Drew Harwell, "A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job", WaPo 10/22/2019: An artificial intelligence hiring system has become a powerful gatekeeper for some of America’s most prominent employers, reshaping how companies assess their workforce — and how prospective employees prove their worth. Designed by the recruiting-technology firm HireVue, the system uses candidates’ […]
Sometimes it's hard for us humans to see the intended meaning of an ambiguous phrase, like "Hospitals named after sandwiches kill five". But in other cases, the intended structure comes easily to us, and we have a hard time seeing the alternative, as in the case of "Extinction rebellion protester dressed as Boris Johnson scales […]
From Julia Preseau: I am feeling old today, having just realized that "talking to" is a widely used way to describe beginning stage of "dating relationships." I noted it in two of these interactions on a little video experiment regarding "girls trying to pick up girls".
In the comments to "A Sino-Mongolian tale in three languages and five scripts" (10/10/19), Michael Watts remarked: I was just reading about the conflict between the Han and Da Yuan. Yuan 宛 is supposed to reflect the Greek self-appellation (presumably Ἰάονες or similar), or a Sanskrit rendition thereof. This made me curious what the reconstructed […]
We've been through a lot of atrocious Chinglish (check the archives under "Lost in translation"), so we should acknowledge, and even revel in, translational equivalents that are outstandingly good. It suddenly occurs to me that the Chinese translation of the American cosmetic brand Revlon is so beautiful that it deserves to be highlighted here: lù huá […]
Last month we had "Explosion Cheese Durian Pie" (9/23/19). Now we have durian pizza, courtesy of Jeffrey L. Schwartz, who posted this photo of an advertisement for Mi Tea on Bell Blvd. in Bayside, Queens… Wash your durian pizza down with some salted cheese tea!
Did Donald Trump call Nancy Pelosi a "third rate politician" or a "third grade politician"? This question has come up in the mass media recently, and we discussed some phonetic aspects of the question earlier today. Based on a quick corpus study, I conclude that the probabilities strongly favor "third rate".
Recent political events have offered a lesson in the phonetic interpretation of American English, among other subjects. See "Trump disparages Pelosi at their first meeting since impeachment inquiry began, Democrats say", Washington Post 10/16/2019: “He couldn’t handle it,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol, referring to a House vote earlier Wednesday condemning Trump’s decision to […]
American sports fans are now familiar with the "Stand with Hong Kong" logo because it appeared in the controversial tweet from Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey:
Lucas Klein and Nick Williams asked me about this interesting word: 落魄. It can mean either “free-spirited” or “downtrodden”, which appear to directly contradict each other, and it has at least three variant pronunciations (luòpò, luòbó, luòtuò). Source Negative meanings: "down and out; in dire straits; abject". Positive meanings: "unrestrained; unconventional; untrammeled by convention; casual". […]
Sherlocution Holmes is an entertaining UK-based Twitter presence with a bio that reads, "Consultant detective tracking down the best (and worst!) linguistics and language examples." Many of the tweets are humorous illustrations of structural or semantic ambiguity, including many examples of "crash blossoms" — those double-take headlines that are ambiguous enough to be laughably misinterpreted. […]
During his recent trip to Nepal, Xi Jinping blasted those who aimed to split up China by saying they would have their "bodies pulverized and bones crushed" (fěnshēnsuìgǔ 粉身碎骨). A lot of people were shocked by the harshness of the language and also wondered why he would take advantage of the first trip to Nepal […]