) by the medieval Buddhist poet, Wáng Fànzhì 王梵志 (Brahmacārin ब्रह्मचारिन् Wang; fl. first half of 7th […]

From Jonathan Falk: When Wuhan is called the "epicenter" of the coronavirus outbreak, do people know that epicenter is a term borrowed from geology and is just a metaphor for what is in fact the "center" of an outbreak, or are they fooled by the "epi-" prefix to think it has something to do with […]

Tweet from the University of Westminster Contemporary China Centre Blog @CCCblogUoW: who did dis pic.twitter.com/2VPoSZOYvf — The Contemporary China Centre Blog (@CCCblogUoW) February 10, 2020

Tweet by Sulaiman Gu: Emperor #XiJinping Winnie the Pooh's Jade Seals 习近平大帝玉玺恭刻完毕 pic.twitter.com/056nEE9W8k — Sulaiman Gu (@slmngy001) February 10, 2020