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#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
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.
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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]
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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?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
put on (2)
to make an appliance or a piece of equipment start to function
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Poor Mr. Fardass #BrianHuskey #WillFerrell #ZachGalifianakis
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
@nimayndolo pulled a Paul Mescal #KMK #DNC2024 #CreatorsForKamala
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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?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
stand up
to get to your feet from a lying or sitting position
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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
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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
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
weirdo
a strange, eccentric or weird person
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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
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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…
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
bugger up
to ruin, spoil, mess up
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Hispanic Heritage Month from Humpty Trumpty #GeorgeLopez #Trumpez #SNLSpoof
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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.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
shitload
a large amount or number
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Idiom of the Day
like a chicken with the pip
In low spirits; in a weak or sickened state or manner. Watch the video
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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
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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]
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⚠️ Best of English Learning Channels
👉 @EnglishLearn
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
dag
an unfashionable or socially awkward person
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Idiom of the Day
(as) quick as a bunny
Incredibly quickly or speedily. Watch the video
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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.
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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
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
come over (2)
to seem to be a particular type of person
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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
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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, [...]
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.
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