Xinhuanet has a feature article on a "Mongolian sinologist devoted to translating Chinese classic works" (8/31/19). His name is Menerel Chimedtseye, and he is a professor at the National University of Mongolia in Ulan Bator. The scholar's Mongolian Cyrillic edition of The Book of Mencius was just published this past Saturday. With the appearance of […]
So we learn from this article: "Leprechaun 'is not a native Irish word' new dictionary reveals", by Nuala McCann BBC News (9/5/19) Leprechauns may be considered quintessentially Irish, but research suggests this perception is blarney. The word "leprechaun" is not a native Irish one, scholars have said. They have uncovered hundreds of lost words from […]
Americans following recent U.K. political antics have been able to learn a piece of British slang that's probably new to them — Martin Belam, "'You great big girl’s blouse' – Johnson appears to insult Corbyn during PMQs", The Guardian 9/4/2019: Boris Johnson’s first Prime Minister’s Questions was immediately embroiled in controversy after footage appeared to […]
It's been a while since the last Goropius Becanus Award — see "The envelope, please" and "The Language of Eve" (1/3/2007). But a worthy nominee has recently appeared, as reported by Zin Kao, "English is actually Chinese, scholars claim", The Taiwan News 8/31/2019 ("World Civilization Research Association academics also believe all European history before 15th […]
I just got an email from WordPress notifying me of a comment awaiting approval at LAWnLinguistics. Here is the comment, in full: This is Pam, and English is my 1st language. I'm for real, and would like you to get back in touch with me. The comment makes four assertions: This is Pam English is […]
In case you were wondering, it's "zyu1 zeoi2 豬嘴" (lit. "pig snout"). You can see pictures of them here and here. Since the police have fired thousands of canisters of tear gas at the protesters, "zyu1 zeoi2 豬嘴" ("pig snout [gas masks]") — not to mention yellow helmets to protect your skull from being cracked […]
Among the new polysyllabic characters (called hétǐ zì 合體字 ["compound / synthesized characters"] in Chinese) created by the Hong Kong protesters is this one (see below in the "Readings" [especially the first item] for other examples). It is preceded by this note: "Hongkongers will remember 721 & 831", which are references to the extreme brutality […]
Speakers of Kongish have three ways to write their equivalent of English "Go!": 1. "ga yao" (Cantonese Romanization of the wildly popular term), 2. 加油 (the Sinographic form of the Cantonese expression), 3. "add oil" (Chinglishy equivalent of the former two forms). See this excellent article by Lisa Lim for a brief introduction to Kongish: […]
The Hong Kong extradition bill protesters have developed a vocabulary of slogans and newly invented polysyllabic characters which they wield deftly. Here are two instances from the Twitter feed of Ryan Ho Kilpatrick documenting this weekend's protest activities on the way to and in the Hong Kong International Airport. If you scan through the photographs […]
More clearly, the prosody of French president Emmanuel Macron and American president Donald Trump, as exhibited on one occasion, and presented in some eccentric (but I think interesting) graphics. The occasion is the post-G7 press conference on August 26, 2019. The eccentric presentations are two-dimensional distributions of pitch differences as a function of time differences […]
Photograph taken by Yuanfei Wang in Baihou Town 百侯镇, Tai Po 大埔, Guangdong Province:
Poster advertising a citywide strike in Hong Kong: (Source — with many other examples of powerful protest art from Hong Kong)