For a natural demonstration of what diglossia is in the Chinese-speaking context, watch this 0:53 video. The speaker begins in local Xi'anese (also called Guānzhōng huà 关中话 / 關中話), but at 0:20, when he suddenly realizes that he is talking to a television reporter, after hilariously sprucing himself up a bit, he abruptly switches to […]
During the 2015 presidential campaign, Geoff Pullum wrote about "Trump's aphasia", and I responded ("Trump's eloquence") that [I]n my opinion, he's been misled by a notorious problem: the apparent incoherence of much transcribed extemporized speech, even when the same material is completely comprehensible and even eloquent in audio or audio-visual form. This apparent incoherence has […]
From Fuchsia Dunlop’s Facebook page (taken in Xi'an):
"Singular 'they': Though singular 'they' is old, 'they' as a nonbinary proonoun is new — and useful", Merriam-Webster Words We're Watching: Much has been written on they, and we aren’t going to attempt to cover it here. We will note that they has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of […]
A month ago, it was being called "Women's Romanization for Hong Kong" (8/17/19). Now it has been catapulted into an all-purpose, across-the-board status for the Hong Kong anti-extradition protesters: "Insurgent tongues: how loose Cantonese romanisation became Hong Kong’s patois of protest", by Rachel Leung Ka-yin, Hong Kong Free Press (9/21/19). Leung's article begins: “Gwong Fuk […]
A nice example of "um" as a discourse particle — from Jennifer Rubin, "What might finally ensnare Trump", WaPo 9/20/2019 [emphasis added]: This would be the perfect example of conduct that might not technically be a crime but is obviously and blatantly a violation of the president’s oath of office and a threat to our […]
In Berlin for the kick-off meeting of DoReCo, I've noticed a lot of multi-lingual wordplay. The punning radio-station advertisement in the picture is a good example. It combines the 1993 R.E.M. song "Everybody hurts" with an appropriate if non-existent form of the German word hören to imply that "everybody listens" to their station, because, as […]
Fascinating article from BLARB (Blog // Los Angeles Review of Books: "Our Language Battle: Korea’s Surprisingly Addictive Game Show of Vocabulary, Expressions, and Proper Spacing", by Colin Marshall (9/1/19) This is the second paragraph of the article: Having found myself living in the genuinely foreign country of Korea, I’ve lately also found myself watching Our […]
Many's the Language Log post in which we've looked at the pluses and negatives of writing Chinese characters (see "Selected readings" below). These include discipline, character building, aesthetic aspects, myopia, even punishment. Now, in "Bring Back Handwriting: It’s Good for Your Brain: People are losing the brain benefits of writing by hand as the practice […]
The University of New South Wales wants you to know that it's driving waste, and also recycling innovation for the world. It's not clear what either of those activities really are, and it's not easy to construe either of them as something to boast about. UNSW seems to be taking a contrarian stance here — […]
[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson] I wanted to share two photos with examples of Japlish. One appears to be the result of a quirky machine translation. That's the "Training room area guidelines" from the municipal sports center near my home (the only gym I can afford on my salary). The offending passage […]
The following mind-boggling demonstration of machine-like writing of Chinese characters was posted on imgur a few days ago: Flawless writing of Chinese characters
From Donald Clarke: This poster from Hong Kong is supposed to be ‘loving’ and ‘tender’, personally I think it looks menacing, like an image from a Japanese horror movie! Even the lighting and colour palette is depressing! pic.twitter.com/bbURNFLMYM — PatrickSFord (@ps_ford) September 13, 2019