Martin Delson asked about a couple of Chinese expressions that appeared in this article from the San Jose Mercury News (6/17/21): "China launches crew to its new space station", by Carlos Garcia and Shubing Wang Complete, and more easily accessible version from Reuters (6/17/21): "Chinese astronauts board space station module in historic mission", by Carlos […]
Jeff DeMarco saw this sign in the window of a building in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district in 2009:
As part of my run through the Western Regions (Xīyù 西域) of Pennsylvania, I wrote to Ed Shaughnessy asking him which town he was from, since I knew he came from somewhere around Pittsburgh, and it might be nice to be aware of where he grew up if I happened to run through that town. […]
Thomas Clayburn, "Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language", The Register 6/15/2021: After three decades, Coq, a theorem-proving programming language developed by researchers in France, is being fitted for a new name because it has become impossible to ignore that it sounds like bawdy English slang. Once referred […]
Dave Holmes, "The Rise of Elevated Stupidity", Esquire 6/11/2021: Stupidity is saying two plus two equals five. Elevated Stupidity is doing the same thing, except you invoke Pythagoras, decry cancel culture when someone corrects you, then get a seven-figure book deal and a speaking tour out of it. Elevated Stupidity has permeated all facets of […]
The linguistic importance of Dungan is greatly disproportionate to the number of its speakers, approximately 150,000, who live in seven different countries that are widely spread across Eurasia: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. The main reason why Dungan has been the focus of so much interest during the half-century since I began […]
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The discussion of Boxer(')(s)(') Trail ("Signs and wonders", 6/12/2021 ) brought up the question of plural forms in English nouns in structures like mouse trap, activities center, and iron bar, which has been much discussed in the linguistic and psycholinguistic literature — and also here on Language Log.
I recently got hold of an electronic copy of this book: Zhōngguó chuántǒng wénhuà guānjiàn cí (Hàn Yīng duìzhào) 中国传统文化关键词(汉英对照) (Key Terms of Traditional Chinese Culture / Key Concepts in Chinese Culture [original English title] [Chinese-English]) Beijing: Wàiyǔ jiàoxué yǔ yánjiū chūbǎn shè 2019 外语教学与研究出版社 2019 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2019) Here is […]
From a Reliable Source: I thought you might enjoy this as yet officially unreported dispute about a sign being posted in Phil. The sign originally said, "Boxer's Trail," because Joe Frazier famously ran along it to train, and later Ali ran on it once to psyche out Joe (Ali worked out in Overbrook, apparently). Someone […]
Jennifer Henderson, "UnitedHealthcare to Crack Down on 'Non-Emergent' ED Claims", MedPage Today 6/8/2021: UnitedHealthcare plans to take a closer look at emergency department (ED) claims beginning July 1. In a June network bulletin posted to its website, the insurer said that it will assess ED facility commercial claims to determine if an event was emergent […]
Long, but worth reading — Tom Simonite, "What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru", Wired 6/8/2021. The crux of the story is this paper, which is now available on the ACM's website: Emily Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?🦜" In […]
I was going to title this post "Insect vocalisms", but thought better of it, because I didn't want anyone to think I was claiming any kind of linguistic quality for the mind-boggling acoustic phenomenon that I witnessed on Saturday. Though what I heard was not language in any way, shape, or form, it did impart […]