Candice Norwood, "In battle for the Senate, Georgia organizers fight to mobilize voters of color", PBS News Hour 12/3/2020: For Susana Durán, Georgia State director for the civic engagement group Poder Latinx, informing voters about the race starts with the basics. “What is a runoff? There’s no Spanish language word for runoff,” Durán said. “I’m […]
[This is a guest post by Scott de Brestian] I am an avid Language Log reader, and so am familiar with two ongoing series that your blog has – first, the posts debunking the “Eskimos (or people X) have unusually many words for snow” myth (which I believe drew me to your blog in the […]
Tiger Webb writes to point out what he calls "a particularly toxic variant of the 'no word for X' meme" — from Paul Toohey, "The fight to protect indigenous children from abuse and neglect", News Corporation Australia 5/28/2018: NO WORD FOR RAPE Youth workers who spend time with roaming kids say they would never ask them […]
Yesterday in Philadelphia we had very strong winds and what the weather people call a "wintry mix", so (along with some big downed trees) there were lots of people holding on to umbrellas turned inside out and partly stripped of their fabric, and lots of wrecked umbrellas discarded along the sidewalks and stuffed into trash […]
At the Valencia Police Station in San Francisco, CA, there is a sign reading "Community Room" in English and Spanish. There is also Chinese on the sign; however, apparently a word or two is not considered adequate to communicate this concept in Chinese.
Michael Rank sent in this photograph taken at the Shanghai restaurant in Dalston, London E8:
By Drew Dernavich, originally published August 20, 2007, a cartoon addition to our No Word for X archive: Or, to put it another way: "They have no words for anything, but they have no concept for 'fetch'." [h/t Joan M.]
Last week I read this article about the Mosuo people of southwest China: "The Ethnic Group in China That Doesn’t Have a Word for Father" (10/13/14). The Mosuo are indeed famous for having a matrilineal society, and I had long been aware of their unusual marriage customs, but I was innately suspicious of this sensationalist […]
A.S. sent in this quotation from Jeremy Fogel, “A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”, Litigation Journal, Spring 2014: Different cultures understand privacy in different ways. In societies in which large numbers of people typically live in close proximity to each other, often in very small spaces, very little truly is understood or expected to be private. There […]
Following up on yesterday's "No word for rape" post, several readers have pointed me to another recent addition for the "No word for X" archive, namely Isagani R. Cruz, "Lingual misunderstanding to blame for refusal to apologize?", China Daily 11/12/2013: The refusal so far of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to issue a formal apology […]
Several people have sent me this entry for the "No word for X" files — "When is it rape?", The Economist 11/15/2013: In Urdu there is no word for rape. The closest direct translation is "looting my honour".
Ian Preston wrote to draw my attention to this new item for our No Word for X archive — Thomas Brewer, "Giving Childhood Diarrhea a Name", Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 7/20/2013: Over the course of my career I’ve spent over thirty years working in various developing countries trying to better understand and fight infectious diseases. […]
Philip Maughan, "Colum McCann: 'What could be worse that [sic] being called a historical novelist?'", The New Stateman 7/4/2013: Q: And, of course, there is a narrative element to any work of non-fiction. A: I’m interested in the idea that these categories don’t really exist. Aleksandar Hemon says that, in Bosnian, there is no word […]