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Language Log Vanceism of the week: "Haitia" Back in the early 2000s, George W. Bush got a lot of flac for calling Greeks "Grecians" and making similar mistakes in the mapping from place names to ethnonyms. J.D. Vance recently went the other way, mapping the ethnonym Haitians to a possible place name pronounced /ˈhej.ʃə/, as if it were spelled "Haitia": Your browser does not support the audio element. Or maybe that shoud be "Heyshuh", as in this TikTok video. This slip is pretty far down on the list of things for which Vance has recently been criticized, so one of the few other recent allusions to his morphological choice is buried in this Daily Show segment. For those from other countries (or planets) who haven't been following this story, the Haitians in Springfield OH are legal immigrants, and the accusations of pet-eating are false. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Can Google AI count? Apparently not. Given this recent tweet, in which Google AI Overview explains that "October 21 is not a Libra, as the Libra zodiac sign is from September 23 to October 22", I thought I'd try for myself. The result had a different format but the same problem: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Backflip4.png We've previously described AI problems with counting R's in "strawberry", numbering sentences, etc., so this isn't surprising. These various LLMs are very much a moving target, so what fails now might work next week. Or maybe not — consider the "John Backflip" legend, which was first noted in the spring of 2023 but remains alive today, as per this recent Bluesky post: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Backflip1.png When I tried it myself this morning, Google's AI overview distances itself a tiny bit by citing the source as a YouTube video and waving its metaphorical hand at other answers, while still featuring the fable as if it were true: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Backflip0.png The fact that most of these systems' answers are correct makes such logical and factual backflips more troubling. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day dusky Definition: (adjective) Characterized by little or inadequate light; shadowy. Synonyms: twilight, twilit. Usage: I met him on the road one dusky evening, and he insisted on seeing me safely home. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub pain | pain in the arse | pain in the backside someone or something that's annoying or troublesome ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub line up If you line up, you join a line of people standing one behind the other, or side by side. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

paraphernalia

Idiom of the Day like attracts like People tend to seek out or be attracted to those that are similar or like-minded. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) TOP YOUTUBE COMMENT 🏆 #50ShadesofBlue #SelenaGomez #NickKroll Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Mormon Tabernacle Choir vowel variations I departed a total of about 260 miles from my Route 30 / Lincoln Highway running route to come down to Salt Lake City for a few perduring reasons. 1. From the time I was a little boy, I have always wanted to float in the Great Salt Lake. 2. From the time I was in junior high school, I've always wanted to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in person. 3. From the time I was in high school, I have always wanted to visit the world's greatest collection of genealogical records, created at great expense and effort by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Last night I was privileged to hear the MTC — all 360 members, plus 110 members of the orchestra — during their Thursday evening practice session.  Of course, the director paid a lot of attention to emphasis, volume, tonal quality, pronunciation, breathing, and so forth, but what amazed me most of all was the amount of time, attention, and care he devoted to variations in the quality of vowels. At first I was going to refer to this phenomenon as vowel gradation, but then I realized that expression has been coopted for ablaut and umlaut.  So I'm referring to it as vowel variation.  What was particularly stunning was the fact that the quality of the vowels he demonstrated was intimately related to the melodic contours being performed.  The director paid exceedingly close attention to this linkage, and the 360 members of the choir responded immediately and exactingly. I don't think that any notation system (IPA or other) could record on a two dimensional surface the fine gradations / variations of the director's demonstrations.  It had to be done orally and even visually by perception of the director's vocal apparatus (mouth, throat, lips, and — to an extent — tongue):  high, low, front, back, middle, rounded, closed, and so forth, including glissandos from one to the other.   It is this dedication to the precise analysis of tone production that accounts for the smooth, full, rich  sound of the MTC.  Although there were 360 voices, the result was that of an intimate ensemble. The acoustics of the tabernacle (built 1863-1867) are perfect, so I could hear every detail, though I was sitting at the back of the hall in the balcony.  One of the demonstrations of the superb acoustics of the MT is that someone can tear a piece of paper at the front of the hall and you can hear it clearly from any spot in the auditorium. Selected readings * "Vowel chart body art" (12/26/09) * "Tabernacle Choir" (Wikipedia) ➖ @EngSkills ➖

ool of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us. My response: Geoff Pullum uses terms like "aphasia", and phrases like "I don't think there's any structure in there", in describing a quoted passage from Donald Trump's 7/21/2015 speech in Sun City SC. But in my opinion, he's been misled by a notorious problem: the apparent incoherence of much transcribed extemporized speech, even when the same material is completely comprehensible and even eloquent in audio or audio-visual form. This apparent incoherence has two main causes: false starts and parentheticals. Both are effectively signaled in speaking — by prosody along with gesture, posture, and gaze — and therefore largely factored out by listeners. But in textual form, the cues are gone, and we lose the thread. Has anything changed? Certainly not the false starts and parentheticals, and also not the repetitions and the associative jumps in topic. And there's even consistency in the focus on how others don't give him the credit that he deserves. I have the impression that a detailed analysis of his various rhetorical irregularities might show a quantitative increase in some dimensions — but I haven't done that yet, and neither has anyone else. Donald Trump's rhetorical style is certainly different from most other contemporary American politicians. And there are plenty of plausible comparisons to alcoholic speech (though Trump is a teetotaler) and to the effects of various neuropsychological disorders, including some of those associated with aging.  But his style is clearly effective in reaching an audience, and there's no clear evidence of any recent changes. For (a list of far too many) more posts on related topics, see "Past posts on Donald Trump's rhetoric". ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Is there evidence of senility in Trump's speech? Sarah Posner on Bluesky, linking to a kamalahq tweet and a kamalahq Instagram post: In the thread below: a completely rambling, unhinged, incomprehensible quote from Trump at his Flint town hall with Sarah Huckabee Sanders that the Harris campaign distributed, then news headlines about same event. Where is all the coverage that Trump is old and can't speak a coherent sentence? I've been defending Donald Trump against similar accusations since my exchange with Geoff Pullum in 2015 — "Trump's aphasia" vs. "Trump's eloquence". Has anything changed? The answer, I think, is "maybe, but not very much". We'll begin with the 9/17/2024 Flint passage, and then compare the 7/21/2015 passage. The first point is that the cited passage from the recent Flint town hall  is not "incomprehensible". Here's the prompt from Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Your browser does not support the audio element. And Mr. President, we don't mind that you give long answers, because you actually have something to say, because you actually got something done when you were president. And Trump's response (I've edited the kamalahq transcript for accuracy, also including a bit more around the edges, with changes in blue vs. red for the original…): Your browser does not support the audio element. You know, it's a very interesting- cause she- she said- I ((could)) said- I don't think I've ever said this before. So we do these rallies. They're massive rallies. Everybody loves– everybody stays till the end by the way. You know, when she said that, "well, your rallies people leave" Honestly, nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I'd say "and ladies and gentlemen make America great again" and I'd get the hell out, ok? Because I don't want people leaving. But I– I do have to ((say)) so– I give these long sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs But they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with uh… raising cane, that story; I do it with the uh story on the catapults on the aircraft carriers, I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mentioned Doctor Hannibal Lecter I'm using that as an example of people that are coming in, from Silence of the Lambs. I use it, they say it's terrible. So they say– so I'll give this long complex area, for instance that- I talked about a lot of different territory– the bottom line is I said the most important thing. We're going to bring more plants into your state, and this country to make automobiles. We're going to be bigger than before. But the fake news says- There's a lot of them back there, if- You know, for a town hall, there's a lot of peo– but the fake news likes to say, the fake((s)) news likes to say "oh, he was rambling." No, no, that's not rambling. That's genius. When you can connect the dots. ((You gotta connect-)) Now, now, Sarah, if you couldn't connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected and many stories were told in that little paragraph. But there is something- but they say that- …and onward, through more complaining about not getting credit for his alleged rally sizes and crowd enthusiasm. Incomprehensible? I don't think so — Trump is clearly complaining about various things that Harris poked fun at during the 9/10/2024 debate. There are plenty of false starts, parentheticals, and associative jumps. But the focus on reacting to Harris's jibes is consistent and plain. Compare the 2015 passage that Geoff Pullum reacted to. Here's the audio, followed by the (not very accurate) transcript that Geoff took from Slate magazine: Your browser does not support the audio element. Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton Sch[...]

Word of the Day suppliant Definition: (noun) One praying humbly for something. Synonyms: petitioner, requester, supplicant. Usage: "Oh, God!" prayed the kneeling suppliant, "protect my husband, guard my son, and take my wretched life instead!" Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: watershed This word has appeared in 168 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub whacked | whacked out to be very tired, or very intoxicated from the use of alcohol or drugs ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub seal off to stop people from going into an area or a building, often because it isn't safe ➖ @EngSkills ➖

winnow

Idiom of the Day like rats abandoning a sinking ship With great haste and having only personal well-being in mind. (Typically said of people who begin abandoning something or someone that is failing or about to fail.) Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Cultural literacy at The Guardian There has been an enormous turbulence over the simultaneous explosion of Hezbollah pagers (some call them walkie-talkies) at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2024, involving as it does actors in regions as far flung as the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia.  No one could be closer to the center of the turmoil than the gentleman in the middle of the doorway in this photograph: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/goldapollo.jpg He is Hsu Ching-kuang (Xǔ Qīngguāng 許清光), founder and chief executive of Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo, which is alleged to have made the offending pagers, although Hsu denies it. The photograph comes from this article: "‘This is very embarrassing’: Middle East crisis takes a detour to an office park in Taiwan:  Media spotlight shifted to Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo which has denied supplying the pagers that exploded across the Hezbollah network in Lebanon", by Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin, The Guardian (9/18/24) I do not wish to get embroiled in all of the accusations and counter-accusations of this highly sensitive, high stakes international incident, but I do want to call attention to an uncanny, seemingly offhand remark from the The Guardian article, namely, that Gold Apollo's glass entrance "was still festooned with leftover Lunar New Year decorations wishing for prosperity." Since the event occurred around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival (9/17/24), one might have thought that The Guardian slipped up and confused Mid-Autumn Festival decorations with Lunar New Year decorations.  Examining the photograph for evidence one way or the other, I spotted the red poster on the wall behind CEO Hsu.  Although the print is very small and I am on the road without a powerful magnifying glass, I think that the parallel verses of the matching couplet say: niánnián hǎoyùn cáishén dào  rìrì cáiyuán shùnyì lái 年年好運財神到 日日財源順意來 "May good luck and the God of Wealth arrive every year; may the source of wealth smoothly come every day" http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/goldapollo2.jpg This is a typical New Year's poster showing a messenger from the Heavenly Kingdom and wishing for good fortune during the coming year.  We may refer to the figure as a ménshén 門神 ("door god").  They are customarily put on the door as spiritual guards on New Year’s Eve and they’d remain there for the rest of the year.  The banner across his chest reads “gōngxǐ fācái / Cant. gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4 恭喜發財“ ("May you be happy and prosperous!") — a Chinese New Year greeting.  Although it may seem gratuitous to mention this detail, I thought it was sharp for The Guardian not to mix up up the Chinese festivals while at the same time evoking the atmosphere at Gold Apollo which is still producing this (somewhat) outmoded technology and continues to make money from it. Selected readings * "2024 Lebanon pager explosions" (Wikipedia) * "Cracking down on the Hezbollians" (7/19/06) [h.t. AntC; thanks to Jing Hu, Zhaofei Chen, Xinyi Ye, and Judit Bagi] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: denigrate This word has appeared in 61 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub eye-popping amazingly large or impressive ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub save up to put something aside for the future ➖ @EngSkills ➖

approbation

Idiom of the Day get on like a house afire Of two or more people, to enjoy one another's company very much from the start and become good friends at once. (Used when people are meeting for the first time.) Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day interpenetrate Definition: (verb) Spread or diffuse through. Synonyms: imbue, permeate, pervade, diffuse, riddle, penetrate. Usage: Crossing his arms on his chest, as if to control this new sensation of delight, he drank in delicious draughts of that mysterious air which interpenetrates at night the loftiest forests. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

easier, and more accurate. Plans and proposals for lexicon, dictionary and thesaurus creation are also in place, which makes the website more worthwhile to watch out for in the future. The author explains: At the moment, the site consists of four major modules, with others still under active development: 1. 1. A high-resolution oracle bone font. 2. A database including over 52,288 glyphs. 3. A Multi-purpose text editor for inputting transcriptions. 4. Geographical and timeline visualizations. In this two-part article, I will explain the programming technology that made them possible and the academic considerations behind the creation of these modules. In doing so, I hope that some reflections on my attempts regarding font development, database building, and interface design can be helpful for palaeography studies and the general field of DH. The remainder of this long, first part of the two part post explains in technical detail how the font is constructed and how it is accessed and applied.  The author concludes: In general, this combination of the font as the base glyph compilation and the database interface as the base search tool firmly guarantees the correct input of desired oracle bone graphs and sets the foundation for future development of a genuine glyph database that covers the functions of a dictionary, lexicon, and eventually a transcription corpus. Some effort has to be made in order to become familiar with the functionalities of these modules of course. But compared to the current academic situation where everything is done by copy-pasting images, it is no doubt a worthwhile attempt towards the efficient utilization of the textual resources this field has to offer. This is indeed a great improvement over the "drawing" and "copy-pasting" of individual glyphs (don't forget that there are 50,000+ of 'em!) that has heretofore constituted the state of the field.  It's an ambitious project, but remains to be perfected and utilized. A closing note.  This post by Peichao Qin has appeared in The Digital Orientalist, which has also published scores of other posts on the application of DH and AI for the study of South Asian, Central Asian, East Asian, African, Middle Eastern, etc. languages, Selected readings * "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20) * "Oracle" (3/21/14) * "Paleographers, riches await you!" (10/28/16) [Thanks to Geoff Wade] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Font making for oracle bone inscription studies "Jingyuan Digital Platform: Font Making and Database Development for Shang Oracle Bones (Part 1)", Peichao Qin, The Digital Orientalist (9/17/24) If you're wondering what "Jingyuan" means, it's a fancy, allusive way to say "Mirrored contexts [for thorough investigations]" ([gézhì] jìngyuán [格致]鏡原) (source), just a means for the creator of the platform to give it a proprietary designation. A goodly proportion of Language Log readers probably have some idea of what oracle bone inscriptions are, but just to refresh our memories and for the benefit of new and recent readers who are not familiar with the history of Sinographic scripts, I'm going to jump right into the third paragraph of Qin's article, which is like a basic primer of oracle bone inscription studies. Oracle bone inscriptions (OBI), also known as the oracle bone script, can be dated to the later part of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1250 B.C. – 1046 B.C.). It is the inscriptional product of pyromantic divination conducted by Shang elites, a controlled process of systematic drilling of hollows and burning of metal rods to produce cracks on turtle shells or ox scapulae, and the subsequent record-keeping practices of Shang scribes to keep track of the relevant divination events (also see Henry’s post). The oracle bone script, in general, is known to possess highly complex character structures and a huge number of variant forms. Since its first discovery in 1899, over 4,000 characters and 50,000 distinct variants have been identified. The 125-year-long development of the scholarship has produced a lot of useful literature related to the decipherment studies of individual characters and transcriptions for published oracle bone corpora, offering invaluable materials for relevant linguistic and historical examinations of the Shang dynasty. However, the lack of font support and coherent encoding for both archaic and modern forms of the oracle bone characters, and the long absence of efficient database query support have often made the field rather difficult to navigate for both beginners and advanced learners. The input of oracle bone glyphs and database building have been constantly relying on copying and pasting rubbings [of] images which are not so easily indexed and searched. To return to the beginning of the post, wherein the author gives the rationale for their creation of the platform: Tired of struggling to find and type out complex oracle bone script characters? You’re not alone. For years, scholars and enthusiasts alike have faced the frustrating challenges of working with these ancient inscriptions—challenges that stem from the lack of a proper font and efficient search tools. An insane number of characters, variants and transcriptions are out there right now thanks to more-than-a-century-long discoveries and research. Imagine spending hours and hours just trying to locate a single glyph or having to manually piece together characters from a mixture of strokes and blot marks using low-resolution rubbings. This not only creates problems for scholars who want to read the texts and search for the relevant literature, but also for enthusiasts who just want to type the character and create non-pixelated artworks. This was the reality for the oracle bone script, until now. I’m excited to introduce the Jingyuan Digital Platform, a brand-new solution designed to transform how we interact with Shang oracle bone inscriptions. This platform offers two major game-changing tools: the world’s first ultra high-resolution font for oracle bone script (available for free download here) and a comprehensive, user-friendly search engine for these ancient glyphs. Whether you’re typing in Word, designing a poster, or conducting in-depth research, the platform streamlines the entire process, making it faster,[...]

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Parker yelled at us about some BS #CreatorsForKamala #gotv #DNC2024 #GeorgiaYoungDemocrats Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ Sent by @TheFeedReaderBot ➖ ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Man-maids Tale Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ Sent by @TheFeedReaderBot ➖ ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Ask LLOG: Semicolons used as commas? From Josh E.: I am a big fan of your posts on the Language Log and was wondering whether you often see semicolons used the way we might normally use commas to set off a dependent clause. Here is an example I just saw: A Massachusetts family is demanding a full investigation after a state police recruit died after being injured during a training exercise late last week at the Massachusetts State Police Academy. Police said Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, of Worcester was injured and became unresponsive during a training exercise Thursday on defensive tactics. He died the next day. […] McGhee said he put about 400 to 500 recruits through the program without issue, and noted the academy has since trained thousands. “While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened; injuries to this level are very rare,” he said. When I started teaching a decade ago, I rarely saw this issue. Now, I see it all the time in both undergraduate and professionally published writing. Is there a term for this kind of flattening of punctuation distinctions? Or would Geoff Pullum put me up there with Strunk and White as being wrong in my basic understanding? FWIW, I'd be surprised if Geoff defended that semicolon. I don't share the impression that similar errors have become more common, but that may be related to my acknowledged status as the World's Worst Proofreader… What do the rest of you think? We should note that the cited semicolons might be an editing error, rather than a reflection of the writer's punctuation preferences… Some past posts with a connection to semicolons, though mostly not relevant to this question: "Jane Austen: missing the points", 11/17/2010 "Death before syntax?", 10/20/2014 "More on grammar, punctuation, and prosody", 12/19/2017 "Peeving and breeding", 3/4/2018 "Barstool punctuation", 4/4/2020 "Trends", 3/27/2022 ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log AI-based DeepL is different So says DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski. "DeepL translation targets Taiwan as next key Asian market:  CEO says AI-based model is aiming to refine nuances, politeness", Steven Borowiec, Nikkei staff writer (September 16, 2024) DeepL Write is one thing, DeepL Translator is another.  We've examined both on Language Log and are aware that the former is already deeply entrenched as a tool for composition assistance, but are less familiar with the special features of the latter. The article by Borowiec, based on his interview with CEO Jarek Kutylowski, begins with some not very enlightening remarks about the difference between simplified characters on the mainland and traditional characters on Taiwan, attesting to the truism that CEOs and CFOs often don't know as much about the nitty-gritty technicalities of the products they sell as do the scientists and specialists they hire to make them. The article then focuses on the business aspects of  DeepL, where Kutylowski is on much firmer ground, when he tells us how many hundreds of millions of dollars investment DeepL's translation software has attracted and how many billions of dollars of valuation it has achieved. When the conversation turns to more general concepts of different approaches to machine translation, I perked up and was all ears. DeepL was founded in 2017 and touted itself as the first online translation platform to use neural networks and machine learning. The model was fed countless examples of translated sentences in each language in order to teach it to recognize the natural structures of sentences, Kutylowski explained. He contrasted this with the more conventional approach, in which models rely on estimates of probability and try to "guess" which words are most likely to follow one another in a sentence. … Jarek, a native speaker of Polish, pointed to how his mother tongue and other languages have different forms of address depending on the level of familiarity between speakers. He hopes to soon introduce improvements to DeepL that can improve the quality of translations in such areas. "What helps the AI to solve those problems is having a lot of context. We are actually working on some technology that is going to allow us to solve that by trying to gather that information and trying to gather that context from the user, when it's necessary. I expect that to be available pretty soon." I have often exclaimed how remarkably good Google Translate is, and I'm absolutely astonished at how many different languages it can translate to and from, but DeepL is aspiring to give it a run for the money. Selected readings * "How to say 'AI' in Mandarin" (9/17/24) * "DeepL Translator" (2/16/23) — lengthy post that gives a detailed demonstration of how DeepL works in comparison with Google Translate, WeChat, and a human being (linguist-Sinilogist) * "Uh-oh! DeepL in the classroom; it's already here" (2/22/23) * "Competing chatbots" (7/19/23) * "Google Translate is even better now" (9/27/16) * "Google Translate is even better now, part 2" (5/12/22) * "Google is scary good" (7/31/17) [Thanks to Don Keyser] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: disproportionate This word has appeared in 283 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub up the duff pregnant ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub take off (2) If a plane takes off, it leaves the ground and rises into the sky. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

by and large

Idiom of the Day need (something) (about) as much as (one) needs a hole in the head To have absolutely no need or use for something. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Parker Short drinks?? #NationalVoterRegistrationDay #GOTV #CreatorsforKamala #DNC2024 #GeorgiaDems Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) We Found The Most Enthusiastic DNC-Goer of All Time What better way to observe National Voter Registration Day then to feature the President of Georgia Young Democrats, Parker Short. He's here, he's enthused, he may have had a couple of beers. Watch Parker FINALLY reveal his favorite curse word & more! Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day smug Definition: (adjective) Exhibiting or feeling great or offensive satisfaction with oneself or with one's situation; self-righteously complacent. Synonyms: self-satisfied. Usage: On his face was the smug look of a toad breakfasting on fat marsh flies. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Hispanic Heritage Month from Humpty Trumpty #GeorgeLopez #Trumpez #SNLSpoof Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log How to say "AI" in Mandarin An eminent Chinese historian just sent these two sentences to me: Yǒurén shuō AI zhǐ néng jìsuàn, ér rénlèi néng suànjì. Yīncǐ AI yīdìng bùshì rénlèi duìshǒ 有人說AI只能計算，而人類能算計。因此AI一定不是人類對手。 "Some people say that AI can only calculate, while humans can compute.  Therefore, AI must not be a match for humans". Google Translate, Baidu Fanyi, and Bing Translate all render both jìsuàn 計算 and suànjì 算計 as "calculate".  Only DeepL differentiates the two by translating the latter as "do math". DeepL is on the right track that jìsuàn 計算 and suànjì 算計 need to be distinguished in the sentences under consideration, but I think that suànjì 算計 might better be rendered as "compute" — in this pair of sentences. Be that as it may, how do you say "AI" in Mandarin (which is the point of this post)?  AI. Of course, you can also translate "AI" into "réngōng zhìhuì 人工智慧" (more popular in Taiwan and the Sinophone world outside mainland China) or "réngōng zhìnéng 人工智能" (preferred on the mainland), but from observation and asking around, it appears that most Chinese who have even a passing acquaintance with what AI / artificial intelligence is prefer to refer to it as "AI" in daily discourse — even those who do not know English.  In other words, not only has the Latin alphabet become part of the Chinese writing system, as we have shown numerous times on Language Log, countless English terms, even those written in the Latin alphabet, have become part of the Mandarin and other Sinitic topolect lexicons. As a savvy M.A. student from the PRC explains: People wouldn’t think “Oh damn this is a person who wants to brag that they know English” when we use certain English words like AI, offer, deadline, or American terms like NBC, but they would if we use other English words that are not often directly used in English, like if you use “ROI” (return on investment, a very popular term among bankers) in a Chinese conversation (e.g., zhè bǐ jiāoyì de ROI shì shénme 这笔交易的ROI是什么 ["What is the ROI of this transaction?"]), people might think you’re showing off your ability to speak English, etc. We are already in the early stages of China Babel. Selected readings * "Pinyin vs. English" (10/20/23) * "The Englishization of Chinese enters a new phase" (8/8/24) * "China Babel" (3/26/24) * Mark Hansell, "The Sino-Alphabet: The Assimilation of Roman Letters into the Chinese Writing System," Sino-Platonic Papers, 45 (May, 1994), 1-28 (pdf) [Thanks to Zhaofei Chen, Xinyi Ye, Jing Hu, and Chenfeng Wang] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log What did Rich Lowry say? Yesterday, Alejandra Caraballo tweeted: The editor in chief of the National Review just said the N word in regards to Haitians and Megyn Kelly ignores it. Andy McCarthy responded: Ridiculous. @richlowry (not tagged here, natch) obviously got crossed up between 'immigrants' (short i) and migrants (long i) — started mispronouncing "migrants" with short i; instantly corrected himself with no embarrassment because it was patently a mispronunciation. Geez. And Rich Lowry agreed: Yep, this is exactly what happened—I began to mispronounce the word “migrants” and caught myself halfway through Ben Zimmer emailed me: Got sent this from a friend, who was hoping to see some analysis of whether the initial consonant on the misspeak here is /m/ or /n/. (Since the previous consonant is the final /n/ in "Haitian," there may be some gestural overlap.) Here's the full clip from Alejandra Caraballo's tweet: Your browser does not support the audio element. A transcript of Lowry's part of the clip: I love- I think it was in- in that interview where Dana Bash says ((you know)) "police have gone through eleven months of recordings of calls and they've only found two Springfield residents calling to complain about Haitian ((??)) n- m- uh migrants taking geese from ponds, only two calls and I think one lesson of this whole story people don't care about geese people really hate geese you know they- they- all things considered I think people'd prefer Haitian migrants to come and take the geese off the golf course, right So it's- it's pets- it's uh the cats and dogs that's become the- the standard, gee- geese clearly don't matter And the contested phrase: Your browser does not support the audio element. to complain about Haitian ((??)) n- m- uh migrants Just the part that I've transcribed as "Haitian ((???))", with a spectrogram: Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/LowryBashHaitiansX1a.png It's easy to hear (and see) why Caraballo heard and wrote what she did — phonetically, ((???))) is clearly [ˡnɪgɚ]. The /nn/ nasal reflex of "Haitian n…" is 95 milliseconds long, and thus clearly represents a sequence of a syllable-final and a syllable-initial nasal. The stable acoustics of the  nasal murmur isn't consistent with re-articulation from /n/ to /m/ part-way through. And the formant transitions from the nasal consonant into the following [ɪ] vowel (F2 starting at 1900 Hz) indicate a coronal rather than labial place of articulation. That conclusion is made more persuasive by comparing the next bits, where Lowry produces a sequence of false starts that might be transcribed phonetically as [n- mʔ- ə-] before going on to say "migrants": Your browser does not support the audio element. So McCarthy's explanation is wrong: Lowry did not "[start] mispronouncing 'migrants' with short i". However, Lowry is clearly in speech-error mode, and what he said after "Haitian" is clearly a substitution for "migrants", and "immigration" does offer a confusable phoneme sequence. So what he said is clear, in phonetic terms: it was [ˡnɪgɚ]. As for why he said it, there's a range of explanations from a word-substitution error, perhaps of the Freudian slip variety, to an innocent phonemic scramble of the general type that McCarthy proposes. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: infraction This word has appeared in 51 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub shitload a large amount or number ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub put on (2) to make an appliance or a piece of equipment start to function ➖ @EngSkills ➖

dally

Idiom of the Day like a chicken with the pip In low spirits; in a weak or sickened state or manner. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Poor Mr. Fardass #BrianHuskey #WillFerrell #ZachGalifianakis Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day callous Definition: (adjective) Emotionally hardened; unfeeling. Synonyms: indurate, pachydermatous. Usage: He was a callous man and cared not for the suffering of others. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) @nimayndolo pulled a Paul Mescal #KMK #DNC2024 #CreatorsForKamala Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

logist, said. “It was beautiful. He read it as if everybody would understand everything, and that makes you understand.” Magnifique! We do this all the time when we listen to operas in languages we don't know. Selected readings * "Sanskrit resurgent" (8/13/14) * "Spoken Sanskrit" (1/9/16) [Thanks to Don Keyser] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log The City of Angels in Latin "The Best New Book Written Entirely in Latin You’ll Try to Read This Year:  Why Donatien Grau, an adviser at the Louvre, decided to write 'De Civitate Angelorum,' a book about Los Angeles, the Roman way."  By Fergus McIntosh, New Yorker (September 16, 2024) Since even elite schools like Penn and Princeton no longer have a language requirement in their Classics departments, I doubt that many people, other than a few extraordinarily conscientious lawyers and biological taxonomists, will understand much of what Grau has written.  Still, it's an interesting experiment to see how much of his book fluent speakers of French, Spanish, and Italian comprehend. Donatien Grau, an adviser on contemporary programming at the Louvre, was in town from Paris to do a reading from his book “De Civitate Angelorum,” a treatise on Los Angeles written entirely in Latin. He wore an intellectual’s patterned scarf and a too-heavy blue blazer, and was fortifying himself with a pre-reading iced tea. … In 2018, Grau was curating an exhibition about Plato at the Getty Villa, in Los Angeles, when he had an idea. “For Jean Paul Getty, the United States were the new Roman Empire, and the Pacific Palisades were the new Amalfi Coast,” he said. “The way the villa was received, in the seventies—it was very strongly criticized as being, you know, Miami. But a lot of scholars, they spoke to archeologists who said that it actually was a fairly accurate rendition of what a Roman villa would have been.” He mopped his brow. “So I thought, What if I do this silly thing and write a book on L.A. in Latin?” The project soon turned serious. A numismatist by training, Grau took inspiration from fourth- and fifth-century Latin literary texts. An art-house publisher in Paris agreed to print a few hundred copies. For a title, he borrowed from St. Augustine’s “City of God” (“De Civitate Dei”), written when the Roman Empire was in its decline. “In the late fourth century, a number of writers and aristocrats and members of the élite thought that their time was over,” he said. “Christianity had arrived, and would erase the heritage of paganism.” He wondered: Could Los Angeles be at a similar juncture? Perhaps writing in Latin would help him decide. “Latin was, of course, an imperial language,” he said. “And now it’s a non-hegemonic language. Whereas English is an imperial language that still has that sense of hegemony.” He went on, “We have to accept the foreignness of Latin in order to be able to understand it again.” After Fergus McIntosh has described the cognoscenti who had gathered for the reading at 192 Books, on Tenth Avenue, "to hear Grau declaim in a dead language", the author begins: “In ultima terra Civitas Angelorum locata est. Nam inter solitudines et mare, montes et caelum, silvas et urbem, posita est.” So far so good: The City of Angels is at the end of the earth, amid deserts and sea, mountains and sky, forests and sprawl. The next bit was trickier: The city is diverse (“Civitas varia est”), crossed by raised freeways (“viae altae liberae”), prone to earthquakes (“motus terrae”); everyone always thinks that they’re young and happy (“Omnes semper se iuvenes ac beatos esse putant”). Some people frowned in concentration; others looked out the window. Occasionally, Grau slipped in a familiar name—Venice Beach, Topanga, the Oscars—to grateful chuckles. The last section was about David Hockney. “Ad civitatem pictor e Britannia venit,” Grau intoned: A painter came from Britain. Afterward, fans waited for Grau to finish stacking chairs. “Oddly, I could follow certain parts,” Aisha Butt, who works for the Guggenheim, said. “I think I ended my Latin education at sixteen, but there are little parts you keep.” For some, it was more about vibes. “He read it without one hint of irony,” Ernesto Estrella, a poet and a philo[...]

Word of the Day Word of the Day: prescient This word has appeared in 144 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub dag an unfashionable or socially awkward person ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub stand up to get to your feet from a lying or sitting position ➖ @EngSkills ➖

nebula

Idiom of the Day (as) quick as a bunny Incredibly quickly or speedily. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day imitative Definition: (adjective) (Of words) Formed in imitation of a natural sound. Synonyms: echoic, onomatopoeic. Usage: Onomatopoeic words like "buzz" and "murmur" are imitative of the noises they describe. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log “Weak point; holler louder!” My debate analysis for The Economist included these charts: : http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PublishedDebateMADM.png …with the commentary The final charts show the average pitches of the two candidates and their variability within each speaking turn (which can be a rough proxy for emotional arousal). Both candidates start at a lower average pitch and with lower variability, before showing a fair amount of range throughout the debate. Mr Trump was at his most animated (a highly variable pitch) when asked if he had any regrets about his behaviour during the Capitol attack on January 6th 2021. A particularly striking difference can be seen at the right end of the chart. Ms Harris’s final statement returned close to the tone she began with—low and stable—much like a prosecutor closing a case that she thinks she made well. Mr Trump, in clear contrast, and unusually for a closing statement, gave one of his more animated turns of the night, rising in pitch and variability as he denounced “what these people have done to our country”; “they’re destroying our country, the worst president, the worst vice-president in the history of our country” was his final line. In other words, Mr Trump sounded like a man still trying to put energy into changing the narrative—or possibly just like a man who knows he has not had his best night. Here's the text of Trump's "most animated" turn: 2699.510 2774.899 DonaldTrump You just said a thing that isn't covered peacefully and patriotically. I said during my speech, not later on. Peacefully and patriotically. And nobody on the other side was killed. Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out of control police officer that should have never, ever shot her. It's a disgrace. But we didn't do this group of people that have been treated so badly. I ask, what about all the people that are pouring into our country and killing people that she allowed deported? She was the border Czar. Remember that. She was the border czar are she doesn't want to be called the border czar because she's embarrassed by the border. In fact she said at the beginning, Well, I'm surprised you're not talking about the border yet. That's because she knows what a bad job they've done. What about those people? What what are they going to be prosecuted? When are these people from countries all over the world, not just South America, They're coming in from all over the world, David. All over the world. And crime rates are down all over the world because of it. But let me just when it does, every one of those people going to be prosecuted? One of the people that burned down Minneapolis is going to be prosecuted. Or in Seattle. They went into Seattle. They took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. One of those people are going to be prosecuted. And the audio: Your browser does not support the audio element. Jerry Goldman sent this comment: Sen. Huey Long was reviewing a speech he was to give on the Senate floor. He penciled in the margin, “Weak point; holler louder!” There are interesting things to be said about Kamala Harris's variation in median and MADM pitch, but I'll leave that for another post. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Trump as brass: score Following up on "Trump as brass", I was curious about the relationship between the spoken pitch track and the score that Jase used to generate the trombone sounds. Here's his Xeet again, showing his score and playing his trombone synthesis overlaid on Trump's audio: Donald Trump's 'Eating The Dogs' transcribed for trombone. pic.twitter.com/UpK4hNjNuR — The Jase (@jasemonkey) September 11, 2024 And here's the original audio, with a text-aligned pitch track: Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClip.png Here's the audio and the pitch track for the first phase "In Springfield", with lines corresponding to the values of the score's first three notes (G, C#, F#) assuming A=440: Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClipHist2.png As you can see, Trump's pitch track in this case is not a series of more-or-less level pitches, but rather shows the gliding contours of normal intonational patterns. To the extent that there's perceived musicality here, I think it's more because of the rhythm; but in any case, Jase has chosen representative notes that are in the middle of each syllable's contour, probably amplitude-weighted. And the same thing is true for the subsequent phrases: Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClipX2.png Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClipX2.png Your browser does not support the audio element. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClipX4.png A histogram of his F0 values, translated to semitones relative to A 110, confirms (the obvious perception) that he's not singing: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpEatingClipHist1.png And yet Jase's trombonification is persuasive… If you want to explore the patterns for yourself, here's * the audio * a .csv file of F0 values * a Praat TextGrid with the words ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Trump as brass Trombone, specifically: Donald Trump's 'Eating The Dogs' transcribed for trombone. pic.twitter.com/UpK4hNjNuR — The Jase (@jasemonkey) September 11, 2024 See also: For those people asking for a fretless bass version… pic.twitter.com/xBCpSZoNZz — The Jase (@jasemonkey) September 11, 2024 Some relevant past posts: "Poem in the key of what", 10/9/2006 "More on pitch and time intervals in speech", 10/15/2006 "'An essay towards establishing the melody and measure of speech'", 3/20/2016 "Trump's prosody", 8/8/2016 "Trumpchant in B flat", 10/2/2016 "Blues in Moore flat", 12/15/2017 "Emergency in B flat", 2/17/2019 "Dinosaur intonation", 8/28/2021 "Hummed 'I don't know'", 8/29/2021 "More 'I don't know'", 8/31/2021 ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub weirdo a strange, eccentric or weird person ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub come over (2) to seem to be a particular type of person ➖ @EngSkills ➖

liminal

Idiom of the Day have a light heart To have a carefree, uplifted attitude; to be in a happy or gladdened state or condition. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day gullible Definition: (adjective) Easily deceived or duped. Synonyms: fleeceable, green. Usage: Maddie was a gullible young girl, and we easily convinced her that our homely history teacher was actually a runaway princess in disguise. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Oedipa thinks that Trystero exists as a countercultural secret society with unknown goals. She researches an older censored edition of The Courier's Tragedy, which confirms that Driblette indeed made a conscious choice to insert the "Tristero" line. She seeks answers through a machine claimed to have psychic abilities but the experience is awkward and unsuccessful. As she feverishly wanders the Bay Area, the muted post horn symbol appears in many random places. Finally, a nameless man at a gay bar tells her that the symbol simply represents an anonymous support group for people with broken hearts. Oedipa witnesses people referring to and using mailboxes disguised as regular waste bins marked with "W.A.S.T.E." (later suggested to be an acronym for "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"). Even so, Oedipa sinks into paranoia, wondering if Trystero exists or if she is merely overthinking a series of false connections. There's more, for which you could read the rest of the extensive Wikipedia article (and its links)— or just the original novella, which might even be shorter… ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire" Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/vonThurnUndTaxis.webp An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative Catholic known for hobnobbing with far-right figures said on Monday that she hosted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife at her castle during a July 2023 music festival. Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis also told The New York Times that she viewed the justice as “a hero.” As explained in one of the comments, the article puts "Princess" in the wrong place in her name, and arguably should not translate it, any more than the "von" should be translated as "from": While the titles of Fürst (prince), Herzog (duke), Graf (count), Freiherr (baron) etc. do not give you any privileges and are not used ahead of the first name (as in e.g. "Prince Charles of so-and-so" or "Countess Lisl von Schlaf"), the former title has become part of the family/last name. So her official name is Gloria Fürstin (princess) von Thurn und Taxis. That doesn't mean one has to address her as "Fürstin", but it is part of her name. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MutedPosthorn.png I was a bit surprised that none of the comments (nor any of the other mass-media stories) mention the central role of the Thurn-und-Taxis postal monopoly in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, or that book's anticipatory echoes of today's political paranoia. As Wikipedia explains: The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. […] In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in a northern Californian village, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey and ephebophile, and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, an incredibly wealthy and powerful real-estate mogul from the Los Angeles area, who has left her as the executor of his estate. Oedipa goes to meet Inverarity's lawyer, a former child actor named Metzger, and they begin an affair, which fascinates a local teenage rock band, the Paranoids, who begin following them voyeuristically. At a bar, Oedipa notices the graffiti symbol of a muted post horn with the label "W.A.S.T.E." and she chats with Mike Fallopian, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, who claims to use a secret postal service. It emerges that Inverarity had Mafia connections, illicitly attempting to sell the bones of forgotten U.S. World War II soldiers for use as charcoal to a cigarette company. One of the Paranoids' friends mentions that this strongly reminds her of a Jacobean revenge play she recently saw called The Courier's Tragedy. Intrigued by the coincidence, Oedipa and Metzger attend a performance of the play, which briefly mentions the name "Tristero". After the show, Oedipa approaches the play's director and star, Randolph Driblette, who deflects her questions about the mention of the unusual name. After seeing a man scribbling the post horn symbol, Oedipa reconnects with Mike Fallopian, who tells her he suspects a conspiracy. This is supported when watermarks of the muted horn symbol are discovered hidden on Inverarity's private stamp collection. The symbol appears to be a muted variant of the coat of arms of Thurn and Taxis, an 18th-century European postal monopoly that suppressed all opposition, including Trystero (or Tristero), a competing postal service that was defeated but possibly driven underground. Based on the symbolism of the mute, [...]

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub bugger up to ruin, spoil, mess up ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub owe to (1) If you owe something to someone, you feel that you only have it because of the person's help or support. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

succor

Idiom of the Day live the life of Riley To lead a life of great ease, comfort, or luxury. The phrase is likely of early 20th-century Irish-American origin, but to whom Riley refers is uncertain. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day laic Definition: (adjective) Of or relating to the laity. Synonyms: lay, secular. Usage: He was a laic leader, but many of his followers believed him to be a prophet. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log French Horn Church Mark Swofford stumbled upon this church in Taipei: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/frenchhorn.jpg The Chinese part of the sign reads: fàguó hào língliáng táng 法國號靈糧堂 "French Horn Hall of Spiritual Food" This may be a branch of Táiběi língliáng táng 台北靈糧堂, which calls itself "Bread of Life Christian Church in Taipei" and has a history that goes back to NaN in Shanghai.  Another translation of "língliáng 靈糧" is "manna". The next time I'm in Taipei I will go visit this church because the French horn has special meaning for me.  I played it from the time I was in high school, including professionally in the Canton Orchestra and various bands.  I even trekked it up into the mountains of Nepal where I was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years and people from valleys far away could hear me playing it. The French horn is notorious for being the most difficult instrument to play since it is prone to burble (I think that's because of the tight, twisted acoustics of all that tubing), but I love the rich, smooth sound it produces when you control your embouchure perfectly.  That takes a lot of practice, but when I was good at it, I could play melodies with my lips alone.  I am grateful to my high school band director, Donald M. Kennedy, for guiding me to the French horn and helping get one of my own when I was a freshman. By the way, you're no longer supposed to call the brass instrument under discussion a "French horn".  It's supposed to be just a "horn".  I don't know who decided that and why, but it's now the politically correct thing to do.  It doesn't make sense to me, because there are so many other kinds of horns out there.  Much as I am partial to it, why should this one alone be the horn?  I still call it a French horn, but if someone made a good case (historical, musicological, or otherwise) for calling it a "German horn", I'd be open to such a proposal. Selected readings * "Les Baguettes à Pékin" (7/2/12) * "Names and Systems of Naming" (4/18/08) ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Points were made #StonedDebate #Politics #Debate #2024Election Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Malcolm is out-bratting himself #CreatorsforKamala #DNC2024 #BratSummer Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta Does Not Approve of Outside Clothes On The Bed Malcolm Kenyatta, the first LGBTQ+ person of color to be elected to General Assembly in Pennsylvania, chats with us about indefensible topics, no brainers, and how to be better at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Is there a finite number of pronunciations for anything? Below is a guest post by Corey Miller. Azi Paybarah of the Washington Post quoted Trump as follows: “There’s about 19 different ways of pronouncing it, right,” Trump said falsely, during a speech in Michigan on Thursday. “But Kamala is, at least it’s a name you sort of remember.” The most interesting part of this to me is the assertion that it was a false claim. I suppose the intuition is that there are two common ways to stress Kamala, either initially/antepenultimately or medially/penultimately, so that Trump's "nineteen" is clearly hyperbolic. What do we mean when we speak of a number of pronunciations for a word? One interpretation might be “how many ways can we represent the pronunciation of a word, as spoken by a fluent speaker interpreting the phonemes of a relevant variety of the language in question?”. Under this interpretation, three American English pronunciations of Kamala come to mind: 1. ˈkɑmələ 2. ˈkæmələ 3. kəˈmɑlə Pronunciation 1 seems to be how the Vice President pronounces her own name and the preference of a majority of younger speakers at the Democratic National Convention. Pronunciation 2 is one I hadn’t considered, but noticed it was very popular among older speakers at the DNC; it seems to be on analogy with Pamela, which to my knowledge has only 1 pronunciation under the definition above. I assume Pronunciation 2 wouldn’t be considered an affront in the way Pronunciation 3 is, but this could be investigated further. As a final note on Prounciation 2, it is related to an interesting phenomenon I first read about in an article by Geoff Lindsey and that was further developed in my classmate Charles Boberg’s dissertation and discussed more recently by him here. Pronunciation 3 seems to be the preferred pronunciation used by those seeking to needle the Vice President, but it seems like it can be used “innocently enough” given the predilection for penultimate stress in such words as suggested by the English Stress Rule as formulated in Liberman & Prince and elsewhere. For example, Malala (Yousufzai) seems to be a name that we hear uniquely with something like Pronunciation 3. There is another pronunciation noted occasionally in the press for Kamala that is more “native” to the Sanskrit origins of the name, meaning “lotus flower”. Using standard American English phonemes and their IPA labels, this might be something like Pronunciation 4: 4. ˈkʌmələ The first syllable could just as easily have been transcribed with a stressed schwa by those who admit such things. [ɐ] is used in the Sanskrit etymon for all vowels in the word in Wiktionary. This phenomenon of the “Indic short a” is also encountered in words like pundit and Punjab which are sometimes written as pandit and Panjab. So, are there only four pronunciations? There are certainly other possibilities using IPA interpretations for various varieties of English, American and otherwise. The letter 'a' can also of course be pronounced as [ej], but perhaps using such a pronunciation in Kamala would be considered particularly outrageous. But maybe it could occur in the speech of someone less familiar with English, or someone learning to read? Of course,  there are indefinitely many pronunciations, if we consider "pronunciations" as the articulatory and acoustic signals implementing a word, rather than IPA-ish symbols. But I assume the lay view of what it means to be a pronunciation is more along the lines of the IPA alternatives I gave above, and this is reflected in a long line of pronunciation dictionaries like Kenyon & Knott or indeed the curious symbols used in American dictionaries. In summary, I think Mr. Paybarah was right to call Mr. Trump’s claim of 19 pronunciations false; but I think it could be litigated… Above is a guest post by Corey Miller. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

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Language Log "Bone Apple Tea" The "ABOUT COMMUNITY" description from r/BoneAppleTea: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/BoneAppleTea.png There's also r/BoneAppleTypo, and the #boneappletea Discord channel. [h/t M.O.S.T.] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Learn English Through Football Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024) In this football language podcast we look at some language from the recent 2026 World Cup qualifiers from both the South American and Asian regions. The post Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024) appeared first on Learn English Through Football. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: circumvent This word has appeared in 169 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub dis | diss to show disrespect to someone by saying or doing something insulting ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub let out (1) to allow somebody or something to leave a place ➖ @EngSkills ➖

callow

Idiom of the Day a licence to print money An activity, business model, or company that yields very high profits but requires little or no effort to do so. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day lore Definition: (noun) Accumulated facts, traditions, or beliefs about a particular subject. Synonyms: traditional knowledge. Usage: He had taught the children something of the forest lore that he had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell, and knew that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Still no luck on chord M #vmas2024 @johnmayer Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) masterclass on debate decorum #2024Election #HarrisTrumpDebate #WillFerrell #zachgalifianakis Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Learn English Through Football Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, 'Snakes bite' from the Guardian newspaper about England's win over Ireland in the Nations League. The post Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite appeared first on Learn English Through Football. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: consternation This word has appeared in 149 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub on the level honest, truthful ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub muck up If you muck something up, you do it badly and fail to achieve your goal. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

fraternize

Idiom of the Day letters after (one's) name A series of abbreviations indicating the various levels of higher education or military honors one has received, thereby denoting a presumed level of intelligence, wisdom, or respectability. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) He's just your average John #VMAs2024 #WritersRoom @johnmayer Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day cocksure Definition: (adjective) Marked by excessive confidence. Synonyms: overconfident, positive. Usage: He was arrogant and cocksure but also sensitive and understanding, and I loved him dearly. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) He has concepts of a guy #2024Election #TrumpImpression Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Quantifying the debate Following up on "Type-token plots in The Economist" (9/6/2024), I lost some sleep last night doing some analyses of the presidential debate, which I shared with writers at The Economist to be published as "An alternative look at the Trump-Harris debate, in five charts",  9/11/2024. They lead with a type-token graph: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Economist2024DebateTypeToken.png One of their other "charts" is a table of each candidates most-used words. In some cases the explanation is obvious, like Harris using "former" 15 times while Trump uses it only once. But sometimes the difference may seem puzzling, like the fact  that Trump used the word "they" 230 times, while Harris used it only 10 times. Why? Scanning the contexts of use helps make the political content clear. Many of Trump's "they" referents are of two kinds, exemplified already in his opening turn — 5 references to the Biden administration, and 8 references to immigrants: In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money. They can't it would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do. They're taking in billions of dollars from China and other places they've left the tariffs on. On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by African-Americans and Hispanics. And also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon. And you see what's happening. You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado, they are taking over the towns, They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality. More later… ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Funny Or Die (Youtube) Wayne & Mike are warming up for the @MTV VMAs tonight #EveryLittleStep Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1 Get more Funny Or Die ------------------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie ➖ @EngSkills ➖

d out, Fagin Davis combed through several letters written in the so-called "humanistic bookhand' commonly used by Petrarch and Boccaccio in 14th-century Italy, since the two Roman alphabet columns in the Voynich manuscript were also written in that style. She compared those handwriting samples with the columns in the Voynich manuscript. One was a very close match: a September 12, 1640 letter to Athanasius Kircher written by Johannes Marcus Marci, a doctor in Prague who inherited the manuscript from his friend Georg Baresch when the alchemist died in 1662. Marci sent the manuscript to Kircher in Rome in 1665, hoping that the Jesuit scholar and polymath would be able to decipher it. Fagin Davis identified several "strong markers" between the two handwriting samples that she thinks identify Marci as the would-be decoder. For instance, at this time in the 17th century, many people used prominent loops on the letters b, d, f, h, p, q, s, and y, but Marci did not. Not did the person who wrote the two Roman alphabet columns on that page of the Voynich manuscript. Marci also sometimes used an "open bowl" g, an m with a taller first stroke than the last, and a distinctive shape to his z's—all of which are consistent with the handwriting sample in the Voynich manuscript. That said, anyone hoping this multispectral analysis of the scans will finally solve the mystery of the Voynich manuscript once and for all is bound to be disappointed, although any new textual evidence is significant for scholars. "These alphabets will likely not help us actually decipher the manuscript," Fagin Davis wrote on her blog. "This is because linguists… and other researchers have established that the manuscript is almost certainly not encrypted using a simple substitution cipher, and the substitutions in these columns result in nonsense anyway. Even so, they do add an interesting and new chapter to the early history of the manuscript. I look forward to hearing from other researchers about this new evidence, especially from experts in cryptography who may have ideas about why Marci or any other early-modern decrypter would need three columns of alphabets to do their work." Both articles have copious photographs demonstrating how the multispectral imaging brings out details that are not visible to the naked eye. Despite the hard-won, hitherto unknown data about much earlier attempts to decode the VM provided by multispectral analysis, which tilts the balance in favor of the conclusion that this most vexing cultural artifact is not a forgery or a hoax, we still don't know what this elaborate, illustrated text is communicating.  VM case not closed. Selected readings * Voynich and midfix" (7/3/04) * "Voynich code cracked?" (5/16/19) * "The indecipherability of the Voynich manuscript" (9/11/19) * "The Voynich Manuscript in the undergraduate curriculum" (10/10/19) * "ChatGPT: Theme and Variations" (2/21/23) — CHAT 2 * "Once again the Voynich manuscript" (4/21/24) * "Latin, Hebrew … proto-Romance? New theory on Voynich manuscript:  Researcher claims to have solved mystery of 15th-century text but others are sceptical", Esther Addley, The Guardian (5/15/19) * "Inscription decipherment with digital image enhancement" (12/1/20) [Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto} ➖ @EngSkills ➖