In Iceland your last name is determined by your gender; -son for male, -dóttir for female. It is now for the first time legal to have the appellation -bur, "child", for nonbinary. If I were NB for instance my last name would be Erlingsbur. There you have it! — Freyja 'Catra' Erlingsdóttir (@FreyjaErlings) June 29, […]
One of my favorite ingredients in Chinese cooking is the crunchy water chestnut, but it always puzzled me that the name for this item is mǎtí 马蹄 / 馬蹄. Although technically it's not a nut (it's the corm of an aquatic vegetable) and doesn't really look like a horse hoof, I tried to convince myself […]
Boris Johnson started a recent interview segment this way: Your browser does not support the audio element. Interviewer: Did you really call the French turds? Boris Johnson: Well I doubt- I have no- I have no recollection of this- uh of- of- of this- uh of this- this comment um but you know I- I notice- […]
Fifteen years ago or more, I used to hear the expression "panic attack" quite often. When someone told me they were having a panic attack, I knew it was something serious, and I had to pay close attention to what they were doing and be extra nice to them. I don't think that I've heard […]
In Iancu v. Brunetti, the U.S. Supreme Court recently decided, on free speech grounds, that Erik Brunetti should have the right to trademark his clothing line FUCT. Robert Barnes' Washington Post story ("Supreme Court sides with ‘subversive’ clothing designer in First Amendment case", 6/24/2019) notes that "justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide […]
From Jeffrey Kallberg: Has anybody tracked down the origins of the sports (mostly American football, afaik) usage of the word “matriculate” to mean something like “to move from one place to another” (either physically or in a descriptive sense)? I ran into a recent example of this in a recent NBC Sports column — "FMIA […]
During the last few decades, I have served as the "opponent" in several Scandinavian doctoral defenses. I wore a tuxedo, top hat, and silk socks, plus gleaming black shoes. Much of the ritual was conducted in Latin, so I was quite aware of the high place accorded that ancient language in Scandinavian academia, especially in […]
Many countries in Central Asia are named with words that end in -stan, which is a Persian term (ـستان [-stān]) meaning "land" or "place of", thence "country"; it is synonymous and cognate with the Sanskrit word sthāna स्थान (from Indo-Iranian *stanam "place," literally "where one stands," from PIE *sta-no-, suffixed form of root *sta- "to […]
Once upon a time such a statement would seem like over the top state rhetoric. Clearly, it is offensive language. That said, nowadays, there is not a government in the world, friend or foe that does not think that the American leader is not mentally and emotionally dysfunctional. https://t.co/T38f2muLLe — David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) June 25, […]
Four days ago, rumors and reports were flying fast and furious that Alice Mak Mei-kuen, a member of Legislative Council of Hong Kong for the New Territories West constituency, representing the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, swore at the Chief Executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People's Republic […]
One never ceases to be amazed at the articles one comes upon in Wikipedia. First, in this comment to a discussion on anti-Westernism in China ("War on foreign names in China" [6/22/19]), I encountered the notion of "Westoxification" in contemporary Iranian discourse. Reading the Wikipedia article on this subject is so interesting that I copy […]
….On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) […]
AP News report (6/21/19) by Fu Ting: "Chinese crackdown on foreign names draws protest". The article begins thus: The Manhattan neighborhood, Venice Garden, the Vienna hotel chain — to the ears of the Chinese government, the names are too foreign-sounding and must go. Provinces and cities across China have been issuing notices pressuring both private […]