В 2015 году инженеры из СПбПУ Петра Великого напечатали первый в России тазобедренный протез.

Такие технологии широко используются в промышленности и будут использоваться еще шире, потому что их возможности на сегодняшний день безграничны.

Она уже не отвечает современным представлениям человечества об экологически безопасном и энергетически независимом развитии.

Одним из направлений для решения этой проблемы является использование возобновляемых источников энергии.

Интерфейсы связи между компьютером и человеком смогут работать не только путем тач-панелей или клавиатуры, но и с помощью мысли человека.

И в самом деле, по словам Александра Маркова, некоторые лингвисты уже назвали выводы «бредом».

Значительная часть лингвистов вообще считает проблему языка ранних Homo sapiens ненаучной и не считает возможной реконструкцию языков дальше бронзового века.

1) показывает, что для Нового света данные языковых различий по «присваивающим» и по «производящим» хозяйствам отличаются незначительно.

Безусловно, серьезную практическую проблему составляет то, что для подавляющего большинства языков мира прошлые состояния неизвестны (на глубину более 200 лет).

Таким образом, полученные авторами данные являются умеренным аргументом в пользу того, что для предкового состояния человеческих языков (ранее эпохи…

В 1985 году американский лингвист Чарльз Хоккет (Charles F. Hockett) обратил внимание на почти полное отсутствие губно-зубных (лабиодентальных) согласных, таких как ф и в, в языках охотников-собирателей.

В большинстве современных человеческих популяций, питающихся в основном мягкой пищей, такое состояние («ортогнатический прикус») сохраняется и у взрослых людей.

Авторы перепробовали много разных статистических методов, моделей и поправок (включая «филогенетические» поправки на родство языков и «географические» на пространственную близость).

Своих исконных губно-зубных согласных в койсанских языках, по-видимому, не было, хотя в целом для этих языков характерно большое разнообразие согласных …

Вся эта информация была переработана в ходе колоссального статистического анализа, что позволило откартировать отображение значений слов в коре больших полушарий.

Самое важное, что семантические группы (группы слов с похожими значениями) оказались единообразно представлены у всех участников эксперимента.

В ней излагались результаты томографического исследования мозга испытуемых, которым читали слова с сильно различающимися или похожими значениями.

В журнале Nature обнародованы результаты команды специалистов из Калифорнийского университета в Беркли, которым удалось создать уже целый семантический атлас коры человеческого мозга.

Точнее, конечно, не участок, а участки, так как каждой семантич…

Самый важный вывод, к которому независимо пришли оба исследовательских коллектива, состоит в том, что в бронзовом веке происходили крупные миграции, которые во многом определили состав генофондов современных западноевразийских народов.

Это значит, что в бронзовом веке действительно произошла крупномасштабная миграция причерноморских степняков в Центральную Европу.

Новые данные пролили свет и на происхождение важнейших восточных культур бронзового века — синташтинской, андроновской и афанасьевской (рис.

Ранее было показано, что в генофонде современных европейцев присутствует «древний североазиатский компонент» (см.

В норме млекопитающие пьют молоко только в детстве, а у взрослых особей ферме…

Два первых метода связаны с анализом использования слов с различной эмоциональной нагрузкой — позитивной или негативной, а третий — с изучением искренности улыбок консерваторов или либералов.

Ученые отметили, что в большинстве прежних исследований был установлен более высокий уровень удовлетворенности жизнью для консерваторов по сравнению с либералами.

Чтобы выяснить, насколько склонны к самообману или переоценке собственного состояния консерваторы и либералы, ученые воспользовались специальным сайтом, предназначенным для различных психологических изысканий.

Например, если человек чувствует себя счастливым, то это должно проявляться в его мимике и в его речи.

Выборки и в том и в другом случ…

Слоги в этом ряду отличаются не только по частоте, с которой они встречаются, но и по легкости распознавания.

Почему существуют такие универсальные иерархии сочетаний звуков по их предпочтительности?

Но слоги могут реже встречаться в языке не только потому, что их сложнее произносить, но и потому, что их сложнее распознавать.

То же было верно для других рядов слогов (не встречающихся в английском), составленных так, что за губным согласным всегда следовал переднеязычный.

Получается, что существование универсальных рядов слогов с разной предпочтительностью объясняется не только различиями в сложности их произношения и в активности соответствующих областей мозга.

Эти вопросы решали, объединившись, специалисты из Института психологии РАН К. Р. Арутюнова, Ю. И. Александров и В. В. Знаков и Гарвардского университета (США) Марк Хаузер (Marc D. Hauser).

Авторы исследования решили сравнить, отличаются ли нравственные оценки русскоязычных опрошенных от их англоговорящих предшественников, и если да, то по каким параметрам.

Он еще жив, и, если останется неподвижным, то его могут безопасно эвакуировать медики.

Если Ваня не потянет за рычаг, вагон поедет дальше, собьет пять человек, а один человек на мосту останется в живых.

Во-вторых, они, если и были категоричны, то скорее запрещали (оценка “Forbidden”), чем требовали (оценка “Obligatory”); рис.

Эксперименты показали, что обезьяны способны отличать новые слова от неслов на основании приобретенного опыта.

Каждая 100‑разовая сессия состояла из 25 предъявлений нового слова для обучения, 25 предъявлений ранее выученных слов и 50 неслов.

Обезьяны отвечали, касаясь разных фигур на сенсорном экране — креста в случае слова и овала в случае неслова (рис.

Это само по себе можно считать примечательным результатом, учитывая степень сходства слов и неслов.

Результаты оказались еще более удивительными, когда авторы посчитали связь между точностью определения неслов и их орфографическим сходством со словами, которые обезьяны уже выучили (рис.

На основе этих данных ученые заключили, что именно мужчины играют ведущую роль в распространении и смене языков на новой территории.

Вариабельность Y-хромосомы увязывается с языком, а не с географическим расположением носителей языка (коэффициент корреляции 0,33 против –0,08).

Коэффициент корреляции мтДНК одинаков и в том и в другом случае — и в обоих случаях он низкий.

В патрилокальных обществах женщины приходят в семью мужчины, перенимают обычаи семьи и вместе с ними и язык.

Это означает, что и в этом случае в распространении и видоизменении языков основную роль играет мужская часть населения.

: Найдено новое подтверждение раннего выхода сапиенсов из Африки «южным путем», «Элементы», 02.02.2011), сопровождалось множеством «бутылочных горлышек численности».

: Расселяясь из Африки, наши предки теряли гены и становились более похожими, «Элементы», 09.08.2007).

Генофонд внеафриканского человечества, помимо генов вышедших из Африки сапиенсов, содержит небольшую примесь генов неандертальцев и других древних обитателей Евразии (см.

Среднее фонетическое разнообразие языков (и языковых семей) достоверно снижается по мере удаления от Африки — и только от нее.

также:1) Расселяясь из Африки, наши предки теряли гены и становились более похожими, «Элементы», 09.08.2007.

В сильной форме эта гипотеза гласит, что язык мог возникнуть и приобрести свои основные свойства уже в отсутствие биологической эволюции.

Они моделируют процесс превращения гипотетического протоязыка в язык современного типа, обладающий привычными нам свойствами.

Особенно хорошо это видно в случае итеративного обучения: чем больше номер поколения, тем меньше разница между языком на входе и на выходе.

Важнейшее свойство, которое приобретает язык в ходе эволюции и которое и делает его изучение более простым, — это регулярность.

Тем не менее обнаруженные эффекты указывают на то, что это вполне может быть так и что, увеличив количество испытуемых, можно надеяться получить более ясный ответ.

Стандартные мелодические контуры в этих языках устроены именно так: во французском высота тона к концу интонационной единицы поднимается, в немецком — падает.

Сегментными фонетическими свойствами называются свойства отдельных звуков речи, а просодическими (или супрасегментными) — такие свойства, которые имеются только у более крупных единиц (слогов, слов, целых высказываний), а к отдельным звукам неприменимы.

От высоты тона (и, следовательно, от частоты) зависит и такой сложный параметр, как интонация.

У частоты основного тона и интенсивности есть не только перцептивные, но и артикуляционные корреляты: параметры, описывающие процесс порождения звука.

По мнению авторов, данное исследование п…

22 ноября в Москве состоится юбилейная, XL Традиционная олимпиада по лингвистике для школьников 8–11 классов, открытая для всех желающих.

Первая традиционная олимпиада по языковедению и математике, на которой школьники получили возможность попробовать свои силы в решении таких задач, прошла в Москве в 1965 году.

Можно классифицировать их и на другом основании и выделить слова с увеличительным и уменьшительным значением, а также нейтральные слова.

Сделать это нетрудно, и в результате мы получаем ответ:m- — нейтральное, ji- — увеличительное, ki- — уменьшительное значение; -buzi — коза, -geni — гость, -to — река, -tu — человек.

Но, конечно, самые свежие задачи ожидают тех, кто 22 ноября придет…

Американо-германская группа когнитивистов показала, что грамматики, построенные на использовании конкретного лексического материала, лучше моделируют детскую речь, чем полностью абстрактные грамматики.

Эти грамматики похожи на нашу КСГ-1: слова в них содержатся только в словаре, и в правилах порождения не фигурируют.

Что касается различий между детьми, то видно, что грамматики Брайана хуже справляются с данными Анни, чем грамматики Анни, а грамматики Анни хуже справляются с данными Брайана, чем грамматики Брайана.

В более ранних работах Томазелло доказывал, что в 23 месяца дети уже владеют категорией существительного, а в 25 еще не владеют категорией глагола.

Эти результаты в целом соответс…

Человеческие языки содержат гораздо больше слов, чем необходимо для полноценного общения.

Эксперименты, проведенные специалистами по эволюционной психологии, показали, что мужчины при виде красивых девушек начинают чаще использовать редкие слова.

Специальные исследования показали, что для полноценного понимания художественной литературы нужно знать 9000 слов, а для поддержания практически любой беседы достаточно 6000–7000 слов (Nation I.S.P.

Между тем среднестатистический образованный англичанин свободно владеет 20 000 слов, и совсем не редки люди со словарным запасом в 100 000 и более слов.

Для каждого сочинения была подсчитана средняя частота встречаемости использованных в нём слов (чем м…

Регистрация на фестиваль языков в Санкт-Петербурге будет открыта до 9:00 утра (и потом закроется навсегда).

В программу добавились польский и японский язык, изменений уже не должно быть.

В субботу будет опубликована программа с местом и точным временем проведения каждого события фестиваля.

Подробнее о формате и истории фестиваля можно, например, тут почитать.

В Москве такой фестиваль будет 1 декабря, мы расскажем.

В Северной Осетии в конце лета пройдут месячные курсы переподготовки для госслужащих.

Учащиеся будут повышать уровень владения осетинским языком.

Особое внимание будет уделено деловому языку, — об этом рассказал заместитель министра по вопросам национальных отношений Алан Багиев.

Такие курсы уже проходили в прошлом году, но по сравнению с прошлым годом кратно увеличился охват — с 20 до 50 человек.

На курсы привлекут работников местных администраций, министерств и ведомств, уже владеющих осетинским языком, но «на бытовом уровне».

5 июня в Европейском университете Санкт-Петербурга состоится семинар „Низовые практики сохранения титульного языка в Карелии“.

Речь в докладе пойдет о языковой ситуации и местных инициативах по сохранению титульного языка в Пряжинском национальном районе республики Карелия.

В этом районе в последние годы широко развивается „низовой активизм“: жители объединяются в НКО и решают разнообразные проблемы местного уровня, от благоустройства до сохранения языка и культуры.

Поскольку вопрос сохранения языка всегда так или иначе упирается в желание (или нежелание) носителей общаться на нем и передавать его следующим поколениям, активность именно местных жителей, а не местной или региональной власти,…

Согласно договору, беглецы будут возвращены на свою Родину, (таким образом это и старейший договор об экстрадиции).

Таким образом опытные юристы пытаются предусмотреть все подводные камни и, в случае возникновения спорных моментов, иметь хорошую доказательную базу.

Самое старое изображение сексаЕсть известный комментарий о человеческой сексуальности, что «каждое поколение думает, что это они изобрели секс».

Это массовое заблуждение, возможно, возникает, чтобы избежать травмы и не думать о своих родителях или бабушках и дедушках, занимающихся этим.

Кажется, за последние несколько тысяч лет качество наших признаний в любви пошло не в том направлении.

Сколько мегабайт занимает язык в мозгу?

Например, на все фонемы английского языка у авторов работы ушло 750 бит (по 15 на фонему).

При оценке объёма под хранение лексики учитывался запас в 40 тысяч слов, причём помимо значений этих слов (12 млн бит) заложена информация о частотности (80 тыс.

Меньше всего информации занял в оценке учёных из Рочестера синтаксис — всего 700 бит (что, видимо, объясняется аналитизмом английской грамматики).

Ознакомиться с работой в оригинале можно по ссылке:Humans store about 1.5 megabytes of information during language acquisition (2019).

Председатель комитета Госдумы по делам национальностей Ильдар Гильмутдинов считает, что государство тоже ответственно за сохранение разнообразия языков:Эффективность работы по сохранению родных языков зависит от роли и участия государства, общества в целом и каждой семьи в отдельности.

А это значит, поддержка родных языков должна осуществляться в образовательной, научной, общекультурной, информационной сферах.

У нас в настоящее время нет специальности по подготовке воспитателей детских садов, которые работают с двуязычным ребенком.

Ни в одном субъекте мы не наберем семи докторов по данной специальности.

Надо понимать, что не будет таких специалистов — не будут и развиваться языки.

У берегов Шотландии обнаружили дельфина, который «выучил язык» морских свиней (чем-то похожие на дельфинов китообразные, однако не дельфины).

Дельфин отбился от своих и в конечном итоге сдружился с местной группой морских свиней.

Чтобы общаться с ними, он изменяет характер и высоту своих сигналов (а у тех, в свою очередь, изменений в звуковом репертуаре не отмечено).

Китообразные и раньше были замечены в изменении «речи» под проживающие с ними виды (например, косатки подстраивались под дельфинов), но эти случаи происходили в неволе при смешанном содержании.

Шотландский случай считается первым зарегистрированным «на воле» — учёные ожидают новых записей, чтобы подробнее исследовать происходящ…

Госдума на заседании в среду приняла в третьем, окончательном чтении законопроект о родных языках.

В школах, программа которых включает предмет «Родной язык», его изучение остается обязательным, при этом можно будет выбрать конкретный язык, в том числе русский как родной, — сообщает ТАСС.

По сути это означает отмену обязательного преподавания государственных языков республик там, где это практиковалось.

В документе прописано, что федеральные образовательные стандарты обеспечивают «возможность получения образования на родных языках из числа языков народов РФ, изучения государственных языков республик РФ, родных языков из числа языков народов РФ, в том числе русского языка как родного языка».…

Правительство Мозамбика реформирует начальное образование в стране, переводя его с португальского на местные языки.

Дети лучше учатся, когда в школе им объясняют материал и разрешают отвечать на привычном языке бытового общения.

Билингвальная система преподавания предполагает постепенный переход на португальский, на котором дальше ведётся преподавание вплоть до окончания учёбы.

Оставшийся в наследие от колониальной империи португальский язык сохраняет свой статус государственного и объединяющего языка в Мозамбике.

В сюжете Африканьюс можно посмотреть репортаж из сельской школы, где младшие школьники уже занимаются на языке тсонга (он же шангаан и шангана) — fr.africanews.com/2018/07/18/au-m…

Возможно, впервые в нормальном русском переводе грамматика знаменитого лингвопроекта сольресоль доступна в нашем сообществе ВК.

В проекте сольресоль вместо набора фонем всего семь знаков, в роли которых могут выступать в том числе ноты (и тогда фразы на языке можно играть на инструментах, петь или насвистывать).

Это заметная веха в истории лингвоконструирования, без её упоминания не обходится ни одна книга по теме.

Информация по сольресолю есть и у Свадоста (Как возникнет всеобщий язык, 1968), и у Пиперски (Конструирование языков.

От эсперанто до дотракийского, 2017).

Во Владикавказе вышел первый номер глянца на осетинском языке.

Новый журнал „Нырыккон Дзæуджыхъæу“ (Современный Владикавказ) готовит редакция МВ (Модного Владикавказа), журнала, давно известного в республике.

„Пусть пока блок на осетинском языке не такой большой, как на русском.

В начале зимы [частично] на осетинском языке начал вещать новый телеканал „Осетия-Ирыстон“ (доступный в местных кабельных сетях, в интернете и по спутнику).

Появление нового современного контента на языках, отнесённых к „уязвимым“, — несомненно хорошая новость.

Сенат Исламской Республики Пакистан утвердил предложение провозгласить китайский язык одним из официальных языков Пакистана.

Этот жест призван отметить крепнущие связи между Китаем и Пакистаном, пояснили сенаторы.

Отношения между двумя странами будут развиваться и дальше, и людям будет проще общаться в рамках Китайско-Пакистанского Экономического Коридора, если китайскому дать официальный статус в стране.

Пенджаби, пушту и целый ряд других языков с большим числом носителей на территории Пакистана не имеют в стране никакого специального статуса.

Люди полагают, что знание этого языка может открывать перед ними перспективы трудоустройства как на родине, так и в Китайской Народной Республике.

Но Джобс не ушел совсем: вместо курсов своей программы он стал ходить на занятия по каллиграфии.

По мнению Джобса (и не только его), это определило облик современных персональных компьютеров и общий вид программ для набора текста.

Использование ослепительно белого цвета в дизайне продуктов — одна из главных фишек Apple и одновременно характерная черта многих проектов Баухауса.

Когда Apple в 1980-е стала большой корпорацией, она делала с Porsche совместные рекламные кампании.

Как и Джобс, Эйхлер добился главных успехов в своей жизни в довольно позднем возрасте: до 45 лет он работал бухгалтером.

Теперь настала очередь поздравлений с 23 февраля.

Одни из самых популярных похожих запросов в Google на момент написания статьи:«оригинальное поздравление мужчин коллег с 23 февраля»«душевное поздравление с 23 февраля»«офигенное поздравление с 23 февраля»«короткое поздравление с 23 февраля»«поздравление с 23 февраля своими словами»«поздравление женщин с 23 февраля»Мы решили взглянуть на тексты, которые выдаются пользователям по этим запросам, и понять, из чего они состоят и насколько они ужасны .

Для этого мы собрали тексты с сайта, который стоит первым в выдаче Google по запросу «поздравление с 23 февраля».

Душевные поздравления с 23 февраля от марковской цепиПоздравляю тебя через край.

Ис…

Статьи, написанные в дореволюционный период и в первые годы после революции 1917 года, с тех пор не переиздавались.

Это слова и словосочетания, которые очень часто встречающиеся у автора и очень редко — у других.

К примеру, стилометрия отлично определяет стилизованный Сорокиным под Тургенева текст как текст Сорокина — и не смешивает его с Тургеневым.

Поскольку другие алгоритмы во время нашего предварительного тестирования ошибочно определяли чужие тексты как тексты Асафьева (недостаточная точность при хорошей полноте), их результаты мы не учитываем.

Короткие тексты не дают достаточно данных, чтобы можно было определить их автора с полной уверенностью.

Математические методы, программирование и приставка digital породили множество гибридов, и сравнение двух основных книг по цифровой гуманитаристике — A Companion to Digital Humanities и A New Companion to Digital Humanities — подтверждает, что с каждым годом количество DH-химер увеличивается.

Кроме того, на развитие хрупкой научной экосистемы влияет не только технический прогресс и темы в заявках на гранты, но и экономическая нестабильность и политические сдвиги.

Его осторожность и недоверие к Digital Humanities связано с боязнью подмены и извращения традиционной науки.

Тонкое искусство междисциплинарной дипломатииВ спектре разнородных краудсорсинговых и грантовых DH-проектов (ARIADNE, CEND…

Чтобы стать водителем Убера, много не надо: ты должен быть совершеннолетним, иметь опыт вождения не менее года, права и страховку.

В среднем водители сдают экзамен с двенадцатого раза, и только половина всех претендентов в итоге получает лицензию.

В век технологий GPS помогает нам перемещаться из точки А в точку В без проблем.

Журналист М. Р. О’Коннор, автор книги Wayfinding, считает, что навигаторы делают нас невнимательными к знакам и ориентирам на местности, что в долгосрочной перспективе может оказать негативное влияние на когнитивное здоровье человека.

Участники эксперимента, которые перемещались по навигатору, продемонстрировали меньшую активность в гиппокампе чем те, кто самостоятель…

И это не первый случай, когда чат-боты или голосовые помощники обращаются к своим клиентам эмоционально.

В них содержится то, что составляет поведение человека в сети, в том числе троллинг, буллинг и тому подобные эмоции — не очень приятные, но часто встречающиеся вещи.

Голод заставляет человека искать еду, эмоции заставляют его обратить внимание на другие потребности — например, безопасность и социальное взаимодействие, и это способствует выживанию и репродуктивности.

Технологии пока не смогли научить искусственный интеллект по-настоящему чувствовать, но разработчики обратили внимание на эмоциональную составляющую взаимодействия компьютера и человека.

Разработки, описанные выше, открывают …

The Met 360° Project — проект Метрополитен Музея в Нью-Йорке.

Он состоит из шести небольших видео, каждое из которых можно найти на Ютубе.

Они находятся в филиале музея на севере Манхеттена.

На видео — толпы людей, проходящие по залу во время съёмки, два художника, работающие прямо в зале, витражи Тиффани и, конечно, сами скульптуры.

Сайт проектаПлейлист с видео проекта на канале МЕТ в YouTube

Он выбрал восемь ведущих журналов и в свободное время проверил тысячи опубликованных в них рандомизированных исследований.

Это спорное заявление: ведь анестезиологам известно, что в некоторых процедурах слишком большое количество кислорода может повысить риск развития осложнений.

Он объясняет, что он преднамеренно набирал похожие группы пациентов, поэтому неудивительно, что данные имеют сходства.

Для статистических проверок переменные в таблицы должны быть полностью независимы друг от друга, тогда как в реальности они бывают взаимосвязаны.

В ней были обнаружены «систематически неверные» Р-значения в двух таблицах, но авторы потеряли исходные данные и не смогли пересчитать значения.

Скачивание изданий, охраняемых авторским правом, запрещено, но многие из них можно читать онлайн на сайте.

Привлекают внимание тематические коллекции книг и документов «Спорт в России», «Русские кругосветные путешествия первой половины XIX века», «Олимпийские игры в предметах коллекционирования», «Открытый космос».

Государственная публичная историческая библиотекаИсторическая библиотека предлагает электронное собрание документов и материалов по отечественной и всеобщей истории, генеалогии, геральдике, истории военного дела, этнографии и географии России.

ЭлектронекрасовкаСреди книг и документов, оцифрованных московской Библиотекой им.

Все электронные документы можно и просматривать на сайте…

Предмет исследований: как слова меняют значенияВ широком смысле я занимаюсь репрезентацией семантики естественного языка.

Недавно в своей статье со студентами Вышки мы показали, как менялись значения слов в русскоязычных новостных текстах в 2000-е и в начале 2010-х годов.

При этом то, как происходит изменение значения и как оно манифестируется в текстах, — в сущности, как изменяются типичные контексты для слова «приемный», — вот это как раз, я считаю, предмет для изучения.

Как война меняет ассоциацииИзначально в своей PhD-диссертации я планировал изучить, как в новостных текстах освещаются вооруженные конфликты.

А так, область, в которой я работаю, рождается прямо на глазах.

АНБ собирало метаданные электронных писем и телефонных звонков оператора Verizon.

Это если не учитывать праздники, неразборчивый почерк или трудности чтения писем на иностранном языке.

Совсем коротко: шпионов выдало то, что через них курсировала информация от слишком большого числа людей.

Перехваченные письма, или письма людей, за которыми была установлена слежка, группируются в «хабы», мало связанные с другими участками сети.

Предсказательные техники наверняка ушли далеко вперёд, и теперь не составляет труда оценить степень угрозы от человека, зная, сколько раз и с кем он контактировал.

Почти одновременно — В. В. Вересаевым в рассказе «Лизар».

Большинство исследований получились очень интересными и для нас, и для самих школьников.

НКРЯ в студенческих исследованияхСтуденты не только учат школьников использовать НКРЯ, но и применяют корпус для собственных исследований.

Поисковый интерфейс инструмента, разработанного НУГОпыт ученых и преподавателейИ наконец, мы обратились к учёным, которые многие годы используют НКРЯ в различных научных проектах и в работе со студентами.

и если наградит кого словцом, то пойдет оно ему в род и потомство, утащит он его с собою и на службу, и в отставку, и в Петербург, и на край света…»).

Наша статья — об одной из первых удачных попыток визуализировать данные, спасение тысяч жизней и о том, как Джон Сноу стал одним из отцов основателей эпидемиологии.

В 1854 году в Лондоне в районе Сохо вспыхнула эпидемия холеры — болезни смертельной и с отвратительными симптомами.

Наш главный герой — Джон Сноу (нет, не тот, о котором вы подумали)А вот этот парень:Д-р Джон Сноу — британский врач, именно ему первому в голову пришла идея, что распространение холеры связано с водой.

В честь Джона Сноу в Лондоне установлен памятник в виде водокачки и открыт паб, но главное — его исследования и метод в последующем использовались для обнаружения очагов заболевания в других странах при вспышках холе…

Когда мобильный интернет был экзотикой, а отчёты по грантам сдавали на 3,5-дюймовых дискетах... в Рунете уже были цифровые гуманитарные проекты! Рассказываем в лицах и деталях об одном из них — о параллельном корпусе переводов «Слова о полку Игореве», который отмечает сегодня 13-летие. В конце поста бонус — обзор исследований на основе корпуса

The post Многомерное «Слово о полку Игореве»: от кукушки до алкогольного брендинга appeared first on Системный Блок{ъ}.

С. Довлатов.

1969 год © Ленинградское телевидение 2 / 2 Сергей Довлатов и Ася Пекуровская на Университетской набережной © Из архива Аси Пекуровской / «ВикиЧтение»Актриса ленинградского ТЮЗа Тамара Уржумова — одно из юношеских увлечений Сергея Довлатова.

Довлатов не столько объясняется в любви, сколько исповедуется и просвещает: одно из писем, к примеру, содержит «список из 30–40 книжек, которые… следует прочесть».

Я их не соз­давал, я только записывал, мучительно подбирая слова, которые бы кое-как отвечали тому, что я слышу, как голос извне.

Однако сам Довлатов не придавал этим успехам большого значения:«В Америке успех и слава — не одно и то же.

ИсторияЧтение на 15 минут: «Открытие Антарктиды»В январе 1820 года русские моряки Фаддей Беллинсгаузен и Михаил Лазарев на шлюпах «Восток» и «Мирный» открыли новый материк.

5–6 февраля 1820 года «Восток» и «Мирный» вновь подошли к берегам открытого ими материка (ныне Берег Принцессы Рагнхилль).

Они, а также И. Ф. Крузенштерн и О. Е. Коцебу изложили свои соображения и дали инструкции Беллинсгаузену.

// Ф. Ф. Беллинс­гаузен.

Карты для «Атласа» были составлены, по-видимому , самим Ф. Ф. Беллинс­гаузеном.

Пушкин и Морзе жили в одно время?!

Тест про современниковЛинкольн, Франклин, Джефферсон — современники?

А Микеланджело, Рафаэль, Леонардо и Донателло?

А Марко Поло, Васко да Гама, Христофор Колумб и Фернан Магеллан?

Угадайте, какие знаменитые люди совпали друг с другом во времени (а какие — нет)Подготовил Кирилл Головастиков

641 годПо легенде, китайская принцесса Вэньчэн принесла буддизм в Тибет.

Однако многие тибетцы живут за пределами КНР — в Индии (в частности, в Сиккиме), Непале, Бутане.

Однако также существует так называемое правительство Тибета в изгнании: оно образовалось в 1959 году, после бегства из Тибета четыр­надцатого далай-ламы и последовавших за ним тибетцев.

При этом различные этни­ческие группы, живущие на территории Тибета, говорят на разных диалектах и не всегда друг друга понимают.

Это объясняет и то, почему вопрос о независимости Тибета часто звучит громче, чем вопрос о независимости курдов, уйгуров или кого-то еще.

Смысл этого текста, говорящего о храбрости и страхе (а не о счастливой и несчастливой любви), верно передал Григорий Дашевский в своем стихо­творении «Карантин», которое было вольным переложением из Катулла, в свою очередь переложившего Сапфо на латинский язык.

Кроме того, по всей Франции — и не только Южной — о ней шла слава как о большом специалисте в области куртуазной любви и покрови­тельнице трубадуров.

Эти антологии чуть-чуть отличаются друг от друга по структуре, но в каждой из них обязательно были два раздела: о природе и о любви.

Таких печальных стихотворений о любви — подавляющее большинство: они говорят об уходящем времени, о том, как быстро оно течет.

Стихи о любви — это не стол…

Помню, что я на руках у бабушки.

, с которым мы были вместе и в лагере, и в тюрьме.

Слава богу, в такой ситуации я не был: не уверен, что я бы смог сделать все правильно.

Потому что в тот день, 13 июня 1973 года, я в по­следний раз, находясь на свободе и на родине, увидел свою приятельницу, близкого друга.

В мое отсутствие на него никто так и не обратил внимания, и в 1982 году я его опубликовал в сборнике к 60-летию Лотмана.

Антропология12 слов, позволяющих понять культуру КореиЧто на самом деле значит слово «доширак»?

Показательна в этом смысле ироничная пословица «Тот, у кого есть нунчхи, и в буддийском храме сумеет полакомиться солеными креветками».

В использовании умения нунчхи важно чувство меры, ибо в основе нунчхи — стремление к коллектив­ной гармонии, а не к искусному манипулированию окружающими ради личных интересов.

Культура общения корейцев пронизана стремлением не нанести вреда кибун окружающих, в то же время не забывая и о собственном само­ощущении.

В стране существует множество клубов любителей горных прогулок, и в пого­жий выходной день в горах по-настоящему многолюдно и весело.

ЛитератураКак читать поэтов Лианозовской группыЧто такое Лианозовская группа и почему ее участников вдохновляла унылая жизнь в бараках на московских окраинах?

— как в авангардных группировках начала ХХ века.

Еще через десять лет эту задачу, как и многие открытия лианозовцев, подхватят и разовьют поэты-концептуалисты.

Зять глядит зловеще:«А ну, теща, отдавай мои вещи!»Надвигается на тещу —И не зять, а дворник —И не дворник, а пожарник.

Для Лимонова приемы старого авангарда не так важны, как для Сапгира или даже Холина, — напротив, он стремится писать так, как будто никакого авангарда и не было.

Вышний Волочек, конец XIX — начало XX века © tver.livejournal.com 11 / 11 Тверецкий канал.

Кимры, 2008 год © Иван Лобанов / CC BY-SA 3.0 13 / 13 Дом купцов братьев Лужиных после реконструкции.

Торжок, 2013 год © Wikimedia Commons 13 / 13 Каменный дом на улице Бакунина.

Томск, 2012 год © Wikimedia Commons 8 / 9 Дом на Татарской улице.

Томск, 2011 год © Wikimedia Commons 9 / 9 Дом на улице Кузнецова.

Бабель отморозил себе нос, Тургенев заболел гриппом, у Салтыкова-Щедрина целый день понос, Чехов вообще на улицу не выходит. Собрали отрывки из писем и дневников великих людей, пытающихся пережить самый неприятный месяц.

Все главные имена, события и произведения за десять веков: от Винчестерского тропария до грайма через Генделя, The Beatles и Radiohead.

Ясные вечера, мыши, медведь, специальная итальянская тухлятина, стремительное швыряние людьми и роковые минуты. Рассказываем о жизни поэта и писателя Владислава Ходасевича через цитаты из его писем близким.

История, ИскусствоЧтение на 15 минут: «Monument du costume»В издательстве «Арт-Волхонка» вышла книга «Monument du costume.

Серия с самого начала была ретроспективна, и слово monument в окончательном названии лишь подчеркивало и концептуали­зировало это ее свойство.

Из серии «Le Monument du Costume Physique et Moral de la fin du dix-huitieme siecle, ou Tableaux de la Vie» Государственный историко-культурный, художественный и ландшафтный музей-заповедник «Царицыно» 2 / 12 Жан-Мишель Моро.

В 1789 году появилось издание «Monument du costume»; местом публикации стал Нойвид-на-Рейне, город на севере Германии.

Гравюры «Monument du costume» замыкают эту тематическую линию, поскольку дата их издания…

История, АнтропологияСветлана Толстая: «Я не очень поддавалась общим настроениям»Детство в Лосинке, арыки и верблюды на ашхабадской улице, послевоенная Москва, лекции Андрея Зализняка, экспедиции в Полесье, работа и семья.

Мне было 14 лет, и я в обмо­рок не падала, но не потому, что была рада этому событию.

Просто я не очень поддавалась общим настроениям — ни в радост­ных случаях, ни в печальных, как-то не всегда попадала в общую струю.

Я говорю, что не считаю себя виноватой: меня попро­сили, и я написала, что видела.

Всю новую литературу я либо не читала, либо, если читала, то не очень вдохновлялась.

ИскусствоРейтинг фильмов Феллини: от худшего к лучшему20 января 1920 года родился великий Федерико Феллини!

16 «Казанова Феллини» (1976)Кадр из фильма «Казанова Феллини» © Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA); Fast FilmsУ Феллини с этой картиной были сложные отношения.

Однако наблюдать за изысканными, но болезненными образами очень непросто, и начинать знакомство с Феллини с этой картины точно не стоит.

11 Ранние фильмы: «Огни варьете» (1950), «Белый шейх» (1952), «Маменькины сынки» (1953)1 / 3 Кадр из фильма «Огни варьете» © Capitolium 2 / 3 Кадр из фильма «Белый шейх» © OFI; P.D.C.

7 «И корабль плывет» (1983)Кадр из фильма «И корабль плывет» © Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI); Vides Produzio…

Albert Costa (a Catalan-Spanish bilingual) died last year, and this book is a great testimony to his lifetime of research into the subject.

Costa quotes Goethe’s famous line that “he who does not know foreign languages knows nothing about his own”.

But the advantages aren’t only cultural breadth or depth, but also better decision-making: we’re less instinctive and kneejerk in a foreign language, more able to be utilitarian and cold-headed.

But he leaves you in little doubt that the brain of bilinguals is, in tiny but important ways, provably different.

• The Bilingual Brain: And What it Tells Us About the Science of Language by Albert Costa is published by Allen Lane (£20).

I was therefore extremely disappointed to see her speaking of “how hard and existentially pointless it is to run on the spot.

All that energy spent, no distance covered: it’s like eating cottage cheese or learning Welsh” (Retro and noisy: Canada’s Air Force fitness drills are a 60s tonic, Weekend, 1 February).

Learning Welsh is a challenge, but it most certainly is not existentially pointless.

I give thanks to dedicated Welsh language tutors and to those in communities throughout Wales who have supported me on this decades-long journey.

This stands in contrast to Zoe Williams’ attitude in citing Welsh language learning in a discussion of “existentially pointless” tasks.

It’s the description of Twi – the Akan language spoken by my family – as “the vernacular”, a term which implicitly compares it to the colonial language, English, and somehow finds it wanting.

It’s a term more befitting of a regional dialect than a nation’s language, with its own history, politics and literature.

Nigerian pre-eminence in the English language is nothing new.

But Nigeria’s relaltionship to the English language, like that of all English-speaking African nations, is a complicated one.

As the great African-American writer James Baldwin once wrote, “my quarrel with the English language has been that the language reflected none of my experience”.

Last year Rodríguez had to choose eight European universities where she would like to do her Erasmus+ exchange.

“UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges with our European friends and partners,” he told MPs.

Erasmus+ sends around 16,000 UK students to more than 30 countries each year.

Those who study abroad outperform their peers in both the classroom and the job market, according to research by Universities UK.

“Taking part in Erasmus gives students new skills that are valuable to employers and that boosts our economy.”

Although this happened decades ago, we haven’t forgotten the look of total incredulity on the face of an American fellow student whom our son brought home for the weekend (Letters, 18 January).

I quickly learned this was not an appropriate offer (he seemed to think it likely though).

Theresa GrahamClevedon, North Somerset• Marika Sherwood (Letters, 14 January) is correct that Peter Fryer’s book Staying Power should be available in all school libraries.

Val HarrisonBirmingham• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers?

Click here to upload it and we’l…

UK schools are turning to foreign governments to fund languages Read moreIt also recommends that the government should start subsidising the teaching of languages at universities, “in light of declining enrolments and growing vulnerability for lesser taught languages”, for strategic and cultural reasons.

“It was a big mistake to scrap compulsory foreign languages at GCSE,” said Megan Bowler, the report’s author.

Nick Hillman, Hepi’s director, said making foreign languages optional at GCSE was one of the worst education policy blunders in recent memory, and that reinstating them was a “no-brainer”.

* – How speaking Welsh became cool Read more“In terms of speaking foreign languages [the Briti…

‘No other subject,” says my language teacher, “is the cause of so much shame.

There we go; it’s that word shame again.

And there’s that feeling of self-loathing you get when you know that, at some point, you knew the German word for exhaust pipe but suddenly can’t remember it.

My Croatian teacher thinks it is a peculiarly British thing.

She says you never hear French, German or Spanish speakers berating themselves about how poor their English is.

The French literary colossus Marguerite Yourcenar once said that she loved ancient Greek for the richness of its vocabulary and its infinite flexibility, which was “like that of a supple, perfect body”.

Marcolongo, an Italian writer and classics scholar, agrees.

She has written a delightfully spirited yet succinct apologia for “the magnificent and elegant ancient Greek language” (translated by Will Schutt).

She argues that ancient Greek offers us uniquely “concise, explosive, ironic, open-ended modes of expression”.

Although we have no way of knowing what ancient Greek would have sounded like, it still speaks to us today.

French and German GCSEs are to be marked less severely from next year amid concerns that students are being put off studying modern foreign languages (MFL) because it is more difficult to get top grades in these than in other subjects.

The qualifications regulator Ofqual has ruled there should be an adjustment to grading standards in French and German GCSEs – entries for which have declined dramatically – but not in Spanish where numbers have been more buoyant.

The GCSE grading adjustments may need to be phased in over a longer period, and will affect grades 4 and above.

“We have conducted a thorough review of the evidence that GCSE French, German and Spanish are severely graded in comparis…

The number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland’s island communities has plummeted in less than a decade, according to a leading Highland researcher who believes the language is on the point of “societal collapse” across Scotland.

Most of those working with Gaelic agree that the language is at a crossroads.

Brian Ó hEadhra, the arts and culture adviser at Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the public body with responsibility for the Gaelic language, counters the pessimism.

Critics have suggested that Gaelic schools often benefit middle-class children whose parents are taken with the educational advantages of dual language learning.

Traditional Gaelic culture is really rich but there has to be an alternative way o…

One of the world’s oldest recorded songs has been translated into one of the world’s oldest languages to mark the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star has been translated and sung in Noongar – a language spoken by Indigenous people who live in or descend from the south-west corner of Western Australia.

The Perth-based Community Arts Network has created a video clip with subtitles so people can sing along and learn some Noongar words at the same time

The retention bonuses will be paid out in the second, third and fourth years, totalling £6,000 and rising to £9,000 for those working in regions of highest demand.

When combined with training bursaries worth £26,000, graduates with at least a second-class degree in those subjects will get up to £35,000.

The expansion of early-career payments follows research that bursaries alone have failed to improve teacher retention rates.

Graduates with maths and physics degrees are among the most sought-after in the labour market, and careers requiring those degrees regularly command the highest starting salaries.

Bursaries for those with degrees in English or history will also fall by £3,000, after im…

My friend and colleague Philip Holmes, who has died aged 74, dedicated most of his life to the study of Scandinavian languages and cultures, in particular Swedish.

Born in King’s Norton, Birmingham, Phil was the elder son of Joan (nee Truscott) and Arthur Holmes, an accountant and former RAF pilot.

After graduation in 1967 he spent a year at Uppsala University in Sweden, gaining a qualification in Nordic languages.

In 1983 Phil rose to be a senior lecturer in Scandinavian studies at Hull, and in 1997 a reader in that subject.

He was head of the university’s Scandinavian studies department throughout the 1980s and 90s, as well as chair of Hull University Press.

Attention grammar snobs: ”they” can officially be used as a singular, nonbinary pronoun.

Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, officially recognized the usage today, when it added 533 words to its online dictionary.

The recognition of “they” as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun comes as its usage grows in popularity, especially among people who identify as neither male nor female.

The British singer Sam Smith made headlines last week when they announced on social media that their pronouns were now “they/them” rather than “he/him”.

Lexicographers and linguists are coming out widely in support of “they” as a singular pronoun.

Just after the first world war, the UK produced its most comprehensive review of languages provision, the Leathes report.

After Brexit we will need a strong language base for trade, international relations and soft power.

Yet instead of a growth in languages, we’re experiencing steep decline: the number of modern languages undergraduates fell by 54% between 2008–9 and 2017–18.

For starters, they need to build capacity in three kinds of language graduates.

Third, we urgently need more language graduates with at least two languages to degree level to teach in schools and rebuild and sustain primary and secondary languages.

Including our mother tongues.

I keep my eyes on the procession of English letters on my keyboard.

Mother tongues, like any other first love, are very hard to forget.

Even when our native letters appear foreign and our native sounds ring forsaken.

After all, our mother tongues raised us.

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But as the debate over trigger warnings has raged, advocates for them have made strong psychological claims.

Trigger warnings increased participants’ negative feelings prior to the photo presentation, presumably as they anticipated what was to come.

It wasn’t about trigger warnings per se, but investigated a cognitive principle central to the trigger-warnings debate.

It’s important not to overstate the scientific case against trigger warnings.

Yet already the results are surprisingly consistent in undermining the specific claim that trigger warnings allow people to marshal some kind of mental defence mechanism.

Newsletter Privacy PolicyAeon email newsletters are issued by the not-for-profit, registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd (Australian Business Number 80 612 076 614).

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As I become more fluent in French, however, the word’s meaning becomes sedimented in it.

Meaning is more sunken into words than the practice of replacing one term with another suggests.

But even if the connection between ‘glow’ and glowing were not based on any verifiable affinity, the word’s meaning is still accompanied by its sound.

For the dog, words have meaning the same way that the sound of my car pulling into the driveway has meaning.

Does this new kind of interchangeable expression constitute a different way of meaning from the kind of meaning that ‘tells me itself’?

Newsletter Privacy PolicyAeon email newsletters are issued by the not-for-profit, registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd (Australian Business Number 80 612 076 614).

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When you receive the information, if you think any of it is wrong or out of date, you can ask us…

Finally, some brave soul will say something, always the same thing: Well, we break the text down.

Metaphor is the knot between language and image, between language and sensory experience, and between language and narrative.

In the process, Pomiankowski reveals that metaphors not only shape the way we see things, but also carry story.

One of his propositions was that ‘even the future has to have a metaphoric quality for us to imagine it’.

If Nehamas is correct, then we need to grow our capacity for metaphor as surely as we need to grow our empathy for the planet.

He believed that increasing immigration, the multiplication of unique American words, the new meanings attaching to English words and the proliferation of slang – or, as the English saw it, vulgar and undisciplined language – made an American dictionary essential to American life.

But then there was the question of whose American dictionary would provide such an authority – which consideration instigated the ‘American dictionary wars’.

It was also partly an ideological war, pitting various sectors of society – political, social, educational, religious – against each other over the direction that American English should take.

Ultimately, the Merriams were the real winners in the American dic…

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So when did the cliché become such a sin of human communication, a mark of simple minds and mediocre artists?

The French theorist Roland Barthes, a follower of Flaubert, was also preoccupied with the political effect of clichés.

In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946), he condemns journalistic clichés as dangerous constructs that mask political reality with empty language.

Think, for example, of the common statement ‘it is a cliché, but…’; or of the use of clichés ironically.

So, before you pull out the next ‘It’s a cliché!’ allegation, think about some of the clichés you commonly use.

Despite their prevalence in many languages, ideophones were once considered linguistic oddities of marginal interest.

Sound symbolism might also emerge from the sensations associated with how we make noises.

Interestingly, synaesthetes tend to be more sensitive to sound symbolism than average members of the population, offering some circumstantial evidence for the idea.

Whatever its origins, analyses of thousands of languages reveal that most cultures use sound symbolism to some degree.

This raises another big question: how do children learn languages such as English, without such a widespread, systematic use of sound symbolism?

Nobody would claim that Mexican Spanish and Columbian Spanish are different languages.

Do we want our cut-off to lie at a level where Serbian and Croatian are the same or different languages?

Either they will tend to be more similar, in which case they can be defined as different dialects, or less similar, in which case they can be defined as different languages.

Some fall not far below it, such as Hindi and Urdu (different languages, barely).

And varieties of Arabic and Chinese, both of which are often thought of as single languages, soar above LDN = 0.48 (the varieties are themselves different languages).

Sounds, words and grammar do not exist in isolation: each of these three levels of language constitutes a system in itself.

Words change meaning gradually, as a small number of speakers use them in a new way, and they in turn cause others to do so.

This is how words can change meaning so totally and utterly; mostly, they do so in steps too small to notice.

There are several predictable ways that words change meaning.

Word meanings change, by both type (a change in meaning) and by force (a change in how powerful a word is).

I couldn’t wait to get to sixth grade to start learning Spanish.

Learning another language benefits each learner in at least three ways – pragmatically, neurologically and culturally.

But as we are going to learn directly, beyond the practical benefits, language will expand your knowledge and your very intelligence.

The Pirahã language of the Amazon has no words for numbers or for borrow, dollars, bank, mom, dad, college or loan.

Learning languages disables our easy and common habit of glossing over differences and failing to understand others and ourselves.

For the grace of being another language, Black English speech might have been considered as linguistically civilized as a classical Greek or Latin, or as linguistically chic as French or Italian.

Instead it resulted in intense public backlash and derision due to the still widespread, incorrect belief that Black English was an inferior, uneducated form of English associated with illiteracy, poverty, and crime.

But Black English is not just one monolithic dialect spanning the many millions of speakers across the country.

All along, while standard American English was busy convincing everyone that it was a superior dialect, it’s Black English that’s been a true cultural and linguistic force in…

The phrase is “carpe diem,” taken from Roman poet Horace’s Odes, written over 2,000 years ago.

As everyone and their grandmother knows by now, “carpe diem” means “seize the day.” “Carpe diem.

“carpe diem” doesn’t really mean “seize the day.” As Latin scholar Maria S. Marsilio points out, “carpe diem” is a horticultural metaphor that, particularly seen in the context of the poem, is more accurately translated as “plucking the day,” evoking the plucking and gathering of ripening fruits or flowers, enjoying a moment that is rooted in the sensory experience of nature.

For Australian philosopher Roman Krznaric, author of Carpe Diem Regained, the “hijacking [of carpe diem] is an existential crime…

Climate Control + Language ControlSo while things get relentlessly warmer elsewhere it’s not surprising that our language about it stays just as cool, calm, and collected as our sterile living environments.

It bears repeating that the blandly uninformative term “climate change” was popularized by notorious Republican political language tweaker Frank Luntz as “global warming” was seen as too scary.

And if we can effectively use language to help to save the natural world, well, language may also end up saving itself.

Our language may show how separate we are from nature, but the relationship between the natural world and natural language is far deeper than we realize.

Linguistic Diversity + B…

We all know the kind, where a dad joke walks into a bar… and doubles up in pain due to the obvious and enthusiastic wordplay.

In Japanese, oyaji (old man) gyagu (gag) are essentially dad jokes that are met with a blank stare from younger folk.

In Japanese, oyaji (old man) gyagu (gag) are essentially dad jokes that are met with a blank stare from younger folk.

Successful joke telling can form a bond between the teller and the audience, but sometimes they are banded together against the butt of the joke.

No special kind of comedic performance or timing is needed—so anyone can tell a dad joke.

One is a front stage presentation for public consumption and the other a secret collective coordination behind the scenes.

The media amplified his framing, together with a confusion of opinions in the absence of an actual report to report on.

So the linguistic choices lawyers make can have a major impact on people’s beliefs and memories, for good or for ill.

Legal language researchers such as Edward Finegan have cautioned that increasingly, judges seem to have decided court cases by just looking up a dictionary and cherrypicking certain meanings over others that suit their purpose.

But dictionary entries can be framed, too.

Different vested interests have manipulated language to downplay, deflect, and shift public attention away from blaming political leaders for ignoring the clear scientific consensus behind the climate emergency.

Morrison’s astonishingly clumsy spinning of the crisis has, in fact, ignited a political firestorm and led to a public and international outpouring of blame.

Sten Hansson’s linguistic case study on blame avoidance in government lays out the many ways that political leaders have sought to reframe scandals and political firestorms to escape accountability.

Political leaders can use a “discursive power abuse” through language to manipulate communication and public perception.

It has ta…

And the tendency toward this kind of behavior is called “cancel culture.”Is the destructive power of cancel culture too much?

Cancel culture is, on the one hand, less severe than these acts of public shaming, because it is mostly linguistic and communicative.

This could explain why cancel culture seems so widespread, so virulently uncontrollable, and so dangerously unstable.

It’s this that makes cancel culture very much a part of modern life.

As language can be dangerous, and as crowd movements can be destructive, so can the cancel culture of “internet mobs” be damaging in the wrong contexts.

Keeping the news in a state of good health, in the age of social media, has become more urgent than ever.

By now, we may think we know fake headlines well enough not to fall into the trap.

It was, incredibly, literally true, yet because it didn’t accurately describe the context, wasn’t it also a kind of fake news?

In identifying misinformation, we often focus too closely on the superficial and obvious aspects of this shiny new concept of fake news—a fake clickbait headline accompanying a fake news article of actual falsehoods.

In one study on subtly misleading headlines, researchers found that headlines can affect how readers remember information and make inferences about the news.

There’s hardly an indigenous culture surviving that does not struggle to preserve their traditional language and knowledge against the overwhelming homogenizing influences of Western colonialism.

In many places, scientists are finding, to their surprise, that traditional knowledge is on a par with many scientific discoveries.

But what does it mean when we accept traditional knowledge as a kind of science only after it’s been compared with contemporary scientific knowledge and processes, and shown to be similar?

Traditional knowledge often values a more nuanced, contextual, and holistic view of information from observation and thought, not just piecemeal experimentation of discrete, individu…

He promptly, but naively, sent it all to Nigerian scammers, who had promised him a cool $50 million in return.

The stories are colorful variations of each other, but the language used to tell them are key to capturing a potential mark’s (greedy) imagination.

Nigerian 419 cons (the number refers to the fraud section of the Nigerian Criminal Code) are practically the oldest scams on the internet.

In the updated 419 Nigerian scam, the potential mark is asked to pay a small advance fee, or asked to send their bank information or personal details to help move funds that have been locked up, perhaps in a foreign country, or somewhere plausibly difficult.

The language scammers use to impress and f…

By extension it is the patron herb of the names of bistros and catering companies: About Thyme, Thyme to Dine, Thyme 4 Pasta, Meal Thyme, Wild Thymes, Thyme to Indulge, Nosh Thyme… also an enormous chain of maternity shops.

That thyme may seem out of joint if you know the fresh item, which brings so much more and other.

Thyme is supposed to be good for many organs, though I don’t know whether it is good for the thymus.

The upsilon, as ever, was rendered in Latin with y, which is why we have thyme after θύμον.

I regret to inform you that no other European language has the same pun on thyme and time that English has, however, so there is no point in imagining that this had to do with thyme to…

But there is Rosemary and there is rosemary.

While Rosemary transparently has rose, the angora cat of flowers, and Mary, the rose of Biblical ladies, and just incidentally has a whiff of its eponymous herb, the lower-case rosemary drags you straight into the kitchen and the forest; it is royalty among herbs, and just incidentally nods at its namesake ladies.

A branch of rosemary looks like a branch of pine, but with style: smart stripes down the middle.

The classic alpine scent of rosemary gains tastes of eucalyptus and other sage things and, um, soap.

And unlike sage, rosemary is hardy: even when dry, the needles retain much of the flavour (and gain even more of the stab).

Aina and I pulled out some old VHS tapes and have started digitizing them.

I was 21 years old.

It was a community theatre production at the Walterdale Theatre in Edmonton.

It was directed and taught by Fan Yisong and Sun Huizhou (William Sun), and it included Balinese performer I Nyoman Catra plus a few people who are now professors of theatre.

But it’s worth watching at least the beginning (after the introduction by Laurence Senelick) so you can see what I looked like when I was very skinny and had very long hair.

A plummet, as you may know, is a little bit of lead (hence the name: from plumb, from Latin plumbum ‘lead’, plus diminutive –et) used to weight a line for sounding depths or determining vertical.

The verb plummet first (in the early 1600s) meant to use a plummet to sound the depth of water; more recently (from the mid-1800s) it has meant to fall precipitously – like a plummet being dropped, I guess.

If you would lead, then bring your leadand take your soundings from it—you need not heed what’s in your head;just stop and drop your plummet.

If to the object you object,don’t seek to overcome it;your sense is suspect, I suspect—don’t guess the depth, just plumb it.

When you have read what you m…

Take a leaf of fresh sage, a soft, caressing pointlet of dense green, ready to be petted.

—Tao Te Ching, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane EnglishDoes this seem fair, equating sage with the sage?

The identity of form is deceptive: sage meaning ‘wise’ traces back to Latin sapere ‘know, be wise’; sage the plant traces to salvia, as we have seen.

“Cur moriatur homo cui salvia crescit in horto?” said the mediaevals (“Why die when sage grows in your garden?”).

(Unless your sage has larger leaves than my sage, those Balles will be litull indeede.)

But there is a thing about letting trebuchet loose from your tongue that may throw you off.

We got it from Old French, in which trebuchet was said with the last syllable identical to how we say Chet as in Chet Baker.

Specifically, like an English-accented rendition of trébuchet, which is the modern French descendent of trebuchet, meaning the same thing and said as you would expect.

Trebuchet may seem more like the latter but is actually more like the former (fitting, since a Moët can throw a cork a long distance, whereas a claret cannot).

We have, in general, decided to keep up with modern times, pull trebuchet out of the garage and pay homage to the modern Gauls, and say it to rhyme with “…

Originally published on The Editors’ Weekly, the blog of Editors CanadaIs writing art?

If we say writing is “artful,” or “artistic,” or “an art,” we mean that we appreciate it aesthetically and admire it for the skill it evinces.

But if we say not “writing is an art” but “writing is art” – or “this text is a work of art” – we connect it to an identity that is simultaneously nebulous and overloaded.

If something serves an ordinary function, many people won’t accept it as art, whatever its aesthetic qualities may be.

But the ideals exist, and they push against any editorial role: if a book is a work of art, then it is not up to anyone but the author to shape it!

To the ancient Greeks, parsley was just another kind of celery, and if you had to be specific, it was the kind that grew on rocks.

But Henry VIII was known to like parsley sauce, which was – and is – a simple white sauce flavoured with parsley.

Parsley can also be seen dancing on top of many a dish throughout Europe, where, as everywhere, it packs a pretty punch.

And in France, you cannot season a good sauce without a bouquet-garni, and you cannot make a decent bouquet-garni without parsley.

I must be fair: the American orbit is not the only place parsley is seen as prettification.

For Chaucer, the happy couple were swete herte; for Shakespeare, sweet-heart.

And for Dashiell Hammett, sweetheart.

You can buy small sugar hearts called Sweethearts, each bearing a message (like a confectionary fortune cookie); you can make a sweetheart deal if you’re negotiating a contract.

And of course “sweetness heart”:But you want your true sweetheart, especially at Valentine’s (which, as a celebration of romance, is newer than this word, sweetheart).

And you will want your sweetheart to let you call them sweetheart:That was a hit in 1911, and it kept coming back…Sweet and heart, together once and forever in English, though their cousins in other languages have never paired off in par…

He didn’t create Finnish culture, of course.

The Finnish language is like a very well tended tree.

The Finnish language didn’t have the same prestige as Swedish, but it was spoken by a lot of people.

For another, the Finnish language has changed so much in the intervening centuries that the kind of Finnish he wrote down is now called Old Finnish.

He went on a trip to Karelia, an eastern area that’s now mostly in Russian territory, and got to know some of the roots of Finnish culture.

It’s a trap. It’s a Barmecide feast, a Potemkin village. It’s like internecine, comprise, meretricious, or one of Benjamin Lee Whorf’s “empty” gasoline drums. If you go by what it looks like, even by what you’ve seen other people treat … Continue reading →

You know that you when you glow you radiate: light comes from you, and warmth too. But are you also a glower when you glower? I won’t say which has a greater glimmer of glamour, but while a beau or … Continue reading →

Cenesthesia is, according to Merriam-Webster, “the general feeling of inhabiting one’s body that arises from multiple stimuli from various bodily organs.” It is also spelled coenesthesia, reflecting its roots in Greek κοινός koinos (Latinized as coen–) ‘common’ and αἴσθησις aisthesis (Latinized as aesthesis) … Continue reading →

Through this research, we can see that thanks responses in English are not very frequent on the whole.

This is in contrast to some other languages.

In addition, the sensitivity of thanks responses to socio-economic setting suggest that they are a subtle form of cultural encoding, with common responses in LARC-up and LARC-mid restaurants possibly signalling formality.

Furthermore, thanks responses do not appear to be very standardized, with a wide range of forms being used, especially in LARC-mid and LARC-low.

The fact that the type of service performed elicits differing thanks responses across the different socio-economic settings reinforces the sense that these small linguistic acts are ac…

This is a question that some recent research has addressed.In their recent research report, Elminger, Schwade and Goldstein examined the function of babbling in infants’ language development.

Previous research has suggested that parents’ speech will match the child’s current age, changing as the child grows.

So, in general, it seems that parents may simplify the whole structure of their speech in response to their child’s babble, suggesting that infant babbling really does influence the adult response.

It may be that this immature, pre-speech babble is actually engineered by the child to create language learning opportunities through eliciting simplified, easy-to-learn responses from their …

In other words, would a candidate with, say a Multicultural London English accent, be perceived as less professional or competent as their Received Pronunciation speaking peers?

To create the mock interviews, we had 10 speakers (2 of each accent) record 10 good and 10 poor interview responses.

They were then asked to evaluate whether they thought the answer was a 'good' answer or a 'poor' answer.

The high quality answers are in yellow and the lower quality answers are in green.

So, it's possible that accent bias might influence the candidate's progression later on down the line.

The second part of our study, detailed here, investigated how people responded to recordings of speakers with different accents to see if the same accent bias exists in speech.

To examine these questions, we recorded 10 speakers of 5 different accents (2 speakers each).

Younger participants, however, did not show this pattern.

On the right are the older participants and on the left, the younger participants.

We proposed that the more prejudiced people were, the lower their ratings of the different accents would be.

We've developed a series of Language Investigations and Teaching Units that helps students and teachers develop a research project of their own!

It's therefore possible that people view these accents much more positively than they did 50 years ago.However, this study examines only responses to 'accent labels'.

What would we find if we played actual audio recordings of these accents to participants?

In the next blog post, we introduce the findings from the second part of our study.

In the meantime, you can find our more about the project by visiting the project website.

Did you know that as well as the 'Research Digest', we also maintain the 'Teach Real English!'

Our site is an archive of spoken English Language Teaching resources that have been developed by Linguists at Queen Mary University of London.

Our website includes:A database of spoken English (containing sound clips and transcripts)Language Investigations for exploring the English language in every day situationsA range of Teaching Units designed to offer secondary school teachers of English language up-to-date examples of English language useGlossaries and descriptions of spoken English featuresThe materials have been designed for teachers of GCSE and GCEA-Level English Language, but they may be…

In their 2007 study, they report on a BBC survey that collected 5010 respondents’ evaluations of 34 different accents.

The researchers also asked a series of questions about whether the respondent liked hearing different accents to test whether their attitudes towards accents and dialects influenced their ratings of the different accent labels.

Coupland and Bishop find that, for social attractiveness, accents such as, andare generally positively evaluated, whilst accents such as, andwere typically down-rated – that is, they score much lower.

Interestingly, accents such asandare rated far higher for attractiveness than for prestige, whereasandare all ranked higher for prestige than for attra…

African American women have frequently been depicted as ‘fierce’ or ‘sassy’, even in very old media representations of this community.

These representations are obviously very problematic since they are based on racialised and essentialised ideas about the personal qualities of African American women.

Returning to the Twitter data, Ilbury argues that these representations are helpful in explaining why the men are using features of AAVE.

He suggests that it is exactly that this ‘sassy’ meaning that the men are ‘activating’ by using components of AAVE.

Ilbury, Christian (Online First/2019) “Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE.

Rather, they can extract massive datasets of social media data to examine where in the country these words are used most.

This finding is shown in the graphic below, where for all of the 8 words, the Twitter maps look comparable to those created for the BBC Voices project.

For instance, consider the maps for the word ‘bairn’ – a word that means ‘child’ is typically heard in northern UK dialects (second row, right).

Nevertheless, with these issues aside, Grieve and colleagues’ analysis suggests that the findings observed in large-scale dialectal surveys are largely mirrored in the Twitter data.

As such, we can expect more and more sociolinguistic research to examine data from social media si…

But, what if I told you that the Queen’s speech isn’t the same as it was in more recent decades than, say, in the 1950’s.

By examining the Queen’s Christmas address across three different time periods (1950’s, late 1960/ early 70’s, 1980’s), Harrington and his colleagues examined how the changing social landscape related to the Queen’s English.

They also compared the Queen’s pronunciation of these vowels with data from Standard Southern British English speaking females to see how the Queen’s speech related to more general patterns of speech.

They also compared the Queen’s pronunciation of these vowels with data from Standard Southern British English speaking females to see how the Queen’s s…

Lucy Jones of the University of Nottingham did a study on a group of LGBT youths, looking particularly at the way that they used language to construct their own identity.

Her research took place in a youth group that specifically supported those who identified as LGBT or who questioned their gender or sexual identity.

Jones identified three ways in which these young people negotiated their identity.

Jones argued that this creates a disconnect between being gay and performing a gay identity, and hence deliberately distancing themselves from it.

Glossary - Cisgender: Someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth------------------------------------------------------…

As one of the best-selling pop artists of our time, Lady Gaga is a name few would fail to recognise.

The term ‘stance’ refers to the way that people align or position themselves in relation to some object, person or idea.

The notion of stance-taking refers to the actual process of making that alignment, which is usually achieved through communication.

The term ‘stance’ refers to the way that people align or position themselves in relation to some object, person or idea.

The notion of stance-taking refers to the actual process of making that alignment, which is usually achieved through communication.

If you’ve spent even a day casually browsing the Internet, you’re probably aware of the stereotypes of a 'typical white girl'.

There are, of course, language features associated with the stereotypical white girl too.

One comes from the popular Teenage girl problems, where the white girl character is performed in a way that mocks her stereotypical concerns.

One comes from the popular Sh*t white girls say Youtube series, looking specifically at two videos that discuss what white girls say to black and Latina girls.

Ultimately, there are a number of ideological stances that the white girl character can be used for.

Well, if you were just about anywhere in 2014, you might recall her smash hit song 'Fancy' featuring Charli XCX.

In fact, that song was so popular that it earnt Iggy Ig's a Billboard award for the 'biggest ever hit for a female rapper'.

------------------------------------------------------------But, why does Iggy sound 'Black'?

But, as a White Australian, Iggy doesn't really look or sound like a Hip-Hop artist... Hip-Hop in an Australian accent doesn't seem to work!

But, whilst she might be able to speak AAE like a native speaker, it seems that her performance is still pretty problematic.

Whether it’s in friends, designer handbags, or website security, one quality people always want is authenticity.

In a recent paper, Pia Pichler Nathanael Williams andlook specifically at the way identity is authenticated by four young men from South London.

One of the men, Les, was complaining about some girls fighting on the website, specifically referring to them as “white girls from The Hills”.

For example, Les also complains about white kids from Oxford or Cambridge proffering extended opinions on hip-hop.

For example, when discussing his brother’s membership in a South London gang, Les saysandas opposed toand– a feature known as DH-stopping.

you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right?

where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?

wellbehold, the journal of recreational linguisticswith such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:Anger?

‘Tis safe never.

Spell that backward and you get:Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

Lingthusiasm Episode 41: This time it gets tense - The grammar of timeHow do languages talk about the time when something happens?

Of course, we can use words like “yesterday”, “on Tuesday”, “once upon a time”, “now”, or “in a few minutes”.

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about when some languages obligatorily encode time into their grammar.

—This month’s bonus episode is about what happens when the robots take over Lingthusiasm!

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] comGretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Her memory sheds light on the ambitious project of social engineering undertaken by the KMT to make the island Chinese.

In many schools, the KMT even deployed “language police” to enforce the policy of only allowing students to speak Mandarin.

During the White Terror period, the KMT ruled Taiwan as if it were only a province within the country of China.

Taiwan was represented in the legislature along with Henan, Hunan, Shanxi, and China’s other provinces, so rather than the legislature representing Taiwan, it only gave Taiwan a small provincial voice.

The KMT reshaped just about every aspect of Taiwan’s society—education, media, the law—in order to impose a Chinese identity on the island’s …

We also have a page that lists all of our episodes by subject, for easy inclusion in your study.

Are you a teacher or prof using Lingthusiasm - take our survey and help us support you better!

First things first: Thanks so much for sharing Lingthusiasm with your students!

We’re using a short Google Form survey to keep a record of how Lingthusiasm is being used in teaching.

We may refer to data from this form in aggregate (“Lingthusiasm is used in X Ling101 classes”).

Tom Scott, creator of short videos for those curious about the world, has teamed up with Gretchen to make more videos in his Language Files videos.

I am very excited that they have made a video about gesture, and how it’s a part of language.

You can even watch Tom succumb to the moment of overwhelming self-awareness about his own gestures – which I’ve come to appreciate as an exciting development when my students start studying gesture, and come to realise there’s a whole feature of communication they’ve never analysed before.

The Language Files also has videos on The Language Sounds That Could Exist, But Don’t and Why “No Problem” Can Seem Rude: Phatic Expressions.

Thanks to Tom and Gretch…

Tom Scott, creator of short videos for those curious about the world, has teamed up with Gretchen to make more videos in his Language Files videos.

I am very excited that they have made a video about gesture, and how it’s a part of language.

You can even watch Tom succumb to the moment of overwhelming self-awareness about his own gestures – which I’ve come to appreciate as an exciting development when my students start studying gesture, and come to realise there’s a whole feature of communication they’ve never analysed before.

The Language Files also has videos on The Language Sounds That Could Exist, But Don’t and Why “No Problem” Can Seem Rude: Phatic Expressions.

Thanks to Tom and Gretch…

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:Anger?

‘Tis safe never.

Spell that backward and you get:Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

My newsletter for January 2020: a robo-generated episode of Lingthusiasm, Lingthusiasm Discord server, LingComm Grant, and xkcd hovertextI got namechecked in the hovertext of an xkcd comic this month, which may have resulted in more congratulatory messages from friends than when my book was reviewed in the New York Times, so, you know, it’s good to see that everyone has their priorities on track.

My Wired article about code being based on English got translated into Japanese for Wired Japan.

I can’t actually read it, but I suppose…

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:Anger?

‘Tis safe never.

Spell that backward and you get:Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:Anger?

‘Tis safe never.

Spell that backward and you get:Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

Here’s a neural net recipe.

Some of the neural net recipes bear at least some resemblance to the human versions, but manage to mess them up profoundly.

I couldn’t find a setting at which the neural net recipes could consistently pass for human.

One thing the neural net has learned from humans is that it’s good to include a story with your recipe.

Bonus content: More jello-centric neural net recipes, including some that were too long to post here.

I’ve been working on the linguist autodidact problem (“I’m super excited about linguistics!

We didn’t start the Lingthusiasm Discord server with the idea that it would support linguistics autodidacts.

And people were excited about the open access intro linguistics textbook linked to from that post (the only open access intro ling textbook I’m aware of, if there are others please tell me!)

Plus, a few other cool things about the Lingthusiasm Discord server:Other channels that we’ve added by request include conlanging, language puzzles, academia, and language learning, since many people who are interested in linguistics overlap with one or more of these areas!

And we’re open to adding still m…

this is oddly close to real‘ard’ is a real suffix in the english language just like ‘ly’ or ‘ify’, it just isnt common enough for us to notice its usage.

‘ard’ means ‘too much’ or ‘too easily’so ‘mustard’ is something that is ‘too pungent’, just as ‘wizard’ is someone who is too wise, ‘coward’ is someone too easily cowed, and ‘drunkard’ is someone too often drunkthis implies that ‘bastard’ is someone who is too ‘bast’ and this needs experimentation and research

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:Anger?

‘Tis safe never.

Spell that backward and you get:Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

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I’ll get to the regularly scheduled links in a bit, but I wanted to lead off with some recommendations from my 2019 media diet (a term I’ve borrowed from Jason Kottke, whose blog always makes for tasty consumption). A couple of magazine articles: “What I Learned in Avalanche School,” by...

« previous post |Tweet from Joshua Wong 黃之鋒, Secretary-General of Demosistō:Here is Winnie The Flu that we call as #WTF Credit to Yeahman Tse via Legend Bricks LEGO Forum pic.twitter.com/q04K7QfAku — Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) February 24, 2020So many layers and levels of visual and verbal puns and metaphors!

To understand more fully the implications of Yeahman Tse's LEGO figure and its accompanying pet, see the following posts:Permalink

From an abstract cognitive point of view, each language organizes phonological features into a sort of grammar of syllabic structures, with categories like onsets, nuclei and codas.

Syllables seems to play a central role in child language acquisition, with words following a gradual development from very simple syllable patterns, through closer and closer approximations to adult phonological and phonetic norms.

Over the years, I've found that even simpler methods, based on selecting peaks in a smoothed amplitude contour, also work quite well (see e.g.

Margaret Fleck and Mark Liberman, "Test of an automatic syllable peak detector", JASA 1982; and slides on Dinka tone alignment from EFL 2015).…

« previous post |From Jeff DeMarco:I hit the translation button for this Facebook post and this is what I got!

Here's the same announcement as rendered by Google Translate:Yóuyú shòu yìqíng yǐngxiǎng, xiānggǎng wénhuà zhōngxīn guānbì zhì 3 yuè 2 rì, hóngguāng guó yuètuán 2 yuè 29 rì "bàwáng yǔ guìfēi-mínyuè xìqǔ jiāo huīyìng" yīnyuè huì qǔxiāo.

Qǐng guānzhòng bǎoliú ménpiào, liúyì wénhuà zhōngxīn jí hóngguāng guó yuètuán facebook de zīxùn, yǒuguān tuìpiào huò bǔ yǎn ānpái róng hòu gōngbù.

Visitors are advised to keep their tickets, pay attention to the Facebook information of the Cultural Center and Hongguang Chinese Orchestra, and the details of refunds or make-up arrangements will be anno…

« previous post |From a Taiwanese colleague:In the struggle against Wǔhàn fèiyán 武漢肺炎 ("Wuhan pneumonia"), Taiwan has to fight the war on three fronts: (1) trying to stop the virus at its borders; (2) trying to join the WHO for world-wide collaboration and disease information; and (3) fighting against the Communist Chinese dictatorial linguistic policies.

The linguistic policy on disease terminology is really weird; it smacks of George Orwell's 1984.

He cites this article in Chinese and this facebook page (also in Chinese).

Here's another article in Chinese from Taiwan that sticks to "Wuhan pneumonia" despite the pressure from WHO and the PRC government to adopt a name that is not transpare…

We should do the same for local languages.

There are many reasons to keep local languages strong.

UNESCO identifies local languages as an integral part of human rights.

Local languages hold deep cultural knowledge, provide a bridge to traditions, and allow community to identify and value itself in the modern world.

At BASAbali, a collaboration of scholars, artists and advocates fueled by passionate millennials, we're trying to change public behavior and attitudes toward local languages.

« previous post |From IAS: Institute for Advanced Study; Report for the Academic Year 2018-2019, p. 8:The scholar in the photograph is the Greek historian Angelos Chanjotis, who is shown leading an Epigraphc Friday workshop.

More than a decade ago, when it was circulating widely, I made a determined effort to debunk this tenacious trope with a long essay under the title "danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray" (Pinyin.info [2009]).

I, on the other hand, have been much solaced by the fact that I've barely encountered this pernicious meme during the past seven or eight years.

See also 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak and, for a recent di…

« previous post | next post »Stuart Luppescu saw this restaurant sign in Saitama, Fukaya:It's a yakiniku 焼肉 ("grilled meat") place called "Yoshi's Restaurant".

What's especially intriguing about it is that instead of the genitive suffix -no 〜の, they substituted the English genitive case marker -'s.

I find it all the more charming that they've transcribed the sound of the English case marker as -zu in rōmaji, which they have highlighted in red, as they did the -'s in English!

Most likely scenario is probably just 義, or in this case 焼肉 義 (with the space implied graphically by use of a different font, color, size, etc.)

We have McDonald's and Denny's of course, but the closest homegrown analog…

… The issue which made [the Pythagorean comma] so pressingly important was nothing less than the question .. whether reality is mathematical or not.

When Pythagoras discovered (or learned) the so-called Pythagorean Theorem, … it is said that he hastened to sacrifice oxen.

…The Pythagorean Theorem is the threshold to the discovery of irrational numbers and incommensurable lengths — a discovery which Hellenists attribute to Hippasus of Tarentum, a renegade Pythagorean whom, according to one account, Pythagoras pushed off a boat for revealing to outsiders the tragic secret of the Pythagorean Theorem, which was irrationality or incommensurability.

… The discovery that the side and diagonal of a…

In extended use: a supporter of or player for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (traditionally associated with the Jewish community in north and east London).

Lynne Murphy, "The point of dictionaries is to describe how language is used, not to police it", The Guardian 2/17/2020:Tottenham Hotspur has shown the yellow card to the Oxford English Dictionary for its new definitions of the words "yid" and "yiddo".

[…]The use of the word has caused controversy in recent years with sections of Tottenham supporters using the terms themselves in an attempt to reclaim them.

Someone in a position to know explained that they were looking for a student who was "Jewish, but not too Jewish".

He had never kno…

The JP drain today continues to be a popular drain of choice for surgeons in all subspecialties.

Although many practitioners will ask for the JP and Blake drain by name interchangeably, there are significant differences in the design.

The origin of the BLAKE drain, as it is spelled on the distributors' (Ethicon, Inc) website, has a history that is less obvious and defined.

The Blake drain's original design is hubless with an even transition from the perforated to nonperforated portion.

Both, the JP and Blake drains, accomplish the task of closed suction negative-pressure drainage.

We are on familiar territory when Foltz writes:Other Ossetian divine names are constructed of combinations.

{II}Here Foltz shows three photographs taken in Korea, featuring a Scythian-style kurgan, drinking horn and gold jewelry, Silla kingdom, Korea.

In conclusion, both language and cultural traditions tie the Alans more closely to the Ossetes than to any of the other Caucasian peoples.

{II}For the deep Iranian connections of the Ossetians and the Scythians with ancient Iranian peoples and practices, we may consider as one concrete instance the following:'Ares': The god of war.

The modern Uastyrdzhi, who is the most prominent deity for the Ossetians today, presumably descends from this war…

But let's read the poem first, then I'll talk about the word in question, namely, méisuō 沒娑 ("massage").

Translation by Diana Shuheng ZhangAll right, what's so special about méisuō 沒娑 ("massage")?

I invite Language Log readers who are interested in Old Sinitic reconstructions to comment further.

Casting about for parallels to this old Sinitic lexeme meaning "massage", it didn't take long for me to light upon "massage", which is the very word we use to translate méisuō 沒娑, etc.

When I looked up the etymology of "massage", I was amazed to learn that "massage" derives from an Arabic word.

« previous post |From Jonathan Falk:When Wuhan is called the "epicenter" of the coronavirus outbreak, do people know that epicenter is a term borrowed from geology and is just a metaphor for what is in fact the "center" of an outbreak, or are they fooled by the "epi-" prefix to think it has something to do with "epidemic?"

The source of the English prefix is the Greek preposition ἐπί meaning "on".

The OED gives the etymology of epidemic as< Old French ypidime, impidemie, French épidemie, < late Latin epidemia, epidimia, Greek ἐπιδημία prevalence of an epidemic, < ἐπιδήμιος, < ἐπί + δῆμος people.

something like "on the people".

My own current association with the prefix epi- has been the exp…

She relies entirely on lipreading and the little bits of sound she can detect with her hearing aid.

Our conversation was very smooth […] The commonly cited low success rate for lipreading isn’t based on people like González.

His work is less about lipreading than it is about the perception of speech.

In it, the researchers examined lipreading abilities among those with impaired hearing (IH, in the study) and normal hearing.

“Visual speech perception in highly skilled IH lipreaders is similar in accuracy to auditory speech perception under somewhat difficult to somewhat favorable listening conditions,” the researchers concluded.

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

If you hear someone speaking Central European Yiddish, Viswanath explained to me, it would be a relatively safe bet that they are from a Hassidic community in Brooklyn.

Whereas a speaker of Northern European Yiddish is more likely to have been taught at a secular university or school.

So whose dialect was going to be digitally archived as the Yiddish dialect?

It triggered a community-wide debate: some felt that the Northern dialect, which closely matches the written form, was most appropriate.

There were 13 million Yiddish speakers before the Holocaust; today the number hovers at around half a million.

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

Afterwards, there were two days of long meetings with the director, the producer, me and several people from the distribution company.

It was helpful to have a group of us thinking together about the challenging parts of the translation.

– In one scene, a woman calls a dish “jjapaguri” but the subtitle says “ramdon.” Is it true that “jjapaguri” was the hardest to translate?

I was embarrassed because I made up this word “ramdon.” I thought people would laugh at me for it, but it works in the film.

I think Bong likes England a lot.

If your preferred feed is Twitter, you can follow @languagehat to get links to new posts here as they appear.

You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

SongdogKaleidoscopeThe Daily Growler †wood s lot †MetaFilteran eudæmonistAvva (Russian)Naked TranslationsNo-swordThe Cassandra PagesTransblawgHaquelebacFar OutlierspaperpoolsLizok's BookshelfA Bad GuidePoemas del río WangThe Flaxen WaveТЕТРАДКИ: Что о нас думают в Европе?

This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor.

It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

Back in 2010, I linked to Anne Lounsbery’s “To Moscow, I Beg You!”: Chekhov’s Vision of the Russian Provinces; she’s since incorporated her thoughts from that and other articles into her new book Life Is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800–1917 .

But “the provinces,” on the other hand—and particularly the provincial city—have often been represented simply as the not-capital, as the embodiment of lack.

But the designation “the provinces” does not refer to absolutely everything outside of Petersburg and Moscow, because the label “provincial” does not focus on rural life per se.

Similarly, a nobleman’s estate, regardless of its location, can be deeply provincial or not…

Perhaps it was “___,” a word so dreadful that she only whispered it in her very worst, most defiant moments.

She blushed and passionately begged Our Lady’s pardon for even having thought of such a word in her presence.

“You’d make a rotten, I mean a hopeless novice.” “A rotten novice, but a first-class Reverend Mother.

And as a future Mistress of Discipline, my dear Hilary, may I remind you that there is a fine of sixpence for using the word rotten?”I’m not sure why rotten was proscribed.

The word so dreadful that Nanda could only whisper it ‘in her very worst, most defiant moments’ is … belly.

Brian Moore, last seen on this blog Irishly having tea, uses a couple of interesting dialect words in his 1958 novel The Feast of Lupercal. One of them, codding, is in my idiolect in various forms, including codology; the other, stravaging, I’ve seldom seen and had to look up. An old sexton, dusting the church […]

British English also uses -ise, and it is house style for some newspapers and magazines, such as the Guardian and Economist.

Hello, vocative comma looks at the comma you often see between a greeting word and a name:Some include a comma after the greeting word (Hi, Bob), while others skip it (Hi Bob).

Sometimes it depends on the greeting word (Hi Kate but Hello, Kate), the register (Hello honey but Hello, Dr Smith), or things like mood and whim.

It’s called the vocative comma because these structures are in the vocative case.

But the vocative comma is used in many other types of situation, as the post goes on to show.

Lauren Beukes’s novel Broken Monsters has a short passage on business jargon and young people’s attitudes to it.

Layla, a character in her mid-teens, is visiting her friend Cas and introduces Cas’s father:Her dad is a tech-preneur.

Name a major company in Silicon Valley and he’s ‘pulled a stint there’ – his words.

Detroit is friendlier to start-ups: lower overheads, tax incentives, hungry talent, cheap office space in TechTown.

Some examples certainly qualify as tech jargon or terminology: the portmanteau tech-preneur and the fictional brand Curatr, with its fashionably dropped vowel (cf.

The Scots Syntax Atlas (SCOSYA) is a fantastic, newly launched website that will appeal to anyone interested in language and dialect, especially regional varieties and their idiosyncratic grammar.

This part of a language is called its syntax, and it’s one of the most creative aspects of how people use language.

open up lists of dialect usages: didnae, We was, jamp, She seen, Gonnae you, I’ll away, needs washed, etc.

FAQs explain briefly what Scots is, how it relates to Standard Scottish English and Gaelic, whether it’s a dialect or a language, and so on.

The Scots Syntax Atlas was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and created by researchers from the University of Glasgow, U…

While the word’s meaning is clear enough, its origin is uncertain and much speculated upon, as we’ll see.

The culchie stereotype still shows up in culchie jokes that exploit the rural/urban divide.

We’ve even tried to take back “culchie” for ourselves, but the lingering bovine associations just can’t quite be shaken off.

Culchie could come simply from coillte ‘woods’ or coillteach ‘wooded’.

Plural coillte ‘woods’ was anglicized less problematically as ‘kilty’ or ‘quilty’: Kiltyclogher in County Leitrim comes from Coillte Cloghair ‘woods of the stony place’.

‘Women’s use of slang is drastically under-reported,’ writes Green in his new book, Sounds & Furies: The Love–Hate Relationship between Women and Slang.

The book’s focus, happily, is on women and slang, not in slang.

Detecting authentic female slang is made trickier by the phenomenon of literary ‘ventriloquy’, whereby men write women and vice versa.

The last chapter proper is a welcome account, and glossary, of lesbian slang.

The appearance online of a variety of lesbian slang lists may also be a generational thing.

Slang is playful and facetious, the story goes, the language by which groups hang together.

Yes, I’m talking about sex, or, more precisely, the language of sex — not copulate or get it on, but the relative value of fuck and bang or nail.

I don’t excuse hammer and tap, but I must point out that other slang indulges in metaphorical violence.

One can fuck people without meaning to puncture them with one’s prick, or any other *peuk-ing thing.

Adults they won’t listen to, anyway, should probably point that out to them, but the cycle of violent slang for sex and other things will probably be unbroken.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the planful Massachusetts Democrat, is not the presidential candidate who comes to mind when one thinks of political potty-mouths. (See Ben Zimmer’s 2019 Tucker Awards for examples of public swearing from Beto O’Rourke and Tim Ryan, who… Continue reading →

"@rudebwoy_lamz: Bomboclaat pic.twitter.com/nFJOIHk7Sj" — Ikenna Anabor (@talk2anabs) September 19, 2019"@rudebwoy_lamz: Bomboclaat pic.twitter.com/0M5HBPmAOn" When you think you will last 4hours but after 4mins you're already pulling out.

https://t.co/LdPRTLRVYO — L A M A R🥀⚡ (@rudebwoy_lamz) October 16, 2019In languages worldwide, swears most often involve sex, hygiene, parents, and/or religion.

Jamaican Patois draws on the first two for these, especially the hygiene part, in bomboclaat and its siblings bloodclaat and rassclaat.

Rass can also be used as a stand-alone swear, a fact adeptly used by Kwame Dawes and Kellie Magnus in their splendid Patois translation of Go the Fuck to Sleep:Go…

With the calendar turning on another year (and another decade), it’s time once again for the annual Strong Language honors for excellence in swearing.

For the past half-decade, Strong Language has been on the scene, tracking all the highlights in low language.

Best Fucking Swearing in Politics (U.S. edition)It’s hard to choose the winner for U.S. political swearing in a year that featured so much of it on both sides of the aisle.

Best Fucking Swearing in Politics (UK edition)With the endless wrangling over Brexit and general-election grief, there was plenty to swear about in British politics in 2019.

As James Harbeck observed in a Strong Language post, “Lana does not swear like a sailor or …

Then, thanks to Hulu, Bell reappeared as Veronica Mars, grown-up private eye, in Season Four of Veronica Mars, another show in which euphemism is practically a character.

In the same episode, Veronica reports to a client, Carson, that her husband is having an affair.

The euphemisms in the latest and presumably last season of Veronica Mars tell two stories.

Second, and to my mind yet more interesting, in its last season, Veronica Mars has introduced a generic euphemism.

Veronica Mars, however, rejects euphemisms specific to their profanities, like sugar for shit, and relies, instead, on a self-explanatory one: cuss.

With Joe Pesci back in the spotlight thanks to The Irishman, and Christmas just around the corner, I’ve been remembering one of his finest performances – as hapless burglar Harry Lyme in Home Alone.

It’s easy to forget how against-type this role was for Pesci, best known for playing menacing, foul-mouthed criminals in gangster films like Casino:(Don’t miss the TV version, with its fancy hecking swear-avoidance.)

When Pesci was sent the script for Home Alone, he ‘saw he could do something with it’, according to executive producer Mark Levinson.

But the filmmakers knew that Harry Lyme would be a challenge for Pesci.

What Pesci did, though, was even better, a masterclass in family-friendly pse…

Lana Del Rey, the depressed, addicted, nostalgic, resentful, mournful, louche musical genius voiced by Elizabeth Grant, has released her new album, and – even more than all her previous albums – it is an instant Strong Language classic.

Lana does not swear like a sailor or a soldier or a rap or punk rock artist.

Between them they have 16 unique swearword instances and a total of 35 swearword utterances, for an average of one swear for every 52 seconds in the E-boxed songs.

But one song skews the numbers all by itself, and it’s not the title song.

But on the other hand, she’s actually using fucking in an album title and already used fucked literally in a song title.

It’s been just about four years since I published my first post about commercial sightings of “AF,” the abbreviation for the intensifier as fuck.

And now we find ourselves, and AF, in the middle of Main Street, USA.

The prominent display of “AF” is just one of the boundary-pushing, sassy-as-fuck elements of Down There wipes.

And neither, by the way, does Cottonelle, an unrelated brand of toilet paper and flushable wipes.

Now they’re on a mission—a hygiene revolution, they call it—to help everyone “feel fresh a.f.

You’ll soon be able to head over to the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and register those trademarks.

Because the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled in the Brunetti case that the statutory bars on registering “scandalous” and “immoral” trademarks are unconstitutional.

The trademark before the Court now, though, is not part of such a feel-good story.

It’s viewpoint discrimination to refuse to register marks that “defy .

perhaps on occasion creating the risk of verbal altercations or even physical confrontations.” But keeping FUCT off of the trademark register won’t even begin to solve that problem, no matter how much the Justices wish it would.

Slut’s origins are obscure; whatever you may have heard, it is not an acronym.

And in twenty-first-century America, slutty is sometimes used to describe red wines that are too easy or approachable, aka fruit bombs.

Three years later, Bill Murray used slut to deadpan comic effect when he directed it at Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

In 2011, after a Toronto police officer told a group of students they could avoid sexual assault by not dressing like “sluts,” women in that city organized the first of many SlutWalks, public protests to raise awareness of rape culture, victim blaming, and slut-shaming.

We want you to have an orgasmic experience and the ultimate feeling of euphoria that comes after h…

For this reason, in his book Dreyer’s English, Benjamin Dreyer calls the comma before a nonrestrictive appositive the “only” comma.

I gave her a controversial opinion: I would leave the comma out, because it simply doesn’t matter how many brothers Ryan has.

And even if they are, are they expecting that information to be communicated via a comma or the lack thereof?

Many of them don’t know what the comma is supposed to mean or even that it’s supposed to mean something.

No wonder readers don’t know what the “only” comma means—it’s a convention that editors just made up.

A lot of people dislike it when nouns like task and dialogue are turned into verbs, but this process has been a normal part of English for centuries.

In my latest piece for Grammar Girl, I explain why we should all relax a little about verbing nouns.

Read the whole piece or listen to the episode here.

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Today and tomorrow only, you can get 20 percent off T-shirts and other items at the Arrant Pedantry Store.

Just use the code ANYTHING20 at checkout.

And remember that you can customize the design color and even put the designs on other items, including mugs and phone cases.

Just hit the pencil icon below the item and then pick the product you want.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about style guides lately, and I decided that what the world really needs right now is the definitive style guide alignment chart.

Neutral Good: The MLA Handbook“A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do.” Look, the MLA Handbook certainly tries to do what’s right, even if it can’t make up its mind sometimes.

Lawful Neutral: The Elements of Style“A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her.” The Elements of Style, a.k.a.

Chaotic Evil: Publication Manual of the American Psychological AssociationA chaotic evil character is “arbitrarily violent” and “unpredictable.” Have you ever seen APA-style references?

Sty…

Regular readers of this blog have probably noticed that my name has a slightly unusual spelling: it’s Jonathon rather than Jonathan.

My parents thought the -on form was the usual spelling, so that’s what they put on my birth certificate.

On the first day of second grade in my new school, my teacher asked if I preferred Jon or Jonathon.

On a whim, I said Jon, so that’s what everyone called me.

But because of their similar forms, people conflate Jon and John and then start spelling Jonathan like Johnathan.

There’s a sale going on at the Arrant Pedantry Store today and tomorrow only.

Just use the code LOVE19 at checkout to get 20 percent off any order—there’s no minimum purchase.

And if you haven’t visited the store in a while, you might want to check out some of my new designs.

Take a look!

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A recent discussion on Twitter about whether the line “I’m gonna have to science the shit out out of this” was in Andy Weir’s book The Martian or was only found in the movie reminded me of one of my favorite facts: science and shit are related.

So let’s science the shit out of this etymology.

This means that shit probably started out as a euphemism.

In English, shit was fairly neutral for a long while and apparently didn’t become taboo until around 1600, at which point it mostly disappeared from print.

In Latin, the PIE root *skey gave rise to the verb scire ‘to know, to understand’.

You might even be suffering from a mild case of ergophobia, or the fear of work.

Work comes from the Proto-Germanic *werkam, which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom, ultimately from the root *werǵ ‘to make’.

It also apparently gives us the name George, a name meaning ‘farmer’ or ‘husbandman’, which comes from ge ‘earth’ + ergon ‘work’, literally ‘earth worker’.

The Proto-Indo-European *wérǵom also yielded the Germanic bulwark (literally ‘bole work’ or ‘tree work’), which originally meant a defensive wall made of logs.

It was also borrowed into French and became boulevard, with an anomalous change from /k/ to /d/ at the end.

It’s Black Friday (ugh), but from now through Sunday, everything at the Arrant Pedantry Store is 15 percent off (yay!).

Now’s a great chance to get a word-nerdy shirt for that special someone in your life (or for yourself).

Or if you wait until Monday, you can get 15 percent off and free shipping, which I think is the best sale that Spreadshirt has ever offered.

Just hit the Customize button, find the design you want, and put it on whatever product you want.

You can put Battlestar Grammatica on an iPhone case or I Could Care Fewer on a tote bag.

You may have seen articles like this one that list 10 or 15 words whose pronunciations have changed over time.

Here are 100,000 words that illustrate how words change.

As with *h₂epó, the initial laryngeal sound changed the vowel to /a/ and then disappeared.

It’s interesting to talk about how words have changed over the years, but listicles like “10 Words Whose Pronunciations Have Changed” can be misleading, because they imply that changes in pronunciation are both random and rare.

So while it’s okay to talk about individual words whose pronunciations have changed, I think we shouldn’t miss the bigger picture: it’s language change all the way down.

Q: “Court” seems to be an incredibly adaptable word—a royal court, a tennis court, a court of law, courting a beau or a client, heartache or disaster.

ultimately come from cohors, classical Latin for an enclosed area—what we’d now call a courtyard.

be foren midwinter dæi and held þær micel curt” (“When he came to England, he was received with great honor.

He was consecrated King in London on the Sunday before Christmas Day, and then he held a great court there”).

The verb “court,” which showed up in the early 1500s, originally meant to live at a royal court or spend a lot of time there.

Q: You have defended the singular “they” when it applies to an unknown person of unknown gender.

But how about for a known person of unknown gender?

A recent news article that said “they were fired” caused me to search back and forth to find who else was fired.

When we wrote about the nonbinary “they” three years ago, we noted that only one standard dictionary had recognized the usage.

#genderqueer #pronouns.” Oxford also has two later citations:“Asher thought they were the only nonbinary person at school until a couple weeks ago” (the Harvard-Westlake Chronicle, Los Angeles, Sept. 25, 2013).

A: Your question has to do with adjectives and their complements—that is, the words or phrases that complete them.

As any native speaker of English would know immediately, the “happy” sentences work with both complements, but the “lonely” sentences don’t.

This is because “lonely” is not among adjectives that can invariably be complemented by an infinitive.

Different adjectives simply act differently in different contexts.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.

(Note: In observance of Valentine’s Day, we’re repeating a post that originally appeared on Feb. 23, 2012.)

A: Yes, there is an apostrophe + “s” in “Valentine’s Day.” The longer form of the name for the holiday is “St.

As a common noun, “valentine” was first used to mean a lover, sweetheart, or special friend.

In February of that year, a young woman named Margery Brews wrote two love letters to her husband-to-be, John Paston, calling him “Voluntyn” (Valentine).

As rendered into modern English, one of the letters begins “Right reverend and well-beloved Valentine” and ends “By your Valentine.” (We’re quoting from The Paston Letters, edited by Norman Davis, 1963.)

A: The colloquial expression “all het up,” meaning angry, upset, or worried, can be traced back to an old use of “het” as the past tense and past participle of the verb “heat.” As odd as this use of “het” for “heated” may seem now, similar forms are standard with some other verbs, like “meet” (“met”), “feed” (“fed”), and “lead” (“led”).

In Middle English, spoken from roughly 1250 to 1500, the past was hatte, hette, het, etc., while the participle was hatte, hette, het, etc.

The earliest example in the OED for “het” used as the past tense of “heat” is from a medieval Scottish life of St. Thomas the Apostle: “[He] in þe fyre gert het þam wele” (“[He] in the great fire heated them well”).

In t…

A: Yes, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s use of “but” is archaic in that sentence, but the usage is still occasionally seen in contemporary historical novels.

The “but” is being used to replace a missing pronoun (the subject) in the subordinate clause and to make the clause negative.

Not a man but felt this terror, i.e.

there was not a man who did not feel this terror, they all felt this terror).

The most recent Oxford example for this use of “but” is from a 20th-century historical novel for children:“There is scarce one among us but knows the fells as a man knows his own kale-garth” (“There is scarce one among us who doesn’t know the hills as a man knows his own cabbage garden”).

Q: Is it the “premier” or “premiere” episode of a TV series or issue of a magazine?

A: We’d use the adjective “premier” to describe the first issue of a magazine or the first episode of a TV series.

Perhaps because 18th-century Francophiles tried to make an already French word (premier) seem even more French by using the feminine form (première).

In the 17th century, writers began using the adjective in the noun phrase “premier minister,” meaning the chief officer of an institution or the chief minister of a ruler.

When the noun “premier” appeared a few years later, it also referred to the chief officer of an institution or chief minister of a ruler.

Which is the correct past tense—“I knit a sweater” or “I knitted a sweater”?

Most of the 10 contemporary standard dictionaries that we regularly consult say the past tense of “knit” can be either “knit” or “knitted.” All five American dictionaries and two of the five British dictionaries agree with that.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Aelfric’s Grammar, an Old English introduction to Latin, written around 995: “Ic cnytte, necto” (ic is “I” in Old English; necto is Latin for “I bind, tie, fasten, connect,” etc.).

The k is still pronounced in some Scottish dialects; in others the guttural is assimilated to the dental, making tn-, esp.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your …

She learned that in Paw­tucket, where she had a unisex before moving to the Space Coast.

I was still a mere bobby-soxer of sixty-five, barely old enough to get my senior discount at Mercury Marquee (Sid used to call it the Sin-a-Plex).

“Everyone wants to be on the pond,” Sid argued as we examined the prospectus in Yonkers.

Sid used to take me to Orchard Beach in the summer, back when we had the one-bedroom on Sedgwick Ave­nue in the Bronx, our first home together.

Sid wasn’t much of a swimmer—more of a splasher, actually.

Q: I was reading the King James Bible and came across this passage in Romans 7:2: “but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law.” Can you explain why “be” is used this way?

A: Let’s begin with all of Romans 7:2 in the King James Version of the Bible: “For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.”In the second half of the verse (“but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband”), “be” is used in the subjunctive mood to express a hypothetical situation.

In modern English, the subjunctive here would be expressed with “were,” not “be”: “but if th…

However, a recent reprint of an 1856 article in Scientific American uses “yeggman” similarly.

A: The date on that Scientific American reprint is wrong; it should be 1906, not 1856.

The brief item mushes together two sections of an extensive article published on Jan. 27, 1906.

—Scientific American, January 1856The original 1906 Scientific American article, headlined “The Ungentle Art of Burglary,” includes the following sections, which were edited and linked in the reprint:Burglary—specifically safe-breaking—has in the last decade gradually ceased to be an exact science.

The earliest examples we’ve found, from 1901, appeared almost five years before the original Scientific American piece.

A: As far as we can tell, “disorientated” as well as “disoriented” are standard in British English, though “disorientated” is more popular.

We’ve found both of these terms in searches of the British National Corpus, with “disorientated” about twice as common as “disoriented.” In fact, both appear in P. D. James novels.

All five standard British dictionaries that we regularly consult—Cambridge, Collins, Lexico (the former Oxford Dictionaries Online), Longman, and Macmillan—include both “disoriented” and “disorientated” as standard, but most of them describe the longer term as a British usage.

Interestingly, four of the five American dictionaries we consult the most—Dictionary.com (based on R…

Q: What’s the difference between “doing time” and “doing hard time”?

“Doing time” means serving an unspecified term in prison, but “doing hard time” implies that the term is a long one for a serious crime.

The OED’s most recent example is from the Atlantic Monthly (March 2010): “A former member of NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Love Association] … doing time at Limon [in Colorado] for sexual exploitation of a child.”Finally we come to “hard time,” a noun phrase that the OED says is found “frequently in to do (also serve) hard time.” The dictionary says “hard time” originated as “U.S.

as part of a long sentence served for a serious crime.”Oxford’s earliest example is from an Iowa newspaper, …

Q: Is there a distinction between a meme, a trope, and a notion?

trope: “A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.” (The author’s favorite trope is hyperbole.)

It was borrowed into Old English from Latin or Greek, apparently forgotten, and then reborrowed in the 16th century.

As the OED explains, “trope” was “probably a borrowing from Latin” but “perhaps” came from the earlier Greek.

This is the OED’s citation:“Boc de metrica arte, & oþere to þisse geþydde be scematibus & tropes boc” (“A book on the art of meter [poetry], to which is appended another book on figures and tropes”).

A: The slang use of “toots” to address a woman probably comes from the colloquial use of “tootsie” for a foot—a usage that began life in the mid-19th century as a grown-up’s imitation of baby talk.

that this “toots” usage may have been inspired by the chorus of “Toot, Toot, Tootsie!

(Goo’ Bye),” a 1922 song with lyrics and music by Gus Kahn, Ernie Erdman, and Dan Russo:Toot, toot, Tootsie, Goo’ Bye!

Toot, toot, Tootsie, don’t cry,The choo choo train that takes me,Away from you no words can tell how sad it makes me,Kiss me, Tootsie, and then,Do it over again, Watch for the mail, I’ll never fail,If you don’t get a letter then you’ll know I’m in jail,Tut, tut, Tootsie, don’t cry,Toot, toot, To…

« previous post |Tweet from Joshua Wong 黃之鋒, Secretary-General of Demosistō:Here is Winnie The Flu that we call as #WTF Credit to Yeahman Tse via Legend Bricks LEGO Forum pic.twitter.com/q04K7QfAku — Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) February 24, 2020So many layers and levels of visual and verbal puns and metaphors!

To understand more fully the implications of Yeahman Tse's LEGO figure and its accompanying pet, see the following posts:Permalink

From an abstract cognitive point of view, each language organizes phonological features into a sort of grammar of syllabic structures, with categories like onsets, nuclei and codas.

Syllables seems to play a central role in child language acquisition, with words following a gradual development from very simple syllable patterns, through closer and closer approximations to adult phonological and phonetic norms.

Over the years, I've found that even simpler methods, based on selecting peaks in a smoothed amplitude contour, also work quite well (see e.g.

Margaret Fleck and Mark Liberman, "Test of an automatic syllable peak detector", JASA 1982; and slides on Dinka tone alignment from EFL 2015).…

« previous post |From Jeff DeMarco:I hit the translation button for this Facebook post and this is what I got!

Here's the same announcement as rendered by Google Translate:Yóuyú shòu yìqíng yǐngxiǎng, xiānggǎng wénhuà zhōngxīn guānbì zhì 3 yuè 2 rì, hóngguāng guó yuètuán 2 yuè 29 rì "bàwáng yǔ guìfēi-mínyuè xìqǔ jiāo huīyìng" yīnyuè huì qǔxiāo.

Qǐng guānzhòng bǎoliú ménpiào, liúyì wénhuà zhōngxīn jí hóngguāng guó yuètuán facebook de zīxùn, yǒuguān tuìpiào huò bǔ yǎn ānpái róng hòu gōngbù.

Visitors are advised to keep their tickets, pay attention to the Facebook information of the Cultural Center and Hongguang Chinese Orchestra, and the details of refunds or make-up arrangements will be anno…

« previous post |From a Taiwanese colleague:In the struggle against Wǔhàn fèiyán 武漢肺炎 ("Wuhan pneumonia"), Taiwan has to fight the war on three fronts: (1) trying to stop the virus at its borders; (2) trying to join the WHO for world-wide collaboration and disease information; and (3) fighting against the Communist Chinese dictatorial linguistic policies.

The linguistic policy on disease terminology is really weird; it smacks of George Orwell's 1984.

He cites this article in Chinese and this facebook page (also in Chinese).

Here's another article in Chinese from Taiwan that sticks to "Wuhan pneumonia" despite the pressure from WHO and the PRC government to adopt a name that is not transpare…

We should do the same for local languages.

There are many reasons to keep local languages strong.

UNESCO identifies local languages as an integral part of human rights.

Local languages hold deep cultural knowledge, provide a bridge to traditions, and allow community to identify and value itself in the modern world.

At BASAbali, a collaboration of scholars, artists and advocates fueled by passionate millennials, we're trying to change public behavior and attitudes toward local languages.

« previous post |From IAS: Institute for Advanced Study; Report for the Academic Year 2018-2019, p. 8:The scholar in the photograph is the Greek historian Angelos Chanjotis, who is shown leading an Epigraphc Friday workshop.

More than a decade ago, when it was circulating widely, I made a determined effort to debunk this tenacious trope with a long essay under the title "danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray" (Pinyin.info [2009]).

I, on the other hand, have been much solaced by the fact that I've barely encountered this pernicious meme during the past seven or eight years.

See also 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak and, for a recent di…

« previous post | next post »Stuart Luppescu saw this restaurant sign in Saitama, Fukaya:It's a yakiniku 焼肉 ("grilled meat") place called "Yoshi's Restaurant".

What's especially intriguing about it is that instead of the genitive suffix -no 〜の, they substituted the English genitive case marker -'s.

I find it all the more charming that they've transcribed the sound of the English case marker as -zu in rōmaji, which they have highlighted in red, as they did the -'s in English!

Most likely scenario is probably just 義, or in this case 焼肉 義 (with the space implied graphically by use of a different font, color, size, etc.)

We have McDonald's and Denny's of course, but the closest homegrown analog…

… The issue which made [the Pythagorean comma] so pressingly important was nothing less than the question .. whether reality is mathematical or not.

When Pythagoras discovered (or learned) the so-called Pythagorean Theorem, … it is said that he hastened to sacrifice oxen.

…The Pythagorean Theorem is the threshold to the discovery of irrational numbers and incommensurable lengths — a discovery which Hellenists attribute to Hippasus of Tarentum, a renegade Pythagorean whom, according to one account, Pythagoras pushed off a boat for revealing to outsiders the tragic secret of the Pythagorean Theorem, which was irrationality or incommensurability.

… The discovery that the side and diagonal of a…

In extended use: a supporter of or player for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (traditionally associated with the Jewish community in north and east London).

Lynne Murphy, "The point of dictionaries is to describe how language is used, not to police it", The Guardian 2/17/2020:Tottenham Hotspur has shown the yellow card to the Oxford English Dictionary for its new definitions of the words "yid" and "yiddo".

[…]The use of the word has caused controversy in recent years with sections of Tottenham supporters using the terms themselves in an attempt to reclaim them.

Someone in a position to know explained that they were looking for a student who was "Jewish, but not too Jewish".

He had never kno…

The JP drain today continues to be a popular drain of choice for surgeons in all subspecialties.

Although many practitioners will ask for the JP and Blake drain by name interchangeably, there are significant differences in the design.

The origin of the BLAKE drain, as it is spelled on the distributors' (Ethicon, Inc) website, has a history that is less obvious and defined.

The Blake drain's original design is hubless with an even transition from the perforated to nonperforated portion.

Both, the JP and Blake drains, accomplish the task of closed suction negative-pressure drainage.

We are on familiar territory when Foltz writes:Other Ossetian divine names are constructed of combinations.

{II}Here Foltz shows three photographs taken in Korea, featuring a Scythian-style kurgan, drinking horn and gold jewelry, Silla kingdom, Korea.

In conclusion, both language and cultural traditions tie the Alans more closely to the Ossetes than to any of the other Caucasian peoples.

{II}For the deep Iranian connections of the Ossetians and the Scythians with ancient Iranian peoples and practices, we may consider as one concrete instance the following:'Ares': The god of war.

The modern Uastyrdzhi, who is the most prominent deity for the Ossetians today, presumably descends from this war…

But let's read the poem first, then I'll talk about the word in question, namely, méisuō 沒娑 ("massage").

Translation by Diana Shuheng ZhangAll right, what's so special about méisuō 沒娑 ("massage")?

I invite Language Log readers who are interested in Old Sinitic reconstructions to comment further.

Casting about for parallels to this old Sinitic lexeme meaning "massage", it didn't take long for me to light upon "massage", which is the very word we use to translate méisuō 沒娑, etc.

When I looked up the etymology of "massage", I was amazed to learn that "massage" derives from an Arabic word.

« previous post |From Jonathan Falk:When Wuhan is called the "epicenter" of the coronavirus outbreak, do people know that epicenter is a term borrowed from geology and is just a metaphor for what is in fact the "center" of an outbreak, or are they fooled by the "epi-" prefix to think it has something to do with "epidemic?"

The source of the English prefix is the Greek preposition ἐπί meaning "on".

The OED gives the etymology of epidemic as< Old French ypidime, impidemie, French épidemie, < late Latin epidemia, epidimia, Greek ἐπιδημία prevalence of an epidemic, < ἐπιδήμιος, < ἐπί + δῆμος people.

something like "on the people".

My own current association with the prefix epi- has been the exp…

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Hello! I have some questions for you all regarding a research proposal I am working on for my ESL Theory class. I’m thinking about writing a proposal for a study that investigates whether someone that has learned an L3 and doesn’t use their L2 will experience more or less language attrition than someone who doesn’t use their L2 and doesn’t know an L3? I am thinking that in the proposal I will propose a longitudinal study where I will test students or whoever that is learning an L2 and will determine their ability, then after a year or two (or more?) of not using the L2 and the other half of the participants not using the L2 but also learning a L3, I will test the participants on the same sk…

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I couldn't find a picture of the capital form of this letter online. Since it was a joke, I decided to look here. ​ Kjell submitted by /u/thomasp3864 [link] [comments]

Hello! I have some questions for you all regarding a research proposal I am working on for my ESL Theory class. I want to propose a study that focuses on language attrition of people’s L2. I haven’t yet decided what linguistic feature I want to focus on, maybe you can suggest something. I was considering syntax or lexicon, but if you have a better idea please let me know. Anyways, I want to see to what degree people who have some degree of mastery of the language but who have not used it in a while (I’m thinking 1-2 years maybe more?) actually experience significant language attrition for a specific linguistic feature like their knowledge of the syntax of the L2. I think that possibly when …

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Lingthusiasm Episode 41: This time it gets tense - The grammar of timeHow do languages talk about the time when something happens?

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about when some languages obligatorily encode time into their grammar.

—This month’s bonus episode is about what happens when the robots take over Lingthusiasm!

Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the Robot-Lingthusiasm episode and 35 previous bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord.

To received an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

Gretchen: I’ve got the blogpost up about the ice cream flavours from the middle school students, and some of them are really good.

There are these whimsical flavours like “It’s Sunday” and “Cherry Poet” and “Brittle Cheesecake” and “Honey Vanilla Happy.” These seem like kind of reasonable ice cream flavours, right?

Lauren: I’d be open to ordering a “Vanilla Nettle.”Gretchen: “Cherry Cherry Cherry.” If you like cherries, this is the flavour for you.

I think it’s worth saying artificial intelligence doesn’t know what ice cream is, right, it’s just using this list of flavours to figure out what kind of patterns could fit into that list.

That’s just randomly combining some letters in ways that …

Since starting Lingthusiasm three years ago, we’ve enjoyed hearing from so many of you how Lingthusiasm got you into linguistics or helped you reconnect with your long-lost enjoyment of linguistics. But for many of you, this also posed a problem: where can you find other people to chat with who are just as enthusiastic about linguistics as you are? You could, of course, follow some linguists on twitter or find a linguistics facebook group to join. But if you’d like something a little more cozy, you can come join us in an experiment! We’ve made a Lingthusiasm Discord server – a private chatroom for Lingthusiasm patrons at the Ling-thusiast level and above! We’ve heard good things about Disco…

Transcript Episode 40: Making machines learn language - Interview with Janelle ShaneThis is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 40: Making machines learn language - Interview with Janelle Shane.

Gretchen: Lauren, I think we should start with ice cream because I know you have a deep and abiding love of ice cream, and Janelle has come up with ice cream flavours.

Janelle, where did the ice cream data come from?

Did you have a list of ice cream flavours that someone gave you or…?

When it comes to language generation, language processing, human language is really, really difficult.

I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: And I’m Lauren Gawne.

Lauren: And I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

So I mentioned some of my favourite Harry Potter books, and I found Harry Potter and the Cursed Child –Gretchen: The Cruciatus Linguists?

In this bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, Janelle Shane, our interview guest from episode 40, demonstrates to Gretchen and Lauren how to train an artificial intelligence called GPT-2 on our 70+ Lingthusiasm transcripts, of both main and bonus episodes.

This bonus episode includes a more detailed walkthrough with Janelle of how she generated the Robo-Lingthusiasm transcripts, and live-action reading of some of our favourite Robo-Lauren and Robo-Gretchen moments.

Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the Robo-Lingthusiasm episode and 35 previous bonus episodes.

Also for our patrons, we’ve made a Lingthusiasm Discord server – a private chatroom for Lingthusiasm patrons!

Chat about the latest Lingthusiasm episode, share other interesting linguistics links, and geek out with other linguistics fans.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.

Bonus #35 - What might English be like in a couple hundred years?

We often look back at the origins of English words, but it’s also weird to pause and realize that we’re somewhere in the middle of the history of English, not at its ultimate destination.

Which leads us to ask, well, what might this future English look like?

Gretchen travelled to the 23rd century to write an op-ed piece for the New York Times about how English might have changed in 200 years, but how did she come up with those particular hypotheses?

And what else have people projected into the future of English?

Transcript Episode 39: How to rebalance a lopsided conversationThis is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 39: How to rebalance a lopsided conversation.

But before kids can even get to that first word, let alone first sentence stage, they’re already doing something that’s really cool linguistically.

When you have the floor, you’re the one who’s talking.

As soon as you give over the floor, I’m happy to take it.

You’re really making clear where those overlaps are.

Lingthusiasm Episode 39: How to rebalance a lopsided conversationWhy do some conversations seem to flow really easily, while other times, it feels like you can’t get a word in edgewise, or that the other person isn’t holding up their end of the conversation?

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne have a conversation about the structure of conversations!

—This month’s bonus episode is about onomatopoeia!

Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the onomatopoeia episode and 33 previous bonus episodes.

To received an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

We all know cows go ‘moo’, sheep go 'baa’ and ducks go 'queck’… well medieval English ducks did.

Dutch cows go 'boe’ /bu/ and Korean sheep go 음매 (eum-mae).

What is it about sounds that make a sheep sound like a sheep, and how can the name of an ice cream flavour make it sound more delicious?

In this bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, Lauren tests Gretchen on Syuba onomatopoeia, Gretchen quizzes Lauren about good names for different products as we explore ideophones, sound symbolism and their role in understanding the world.

Listen here!

Transcript Episode 38: Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals and moreThis is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 38: Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals and more.

It was a technology the way that a lot of languages have borrowed the English word for computer.

It’s like saying, “book” and “book book” to mean “several books.”Lauren: Yeah.

In which case, it would be “emoji” because Japanese does not have the English plural strategy of just add an S to it.

But “octopodes” really, really sounds like he should be writing some plays.

Help spread the Lingthusiasm for our third anniversary!

So we’re asking you to help connect us with people who would be totally into a linguistics podcast, if only they knew it existed!

For technical advice on how to go about listening to Lingthusiasm, especially if you’re new to podcasts, see How to listen.

Share a link to your favourite Lingthusiasm episode so far!

Make sure to tag us on social media (@lingthusiasm everywhere) so we can thank you for your rec, or you can just feel a warm glow of satisfaction if you want to rec us more privately!

Lingthusiasm Episode 38: Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals and moreIn English you have one book, and three books.

We’re celebrating three years of Lingthusiasm by asking you to share your favourite fact you’ve learnt from the podcast.

You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening, and stay tuned for a transcript of this episode on the Lingthusiasm website.

To received an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] comGretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Transcript Episode 37: Smell words, both real and inventedThis is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented.

Plus, and get this – I’m really excited about this – we have water bottles that have the glottal symbols from the IPA on them.

It’s a really interesting list because some of them are really delightful and some of them are really bad, and there’s really not much in between.

Gretchen: Those but science, because they don’t smell like artificial cherry.

Lauren: They also smell really consistently across all of the sticks and they have the same intensity of smell.

A few months ago, I was a guest on the podcast Ologies, a terrific show where the very funny and delightful and curious Alie Ward interviews an ologist of some kind - bisonologist (ologist of bisons), ludologist (video games), corvid thanatology (crow funerals!).

Here’s some of our conversation; you can hear the full-length version on Ologies.

There are a couple of swears in it, including what Alie calls ‘ the Swiss Army Knife of cussing’.

Other relevant Allusionist episodes include Detonating the C Bomb, about swears; Latin Lives!

about the Finnish news broadcast in Latin (vale, Nuntii Latini); and The Authority, for more about ‘on fleek’.

Here’s one final Allusionist for 2019: a quiz all about words, for you to play along with as you listen.

Get a pen and paper, or there’s an answer form all ready for your clicks just down this post.

Do let me know how you fare in the quiz and puzzles at twitter.com/allusionistshow and facebook.com/allusionistshow.

Along with the warm glow of satisfaction at helping us make more of the podcasts you like, you can get such rewards as challenge coins, stickers, AND an audio recording of the Allusionist 2019 live show No Title!

I wanted a numerical amount that looked like a word, and 435 is pretty much YES in calculator font, plus 80085 seemed too expensive.

To celebrate Radiotopia’s annual fundraiser, here’s a special episode about the word that brought us all together… aaand a lot of you hate it.

If you love podcasts, or more specifically this podcast, or slightly less specifically but still quite specifically the podcasts in the Radiotopia collective, get involved by making a donation at Radiotopia.fm!

You can get swag that’s exclusive to this fundraiser, or just pay for the glow of satisfaction at funding the audiotainment we make.

As well as paying for the audio itself, of course - your donations help us keep our shows going.

Check out my ever-expanding collection of portmanteaus and if you see one in the wild, do take a photo and send it …

Steven Yardley of Milne & Yardley talks about the disappearing craft of hand engraving.

Wearing their grandmothers’ rings, Lisa Hack connects to family she doesn’t know, and Freddy McConnell to the family he does.

When Eeva Sarlin’s ex-boyfriend lost her Leatherman multitool, she thought she’d never see it again - and were it not for an engraving, she wouldn’t have.

And Arlie Adlington, who reports this episode, had words engraved into his ring to remind him of his reality when others threaten to ruin it.

Hear the first of the pair of Engraving episodes, about epitaphs, at theallusionist.org/epitaph.

So when Dave’s father died a few years later, Dave was determined to choose better words to represent him in perpetuity.

Have you had to choose words to describe a person after they could speak for themselves?

Have you even decided on what you want your own epitaph to be?

You can hear Dave on a couple of other Allusionists: Open Me part 2, about letter-writing, and Spill Your Guts, about diaries.

Mortified is one of our fellow podcasts in the Radiotopia collective, and right now it’s our annual fundraiser!

East Germany dissolved and was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, took on its currency and its rules - and its lexicon.

Both West and East Germany had already been speaking German, of course; but there were differences, from the years of very concerted separation, the attempts at isolating East Germany from what was considered Western culture and capitalism, and the specifically East German concepts that had their own vocabulary.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:If you lived in East Germany before reunification and remember any specific terms or words, I’d be really interested to hear about them.

The Allusionist live show No Title is on tour in North America right now!

**These items a…

Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his new podcast Year of the Bird about the songs he writes.

This month, the Allusionist is sponsored by:• BetterHelp online counselling.

Get started at betterhelp.com/allusionist, and use the code ALLUSIONIST for 10% off your first month.

Visit babbel.com to find out more, and text ALLUSIONIST to 484848 to try it for free.

Go to squarespace.com/allusion for a free trial, and use the code ALLUSION to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Late 2019 will see the biggest apple launch of our lifetimes. 22 years in the making, ripening on millions of trees into picture-perfect redness, here comes the WA38, more snazzily known as the Cosmic Crisp. The name was the result of a year of focus groups, taste tests and word associations - a far cry from when apples were named after whichever end of a cat they resembled.

CREDITS:Find the show on the socials at twitter.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/allusionistshow.

- HZThe Allusionist is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

In September 2019, the Allusionist is sponsored by:• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for creating and running a good-looking and well-working website.

Go to squarespace.com/allusion for a free trial, and use the code ALLUSION to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Visit babbel.com to find out more, and text ALLUSIONIST to 484848 to try it for free.

CREDITS:- HZThe Allusionist is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

In September 2019, the Allusionist is sponsored by:• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for creating and running a good-looking and well-working website.

Go to squarespace.com/allusion for a free trial, and use the code ALLUSION to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• Bombas, socks that won’t let you - or themselves - down.

Visit babbel.com to find out more, and text ALLUSIONIST to 484848 to try it for free.

It’s Food Season at the Allusionist. Last episode we learned all about compiling recipes, turning food into words. This time, we meet someone who turns words into food. When Kate Young of the Little Library Cafe spots a foodstuff or a feast in a novel, she finds ways to cook it in reality, whether it’s delicious ( Babette’s Feast), evil (Edmund’s Turkish delight in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) or poisonous (the crab and avocado in The Bell Jar).

When recipe writing is done well, the skill and effort involved might not be evident.

Recipe writers MiMi Aye and Felicity Cloake and cookbook editor Rachel Greenhaus consider the verbal ingredients of a well-written recipe.

Next up: turning words into food.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:Hey, remember last year when I released an episode from hospital and my voice sounded like a rusty fart?

Find out more at theallusionist.org/events, which I’ll keep updated with every new fixture.

CREDITS:Find me online at twitter.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/allusionistshow.

- HZThe Allusionist is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

In July 2019, the Allusionist is sponsored by:• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for creating and running a good-looking and well-working website.

Go to squarespace.com/allusion for a free trial, and use the code ALLUSION to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• Bombas, socks that won’t let you - or themselves - down.

Oysters, fragrances, canoeing, space stations, God, hats, and of course people - the word ‘bisexual’ has described a great deal of different things, with different meanings, in its fairly short existence. And that whole time, it has had a pretty bumpy ride.

We’re talking to pronoun expert Dennis Baron on this episode of Talk the Talk.

(with Dennis Baron)Download this episodePromoTtT promo 2020-02-18 with Tom Reynolds: Theyhttps://www.patreon.com/posts/34128392Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 394: What’s Your Pronoun?

(with Dennis Baron) coming soonReflections on 394: What’s Your Pronoun?

394: What’s Your Pronoun?

Become a Patreon supporter yourself and get access to bonus audio and video, extra blog posts, Talk the Talk merch, our infamous Leave That In!

We’re listening to your responses on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 393: Push and Pull coming soonPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wohLyssaTermyBobKristoferMattAndrewKittyLord MortisHelenBinhJackNigelDamienDustinLarryMichaelWhitneyGillesYou’re helping us to keep the talk happening!

Become a Patreon supporter yourself and get access to bonus audio and video, extra blog posts, Talk the Talk merch, our infamous Leave That In!

Every time I see 'pull', I have to think for a second because I get it mixed up with 'push'.

Listen live at 11am Perth time on @RTRFM!http…

Why are certain voices getting repressed?

Daniel and Ben are speaking to Jane Setter, author of Your Voice Speaks Volumes, on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Listen to this episode391: Your Voice (with Jane Setter)Download this episodePromo with Tom ReynoldsTtT promo 2020-02-04 with Tom Reynolds: Voicehttps://www.patreon.com/posts/33819937Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 391: Your Voice (with Jane Setter) coming soonLeave That In!

391: Your Voice coming soonPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wohLyssaTermyBobKristoferMattAndrewKittyLord MortisHelenBinhJackNigelDamienDustinLarryMichaelWhitneyGill…

It’s Word of the Year time, and there are more words than ever before.

We bring you the results from the yearly American Dialect Society vote, and from dictionaries around the world on this episode of Talk the Talk. Listen …

Just about every week, we bring you the Words of the Week.

Which word from 2019 will listeners vote to make Talk the Talk‘s Word of the Year?

Become a Patreon supporter yourself and get access to bonus audio and video, extra blog posts, Talk the Talk merch, our infamous Leave That In!

Show notesWhich of our Words of the Week should become the Talk the Talk Word of the Week of the Year?

pic.twitter.com/oYOGjPKvRr — Talk the Talk (@talkpod) December 2, 2019 Twitter threadWhich of our Words of the Week should become the Talk the Talk Word of the Week of the Year?They're all here as… Posted by Talk the Talk on Monday, December 2, 2019 Facebook threadA literal paradox: “literally” generally mean…

All on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Listen to this episode389: Mailbag of PronounsDownload this episodePromo with Tom ReynoldsTtT promo 2019-12-03 with Tom Reynolds: Disgruntledhttps://www.patreon.com/posts/32138603Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 389: Mailbag of Pronouns for everyoneLeave That In!

389: Mailbag for patronsPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wohLyssaTermyAndyBinhBobDamienDustinElíasHelenJackKittyKristoferLarryLord MortisMattMichaelWhitneyYou’re helping us to keep the talk happening!

Become a Patreon supporter yourself and get access to bonus audio and video, extra blog posts, …

You may think you have a sense about this, but the answers may surprise you.

We’re talking to forensic linguist Professor Georgina Heydon on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Listen to this episode388: Lies, All Lies (with Georgina Heydon, Heather Wilson, and Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway)Download this episodePromo with Tom ReynoldsTtT promo 2019-11-26 with Tom Reynolds: Lieshttps://www.patreon.com/posts/31859292Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 388: Lies, All Lies for everyoneInterview with Georgina Heydon (complete) for patronsPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wohLyssaTermyAndyBinhBobDamienDustinElí…

We’re talking to Dr Maïa Ponsonnet on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Listen to this episode387: The Language of Emotion (with Maïa Ponsonnet)Download this episodePromo with Tom ReynoldsTtT promo 2019-11-20 with Tom Reynolds: Vibe check!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/31709698Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 387: The Language of Emotion (with Maïa Ponsonnet) for everyoneReflections on 387: The Language of Emotion for patronsInterview with Steven Gagau and Jodie Kell of Toksave (complete) for patronsLeave That In!

387: Emotion (with Maïa Ponsonnet) for patronsPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wo…

If you speak a language besides English, you know that there are some idioms that English is missing, or just doesn’t do as well.

We want to hear them on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Download this episodePromo with Tom ReynoldsOK Boomerhttps://www.patreon.com/posts/31504452Patreon extras for this episodeEpisode 386: English Needs These Idioms (Live Q&A) coming soonReflections on 386: English Needs These Idioms coming soonPatreon supportersWe’re very grateful for the support from our burgeoning community of patrons, includingAdieCarolinChrisdcctor wohLyssaTermyAndyBinhBobDamienDustinElíasHelenJackKittyKristoferLarryLord MortisMattMichaelWhitneyYou’re helping us to keep the talk happening!

…

George brings on two conlanger DMs, Joey Windsor and David J Peterson, to discuss how to incorporate conlanging into Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Top of Show Greeting: Boral (by Jack Keynes) Links and Resources: The 5E d20 Standard Reference Document Matt Colville’s YouTube channel The Chain Matt Colville speaking “Gith” D&D Beyond... Read more »

George talks a little bit about how choosing a theme for Lexember can be helpful for your conlanging.

I went on social media recently to ask what people wanted covered before Lexember and got some great suggestions.

Other ideas I had were perfume- or glass-manufacture (I ultimately used glass as my 2018 Lexember theme) or river-faring and boatbuilding.

That said, I think that using a theme for your lexember words is a particularly good way to encourage more onomasiological thinking in the process.

Other ideas I had were perfume- or glass-manufacture (I ultimately used glass as my 2018 Lexember theme) or river-faring and boatbuilding.

George talks a little about little tidbits of his daughter’s linguistic development, and talks about how listening to child language might help conlangers find inspiration.

One of the songs, “Bve Pfa R̂í,” is really, really old.

And I’m presuming you have different songs for different occasions.

I really, really wanted to work with that.

Margaret: If anybody’s interested in being updated about Aeniith music or conlang music in any way, I have a mailing list.

Just take a look into – if you’re a music person, definitely look into what you can do with music and your conlangs.

We bring Mike McCubbins on to talk about his new Kickstarter project, Anasazi, a comic which uses simple constructed written languages to tell a story in a visual medium.

You can find the Kickstarter here!

Top of Show Greeting: Salbécyk / Salbekian

George brings on Christophe and Joey to talk about their experience at the Eighth Language Creation Conference.

We also have clips from interviews Joey made at the conference.

Top of Show Greeting: BizhidaLinks:

George and William invite Prof. William Croft to talk about his theoretical approach to word classes and constructions.

Forget a language without adjectives, let’s talk about how your property concepts are predicated!

Links and Resources:

George spends some time talking about his recent revisions of his Istatikii grammar, with a focus on organizing writing to serve the needs of the language and the readers.

Now, onto our topic for today:After finishing my dissertation, I took a little time to look at my grammar for Istatikii.

I followed a pretty classic format for a reference grammar breaking up topics into phonology, morphosyntax, etc.

There is a third section entirely devoted to glottal deletion rules, as the glottal stop and /h/ have deletion rules that interact with both nasal deletion and liquid deletion.

I’m thinking about how I should present things in other sections of the grammar as well.

Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets joins us to talk to us about Ainu, a minority language of northern Japan.

Top of Show Greeting: Bwángxùd by alr2569 (Translation Notes)Links and Resources:

Jessie Sams comes on the show to talk to us about how she uses conlanging in the classroom.

We discuss how these courses can be designed, what fields of linguistics they address well, and the results she saw from the course.

Jessie also requested the following message be added to the notes:I would also like to thank David J. Peterson, who has visited with my conlang students the last three times I’ve offered the course.

His visits have been incredibly beneficial for both my students and me.

Students don’t often have the chance to speak with the author of their textbook, so it’s an amazing experience.

George and William come back to talk about telicity and lexical aspect.

Listen to us talk about endpoints in events and puzzle over why achievement and accomplishment are supposed to mean different things.

Links and Resources:

George reflects on completing his PhD, and talks to those conlangers who might be considering graduate study in linguistics.

An advanced degree in Linguistics, especially a PhD, is for someone who wants to make a career of it.

My graduate study was a bit different from other conlangers who take this path.

That makes sense, they’re fields that are very connected to conlanging, especially naturalistic conlanging, which benefits strongly from broad knowledge of other languages and historical development.

If you choose graduate study in linguistics, that’s where your head needs to be — you need to want to do LINGUISTICS research.

George gives a short talk about how phonology affects phonetic transcriptions and why the narrow “phonetic” transcription of your language does not have to be overly specific (especially with vowels!).

Conlangers, by our nature, are describing our languages to an audience that is unfamiliar with it and wants to understand quickly.

I want to give an example through the lens of a part of linguistics I know fairly well: phonetic transcription.

A note: yes, I do, in fact, mean phonetic transcription.

If we were to fully specify a phonetic transcription at the absolute, unaltered surface, we’d just print a wave form and spectrogram.

Colm Doyle comes on to talk about his Nymeran language, created for the comic series Glow, as well as some of the process and challenges of making a conlang and script for comics.

Top of Show Greeting: Vaq’ǫ̀ʔ Nąśą /vàqʼõ̀ʔ nã̀ʃã́/Glow issue 2 Kickstarter

Joey Windsor and Christophe Grandsire-Koevets join George to discuss what tools we can get from more advanced linguistics theoretical frameworks.

What tools do they provide the conlanger, and where do you have to be careful about applying them.

Top of Show Greeting: Gidurguyt [ɡɪ-ərdɡuː-jɪt]LCC Presentations:Doug Ball’s TalkUnfortunately, the video of Joey’s talk is incomprehensible.

I also cannot find video for William’s talk.

Academic Sources and Textbooks:

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Владислав Демьянов ведёт параллельный русско- и украиноязычный канал о переводе и локализации. Нашла там советы Нетфликса по субтитрам, дубляжу и локализации аудио- и видеоконтента. Будет хорошим подспорьем для всех, кто увлекается переводом сериалов и фильмов. @translation_localization

@pereklad_lokalizatsiya

❤️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktidpf8Cx0I

Ксенолингвистика — не очень точная наука, которая готовит нас ко встрече с Чужими. Почему стоит слать сообщения в космос, кто лучше всех справится с инопланетянами и как самому стать пришельцем? https://knife.media/speaking-with-aliens/

Поделюсь с вами важной для себя статьей, где я наконец-то смогла свести две большие любви: лингвистику и космос. Статья большого успеха не имела, в комментариях прекрасно писали «нахера нам знать это неприменимое к жизни фуфло» (орфография авторская). Не буду спойлерить фильм «Прибытие», только скажу, что можно и с инопланетянами пообщаться, и личную жизнь устроить. Да и вообще, может Чужой на самом деле милашка, надо было с ним просто поговорить нормально, а не орать сразу.

На выходе может получиться такая красота

Генератор искусственных языков бесплатно создаёт глоссарий из 200 слов, в платной версии - из 4000. Есть возможность устанавливать свои правила, выбирать нужные фонемы, орфографию и грамматику и сверяться с подробной таблицей IPA.

Красота: новая лунная программа NASA названа в честь богини Артемиды — сестры Аполлона.

Как говорил Шерлок в версии от BBC, 'Short Version: Not Dead'. Снова буду периодически развлекать вас новостями из мира языков. Начнем со ссылки, которую я открывала один раз, а потом искала ее полтора года. The Proper English Foundation несёт знамя истинного английского и просит убрать от него грязные руки инноваций. Далее прекрасное от самих авторов: FREEZE THE LANGUAGE?

No, we don't want to stop new words from being invented. We shall even say it categorically, we do not want to freeze the language. We simply feel that the language is currently far too warm and needs to be cooled or even frozen to save it from anarchy. Thank you. На сайте указан расстрельный список ужасных выражений и лю…

В июне я публиковала тут опрос о мате от Анны Диковой из ВШЭ: она исследовала понятия «хуйня», «хуевина», «ебанина», «пиздюлинка», «поебота», «ебала» и «хуерга». Недавно Анна подвела итоги опроса; если вкратце, выяснилось, что «поебота» — это неприятный рутинный процесс, «хуета» — что-то ненужное и не на своем месте, «хуевина» — какая-то функциональная деталь вытянутой формы, а «пиздюлинка» — маленькая штучка, которую легко потерять (или, возможно, кто-то одушевленный: пингвиненок или чихуахуа). Забавно, что слово «ебала» для большинства опрошенных означает «несколько ебал», а «хуергу» в основном связывают с кочергой. Если вы тоже обожаете, когда об обсценной лексике пишут с серьезным лицом…

Английский язык уже пятьсот с лишним лет присутствует на рынке и пользуется большой популярностью. Многие сделали свой выбор в пользу английского языка и не жалеют об этом. Но почему же, спросите вы, мне нужно его изучать, ведь мой родной язык великий и могучий? Во-первых, его знание превосходно структурирует разрозненные интеллектуальные кластеры в человеческой голове. Он самый лёгкий из европейских языков. И совсем не на ровном месте назван аналитическим. Во-вторых, в нём есть артикли и послелоги. Использование артиклей поможет вам понять, чего же вы хотите в жизни, а послелоги учат гибкости мышления. В-третьих, в английском языке шестнадцать времён. Простое понимание того, чем future sim…

Влияние политики на литературу: с 1957 по 1962 с русского (!) на китайский перевели полное собрание сочинений Жюля Верна, так как он был крайне популярен в Cоветском Cоюзе.

Немного запоздалый пост, но лучше уж так, чем вообще не. Наверняка многие слышали про SkyEng, а есть ещё оказывается сообщество SkyTeach. (И нет, это не пост из серии "случайно узнала", я реально случайно узнала, когда они мне сами написали). В общем, ребята организуют онлайн-Олимпиаду по английскому языку. Продлится до понедельника, участие бесплатное, участвовать могут студенты, преподы, школьники и в принципе любители английского. Обещают классные призы и участие в осенней конференции SkyTeach Festival (кстати, сама надеюсь до нее добраться, протереть тряпочкой старые сертификаты и добавить новые). А может и с вами там пересечёмся, чем черт не шутит. В общем, регистрация на Олимпиаду в к…

В переводческом манифесте Sympathy for the traitor Марк Полизотти упоминает крайне своеобразную книгу под названием Le Schizo et les langues. Ее автор — американский писатель Луи Вольфсон, который с детства страдает шизофренией и ненавидит собственную мать. Чувство это настолько сильное, что оно относится не только непосредственно к матери, но и к родному для нее английскийскому языку. В результате Луи усилием воли заставляет себя автоматически переводить всю ее речь на смесь известных ему языков: русского, французского, иврита и немецкого. Система, как можно догадаться, весьма специфична, ведь из языковых заплаток приходится воссоздавать не только звуковую оболочку, но и примерное значение…

#извините https://bash.news/news/117155-nikogda-by-ne-podumala-chto-lyudi-mogut-byt-takimi-gnilymi-v-ufe-otkopali-pokoynika-radi-kvartiry

" Британскими учёными был проведен эксперимент о влиянии музыки на растения. Цветок, которому включали классику, расцвел быстрее остальных. У цветка, которому включали панк рок, опали все лепестки и умер горшок."

Гольмесъ ?!?

Книга по лингвистике «Через тернии к звездочкам» (которые ставят в реконструированных словах) https://books.google.ru/books?id=celaAAAAMAAJ прислал @ain92ru

Знаете, как называется вечно тревожная девочка?

КОРТИЗОЛУШКА

Сам клип вот: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPa9bSnQLTc&t=1s В нем еще на 3:25 появляется роскошный заброшенный виадук, что в деревне Утка (гугл «Мокринский мост»)

Вряд ли на канале наберется хоть 20 человек, знающих чувашский, а подробно разъясненные шутки смешными не бывают, но от этой сцены из клипа Алексея Московского я просто в ладоши захлопала: Анни [Анны́] и Ритти [Ритты́] — это чувашские вариации имен, причем перед ними, как правило, идет уточнение, о ком из жителей деревни речь: например, Микуль Праски — Прасковья, жена Николая, а Ҫумка Кульки — Николай Семенович.

спасибо @bredkollegia, @meles_meles и особенно @alexwasashrimp

К вопросу о том, нюхают парфюм или слушают.

Когда я слушаю духи, они мне говорят, чтобы я их купила.

от автора канала @themedia

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10151551783928064&id=576353063

#Сегодняяузнал от @kashinroad, что «Фикус религиозный» — это не фантазия БГ, а просто название растения: Ficus religiosa, он же священная фига, фикус священный, фикус религиозный и дерево бодхи! А вы знали?

https://vk.com/wall-161180646_305621 от @ain92ru

Рис. 49. Рубилка и тесалка

Рис. 61. Круглилка (выгибалка)

​​ТРУДНЫЕ ВОПРОСЫ ИЗ ПЕТЕРБУРГА Пока президент Путин пыхтел, пытаясь объяснить простой петербургской пенсионерке, как прожить на 10 тысяч рублей в месяц, самому известному лингвисту в мире Ноаму Хомскому выпало на долю свое испытание. Задать вопрос @UchenyjBot

НАША АНАТОМИЯ Пытливый иностранец, изучая русский язык, во всех наших словарях, начиная с XVIII века и заканчивая современными, обнаружит, что «облокотиться» — это «опереться локтями». Например: конец XVIII века — «Облокачиваюсь. Опираюсь на локоть» (Словарь Академии Российской); конец XX века — «Облокотиться. Опереться локтём (локтями) на что-либо, обо что-либо» (Большой толковый словарь русского языка). И везде так. Приступая с этим знанием к чтению текстов, пытливый иностранец столкнется с весьма необычной анатомической картиной. Окажется, что локти у русских людей «растут» в самых разных местах. Чаще всего, конечно, на спине: «С цветком в руке, бледна и одинока,

Облокотясь спиною на роя…

ПРАВО-ЛЕВЫЙ ОБЗОР Многократно описанная символическая асимметрия понятий ‘правое’ и ‘левое’ считается семантической универсалией. Она отражена в мифологии, фольклоре, обрядовой практике всех индоевропейских и многих неиндоевропейских народов. Помимо смыслов ‘правильный’ и ‘неправильный’, знакомых нам даже по данным современного русского языка, эта оппозиция могла наделяться значениями соответственно ‘благоприятное — неблагоприятное’ (у А. С. Пушкина о приметах: «И месяц с правой стороны / Сопровождал мой бег ретивый … И месяц с левой стороны / Сопровождал меня уныло»), ‘божественное — дьявольское’ (у В. И. Даля: «не плюй направо — там ангел-хранитель, плюй налево — там дьявол»), ‘более высо…

КНЯЗЬ ПОЛИГРАФ ШАРИКОВ В советской литературе 1920-х гг. неверные, с точки зрения нормативной грамматики, формы слова «пальто» являлись характерологическим художественным средством. Так, они регулярны в сказовых по типу повествования произведениях М. М. Зощенко, например: «Вдруг назад кличут. Велят раздеваться. ― Польта, — говорят, — сымайте. Локтев, конечно, с дамой моментально скинули польта. А я, конечно, стою в раздумьи» (1926). То же у М. А. Булгакова: «— Что же вы делаете с этими... С убитыми котами? — На польты пойдут, – ответил Шариков, — из них белок будут делать на рабочий кредит» (1925). Однако не всё так просто с этим словом. В конце XIX — начале XX века оно было, как бы сказали…

БОЛЬШОЙ ПЛОХОЙ ВОЛК Нам как-то приходилось уже писать о том, что в английском языке существует достаточно жесткий иерархический порядок прилагательных в определительном сочетании: opinion (оценка) — size (размер) — age (возраст) — shape (форма) — colour (цвет) — origin (происхождение) — material (материал) — purpose (назначение) — и дальше уже собственно существительное. Все вместе это должно выглядеть, например, так: lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. Любопытно, что этот порядок нарушается в распространенном выражении big bad wolf — аналоге нашего злого и страшного серого волка. Должно было бы быть: bad big wolf — сначала оценка, потом размер. Отчего же так?…

ПАРЕМИОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ СПОР — Я думаю, что ничего не изменится. Наивно ждать. Как говорится по-армянски, «как кошку ни брось, она на ноги станет». — Мне кажется, что изменения будут. Не стоит торопиться. Как говорят осетины, «вечные снега и те сдвигаются». — Не знаю, не знаю. Вот монголы утверждают: «Сколько навоз ни суши, он будет вонять». — Всё возможно. Помню, чуваши учили меня: «Уехал в белых штанах, вернулся в черных шароварах». — Я лично ни на что уже не надеюсь. Недаром в Грузии говорят: «Волку евангелие читают, а он в лес просится». — Ничто не остается неизменным. Помните, как это у корейцев: «С годами невестка тоже становится свекровью»? — Мне ближе мнение узбеков: «Глина не станет фарф…

ПЯТЬ ПУНКТУАЦИОННЫХ СМЕРТЕЙ Иван Петрович из Новокузнецка поставил тире в предложении «Бедность не порок», неаккуратно повернулся — и тире пронзило его сердце. Галина из Миллерово поставила вопросительный знак в конце придаточной части сложноподчиненного предложения, содержащей косвенный вопрос без сильно выраженной вопросительной интонации, посмотрела на него минут 15, сплела удавочку да и повесилась. Серега из Кривого Рога забыл про запятую в названии пьесы А. Н. Островского «Воевода, или Сон на Волге», и его брат Коля серпом отрезал ему голову. Некто Залупьев из Тимофеевки употребил многоточие для указания на неожиданный переход от одной мысли к другой, хотя никакого перехода и никаких м…

НОВАЯ ГЕОГРАФИЯ Если бы некоторые народности решили объединиться и создать целостное государство на месте бывших двух, то названия этих новообразований могли бы звучать для русского уха любопытно. Нидержикистан (Нидерланды + Таджикистан)

Абчехия (Абхазия + Чехия)

Портоссия (Португалия + Россия)

Фраермания (Франция + Германия)

Поразилия (Польша + Бразилия)

Великоспания (Великобритания + Испания)

Украиль (Украина + Израиль)

Мотай (Молдова + Китай) Задать вопрос @UchenyjBot

УДИВИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ЯЗЫК Если бы люди прошлого услышали нас, они бы, конечно, удивились всяким необычным словам типа «интернет». Но может быть, они бы больше удивились словам, которые им знакомы. Например, если бы они услышали «элитный ресторан», то удивились бы, потому что раньше слово «элитный» употреблялось только как сельскохозяйственный термин (‘об отборных экземплярах каких-либо растений или животных’): «Ученые, умирая от голода, сохранили элитное семенное зерно» (В. О. Богомолов). И они удивились бы, если бы услышали «схлопотать выговор» или «схлопотать по роже», потому что «схлопотать» означало прежде ‘добыть что-то желаемое’: «Я тебе и местечко схлопочу» (В. А. Гиляровский). И конечно, он…

БОЯЗНЬ ПАЛИНДРОМОВ Вчера, как говорят, был особый день. Точнее, особая дата. Как ее ни запиши: 02022020 или 20200202 — получается редкий в хронологии цифровой палиндром. В связи с этим мы хотели бы вспомнить, что европейские остроумцы уже давно выдумали особое слово, которое означает ‘боязнь палиндромов’. И выглядит это слово, как можно догадаться, так: eibofobie (придумали, видимо, где-нибудь в Голландии, так как там слово ‘фобия’ пишется через f). Если тот же принцип применить к русскому слову, получится, между прочим, вполне осмысленное загадочно-тревожное высказывание: «Я, ибо фобия». Вот так: им шутки шутить, а нам по-настоящему бояться. Задать вопрос @UchenyjBot

А ЭТО ВЕСЕЛАЯ ПТИЦА-СИНИЦА Новый виток скандала с (уже бывшим?) футболистом ФК «Зенит» Александром Кокориным, которому некие ушибленные стулом чиновники, судя по всему, всерьез решили не дать нормально играть в России в футбол, навел нас на некоторые более общие мысли. На первый взгляд может показаться удивительным (и даже стать весьма неприятным сюрпризом) тот простой факт, что чем дольше в нашей стране сохраняется и укрепляется установившийся каким-то затейливым мороком порядок вещей, тем больше сужается круг занятий, которыми обычный человек может заниматься без внутренней нравственной борьбы. Сейчас мы дошли до того, что за пределы этого круга оказалось вытолкнута такая совсем уж безоби…

ВЕРОЯТНОСТЬ ЭКСПЕРТА В английской научной литературе по статистике (прощайте, читатели) различают два термина, который на русский, кажется, переводятся одним и тем же словом «вероятность»: probability и likelihood. Отличие между ними, говоря по-простому, заключается в том, что likelihood оценивает вероятность некоей гипотезы при имеющихся данных Pr(model|data), а probability — вероятность получения таких данных при условии, что гипотеза верна Pr(data|model). Понять эту замысловатость очень просто, если представить себе эксперта (или даже лидера мнений) в области русского языка. Всякий раз, когда мы видим, или слышим, или читаем такого мыслителя, он говорит о том, как правильно писать слова …

ТАЙНА РУССКОЙ ОРФОЭПИИ Принято считать, что законы русской орфоэпии очень сложны. Это не так. Они очень просты — конечно, если знать тайный ключ. Мы даем его вам. В любой непонятной ситуации отдавайте предпочтение тому варианту, который позволит зарифмовать данное слово с каким-нибудь матерным выражением. Убедитесь сами: афера — какого х---ра

баловать — е---ать

вандалы — в е---ало

ворожея — ни х---я

граффити — не п---дите

завсегдатай — п---датый

мусоропровод — е---ать тебя в рот

ретироваться — е---аться

трансфер — х---р

фетиш — ты п---дишь Задать вопрос @UchenyjBot

БРАТЬЯ ПО РАЗУМУ Кто из западноевропейских народов нам ближе всего по духу? Узнать это очень просто. Нужно только посмотреть, как в их языках передаются понятия «громоотвод» и «гром». Итак: английский — lightning rod and thunder

немецкий — Blitzableiter und Donner

итальянский — parafulmine e tuono

испанский — pararrayos y truenos

португальский — pára-raios e trovões

нидерландский — bliksemafleider en donder

шведский — blixtstång och åska

датский — lynstang og torden

французский — paratonnerre et tonnerre Ответ ясен. Наши братья — французы. Они так же, как и мы, не знают, что отводить надо не гром, а молнию. Задать вопрос @UchenyjBot

​​ДВА КОНЦА, ДВА КОЛЬЦА В «Хоббите» Голлум и Бильбо загадывают друг друга по пять загадок. Последняя загадка, которая приносит Бильбо победу, на первый взгляд кажется абсурдной: он спрашивает, что лежит у него в кармане. Кажется, что Голлуму просто не следовало соглашаться отвечать на такой вопрос. (Комментаторы обычно указывают, что Голлума подвела неосведомленность об утрате кольца, как будто если бы в кармане у Бильбо лежал томик Блока, отгадать это не представляло бы никакой трудности). Однако, если вспомнить точную последовательность загадок и отгадок (см. схему), становится понятно, почему Голлум, пусть и после некоторых колебаний и с некоторыми уступками, решил попробовать ответить. …

#sözler #слова

В Турции, как в России, никто не называет ЛОРа отоларингологом. Только ухо-горло-нос. По-турецки этот доктор звучит так: Kulak Burun Boğaz.

Недавно открыли новый эффективный антибиотик. Так как искали его с помощью «искусственного интеллекта» (то есть, машинного обучения), то и название ему дали халицин (halicin) — в честь HAL 9000 — искусственного интеллекта из Космической Одиссеи. https://polit.ru/news/2020/02/21/ps_halicin/

Как женщина купила себе название урагана. А также объяснение, почему он где-то Сабина, а где-то Киара: https://t.me/dwrussian/2088

Как известно, silicon и silicone — это два разных слова, которыми названы два разных вещества (потому-то долина Кремниевая, а не Силиконовая). Есть ещё пара английских слов, очень похожих друг на друга: это слова suit и suite. Первое — это тот самый «сьют», костюм, который все проходили в школе. Второе слово читается примерно как «свит», и означает: свиту, сюиту, номер из нескольких комнат в отеле, набор из нескольких программ. Понятно, что оба эти слова происходят из одного источника, означающего последовательность (там ещё и слова sue и lawsuit и современный глагол seguir — «следовать» — в испанском и португальском). Но сейчас в английском это два разных слова. В общем, не называйте номер…

История о том, как японцы придумали своё слово для Олимпиады в два иероглифа, потому что катаканой слишком длинно в газетных заголовках: https://t.me/orientwitch/332 Строго говоря, это просто газетный эпитет: 五輪, «пять колец». То есть, тот заголовок можно прочитать как «Пятиколечный флаг прибыл в Берлин». Ну обычно, у нас тоже есть всякие «огнеборцы» (firefighters, между прочим) в газетах. Но ведь короче же получилось — в сравнении с オリンピック. Японская википедия говорит, что слово прижилось и используется как синоним.

А вот лингвист Александр Пиперски говорит «пасибо»

Среди принятых в январе этого года эмодзи есть аккордеон. Этот символ примечателен тем, что его предложил я (в июне 2017 года). Сейчас эта фраза про баян уже уходит, а раньше слишком старые и надоевшие приколы называли баяном в честь старого анекдота про баян. Писать каждый раз в чате «баян» мне надоело, хотелось иметь специальный символ для этого. Как это так — музыкальный инструмент есть, а эмодзи нет? В общем, теперь даже я уже не называю старые шутки баянами, а эмодзи наконец приняли. Кого интересует — вот по этому адресу принимаются предложения о новых эмодзи.

Чемодан - от перс ǰāmâ + dân = одежда + хранилище. В русский пришло через татар čаmаdаn Забавно при этом, что на момент заимствования ещё не существовало чемодана в привычном нам виде, а имелись в виду сумки/тюки/круглые кофры. В нынешнем же персидском (фарси) произошло обратное заимствование слова из русского уже для современного чемодана :) Кстати, прямоугольный чемодан с жёсткими стенками придумал не кто иной, как сам Луи Вюиттон (основатель компании) в середине 19 века. Время изобретения совпало с/было вызвано началом эпохи паровозных и пароходных путешествий, где плоская форма оказалась наиболее удобной, так как позволяла компактно перевозить багаж, в отличие от круглых коробок, тюков …

⬆️⬆️ Как видите, не всегда можно доверять своему фонетическому чутью. Китайские города склоняются по мужскому роду, дорогие некоторые редакторы европейской части России (а также переехавшие в Ригу). Даже легендарный революционный Яньнань (который якобы успел устояться в женском роде).

И: лохань

Р: пью из лохани

Д: поближе к лохани

В: упал в лохань

Т: в обнимку с лоханью

П: думаю о лохани

И: Ухань

Р: из Уханя

Д: к Уханю

В: вижу Ухань

Т: вместе с Уханем

П: об Ухане

Есть такой жанр — надписи не по-русски, но «в русском стиле», со вставленной не к месту кириллицей. Так вот, китайцы тоже делают это. Прямо в иероглифы вставляют русские буквы для красоты. Афиша китайской комедии 囧妈 (международное название «Lost in Russia») из твиттера: https://twitter.com/stillmatique/status/1221340851944787969/photo/2

В (китайской) википедии логотип сменили — завтра Новый год

Российские СМИ, в частности @meduzalive и @rt_russian , упорно считают китайский город Ухань женского рода. Я и сам грамотей еще тот, но, изучая китайский, поневоле обретаешь способность слышать и видеть фальшь в транскрипции и склонении китайских собственных имен. Никакого Уханью, Ухани быть не может. «Названия городов, уездов, округов, островов, горных хребтов (и гор), проливов следует склонять как имена мужского рода по склонению образца зверь, например: в [городах] Тяньцзине, Сиане, Аньшане, в Дахунмыне (городская территория Пекина), в [уезде] Есяне, на [острове] Хайнане, на склонах Алашаня, на Тайшане (горная вершина) и т. д.» Концевич Л. Р. Китайские имена собственные и термины в русс…

До сих пор нет консенсуса по вопросу склонения китайских топонимов на «-нь». Вроде бы все согласны, что провинции нужно склонять по женскому роду (Юньнань, Хэнань, Фуцзянь). Но и тут есть Хайнань, который остров, и его хочется склонять как остров. Но некоторые пытаются и города склонять в женском роде (Ухань). Точного правила нет, но в рекомендациях обычно советуют склонять в мужском, потому что это города. Некоторые вообще советуют «стараться не склонять». Лично я не могу считать, скажем, Сиань словом женского рода. Это же город, «он мой», мужской род. Или вот Далянь. Он же до переименования был Дальний (не «Дальняя»). Так что я все китайские города на «-нь» склоняю по мужскому роду. Ехать…

Если спросить знающего только английский язык человека, сколько в английском гласных звуков, вам ответят «Пять! A-I-U-E-O!». На вопрос, неужели в словах father и cat буква «a» означает один и тот же звук, вы скорее всего получите молчание в подтверждение известного выражения «рыбы — не ихтиологи». Для того, чтобы говорить по-английски, не нужно знать, что там от 14 до 21 гласного звука (в зависимости от диалекта). Но как насчёт того, чтобы изучать их: их же надо как-то называть? У нас конечно есть Международный фонетический алфавит, да будут лета его долги, но выговаривать «огубленный гласный среднего ряда средне-верхнего подъёма» каждый раз — сомнительное удовольствие. Тем более, что один …

Теория оптимальности очень красиво решает очень многие проблемы фонологии, в том числе проблему безумных слогов в шильхском берберском, но у неё есть один крупный недостаток (она не позволяет объяснить случаи с непрозрачными правилами) и один недостаток среднего размера. Недостаток среднего размера заключается в том, что если недостаточно критично подходить к подбору правил, можно доказать вообще что угодно, и теория тогда превращается в гадание по полёту птиц. Строгий отбор правил означает, что, вводя новые правила, мы должны доказать их применимость комбинаторным методом. К примеру, если у нас есть языки, в которых запрет закрытых слогов более важен, чем запрет добавлять, то должны быть и…

Многие годы лингвистику мучила проблема заговоров в звуковых системах. Возьмём английское слово, primary [ˈprʌɪməri], «праймари» и заимствуем его в японский и йоруба.

* японский: プライマリ «пураимари»

* йоруба: pámárì В японском добавилось несколько гласных, в йоруба исчез один согласный. Конечно же для записи таких вещей есть особая система формул, которой в том или ином виде пользовались много веков. «Г» ниже значит «гласный звук», «С» — согласный, «∅» — пустоту.

* яп. ∅ → Г в положении между С или между С и концом слова,

* йор. С → ∅ в положении после С. Сокращённо,

* ∅ → Г / С _ [C|#],

* С → ∅ / С _. С одной стороны, мы наконец-то можем формализовать оба изменения, но с другой из формульной…

Пять вещей, которые нужно знать о языковой обстановке в Мезоамерике 1. «Ацтеки» — народ, говорящий на языке науатль, который живёт (до сих пор) в Мехико и за его пределами, вплоть до Оахаки. Науатль — язык юто-ацтекской семьи и родственнен юте (от юте происходит название штата Юта). «Древние ацтеки» живут в наше время. 2. Майя говорят на майяских языках и живут на полуострове Юкатан и в Гватемале. «Древние майя» тоже живут в наше время. У языков майя миллионы носителей и носительниц, и множество говорящих на юкатекском, какчикельском, успанткеском, чухском, киче и других языках майя живёт в Мексике и США. 3. Одна из крупнейших языковых семей обеих Америк называется ото-мангской, на ото-манг…

Сочинения древнегреческих и древнеримских авторов — также известных как «классическая литература» — имели огромное влияние на европейскую культуру. Их читали в Средние века (правда тогда их звали просто «авторитетами») и в эпоху Ренессанса; по ним учились, их цитировали, хотя и не так часто, как религиозные тексты. Самыми популярными авторами были Виргилий и Цицерон, чьи книги средневековые читатели заложили в фундамент европейской литературной традиции. К примеру, архиепископ Кентерберийский Феодор и его друг, Адриан Кентерберийский (африканский учёный, живший в Англии), основали монастырскую школу, которая стала важнейшим центром англосаксонской науки и литературы; произведения там создав…

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