35152
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Jewtinas with Joanna Hausmann (Bless These Braces: Episode 5)
Writer and comedian Joanna Hausmann (Hamster and Gretel, Bill Nye Saves The World) joins Tam Yajia to talk doing therapy in Spanish, the best Yiddish words, and the smell so bad Tam's husband passed out.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
goof off | goof around
waste time, play around
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
do up (2)
If you do up a zip, a button, or a shoelace, you secure it in some way.
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: As it Stands/Standings
Читать полностью…
Idiom of the Day
win (something) in a walk
To win (something) easily, handily, or without much or any effort. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
roster
Definition: (noun) A list, especially of names.
Synonyms: roll.
Usage: The spy's mission was to compile a roster of officials amenable to bribery.
Discuss
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Language Log
Schwa
xkcd (3/15/24)
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/schwa.png
(image URL) (explanation; transcript; discussion)
Selected reading
* "Linguist Llama" (10/26/11) — never stressed
* "'Skadoosh' and the case of the schwa" (6/29/08)
* "Schwa Fire" (5/25/14)
[h.t. Edward M. McClure]
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Language Log
"Gentle onsets" are everywhere
President Joe Biden is known for having overcome a serious stuttering problem as a child — see e.g. "Biden’s Stutter: How a Childhood Battle Shaped His Approach to Life & Politics", or "Joe Biden's history of stuttering sheds light on the condition". It also seems clear that the techniques that he developed to overcome the problem are still present in his speech today, as I discussed in "Calling all linguists", 10/21/2023. My conclusion in that article, agreeing with others more knowledgeable than I am, was that the main effect is selective lenition, probably related to what are called "gentle onset" techniques.
But what's less clear is whether this effect is different in kind from things that happen in (almost?) everyone's speech.
We don't need to listen very long to find apparent examples Biden's speech. For example, in second phrase in a recent campaign event in Las Vegas:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
hello hello hello
Pablo thank you ((for the)) introduction http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/BidenThankYouIntroduction.png And in the next phrase, we get
Your browser does not support the audio element.
you know uh
you immigrated to America as a teenager
graduated ((from)) high school ((and)) spent four years ((as)) a union apprentice
Some of the lenited/omitted syllables are in the middle of words — a few seconds later, we get
Your browser does not support the audio element.
…represen((tat))ive Steven Horsford…
Or again:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
…represen((tat))i((ve)) Susie Lee…
Now let's compare the speech patterns of some other public figures, starting with the opening of Rishi Sunak's interview last fall with Elon Musk:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
uh we feel- we feel ver((y)) priv((ileged and)) ver((y)) excited to have you
Zeroing in on the "very privileged and very excited" part:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Early in Musk's response to the first question, we get
Your browser does not support the audio element.
you know ((the)) poin((t)) a((t)) which someone can see
The first two words are roughly [junoð];
Your browser does not support the audio element.
…and the next two are roughly [poɪnəwɪt͡ʃ];
Your browser does not support the audio element.
For more, let's turn to a LLM's interview with Rishi Sunak and Bill Gates. The AI's second question, read by Gates is:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
What's the most important piece of advice
you've ever received and how's it ((influenced))
your career and approach to life?
Gates' pronunciation of "influenced" is not a lenition, but a regular type of speech error. Perhaps under the influence of the following "your", the final /nst/ of "influenced" palatalizes to [nʃ] — "influensh" in eye-dialect…
Your browser does not support the audio element.
But Gates also give us plenty of lenitions → omissions, for example in this phrase:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
I was a little too-
I was very intense on myself and I tried to apply that
t((o)) other people and
…where "to other" comes out as [dʌðɚ]:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Turning back to Elon Musk, here's an answer about advertisers and censorship on X, from Musk's recent interview with Don Lemon. I'll supply an orthographically full transcription, and let you decode the lenitions for yourself:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
if-
if- if- if given a choice
where
and advertiser is saying like you have to censor all this content ((that-))
on the platform irrespective of where the advertising appears
then o- our answer will be like you-
you- you can choose where you want your advertising-
what you want your advertising [...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
limo
limousine
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
jot down
If you jot something down, you quickly write it down on a pad or piece of paper.
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Language Log
Scythians between Russia and Ukraine
To situate the Scythians linguistically, before delving into their history and culture, let us begin by noting:
The Scythian languages (/ˈsɪθiən/ or /ˈsɪðiən/ or /ˈskɪθiən/) are a group of Eastern Iranic languages of the classical and late antique period (the Middle Iranic period), spoken in a vast region of Eurasia by the populations belonging to the Scythian cultures and their descendants. The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythian-speakers were nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Fragments of their speech known from inscriptions and words quoted in ancient authors as well as analysis of their names indicate that it was an Indo-European language, more specifically from the Iranic group of Indo-Iranic languages.
(Wikipedia)
Everyone will recognize the current avatar of this ancestress of the Scythian nation: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/scythian1.jpg Source: The Mixoparthenos (half-maiden), a hybrid creature from the Black Sea, limestone sculpture, 1st-2nd century AD, from Panticapaeum, Taurica (Crimea)
The Mixoparthenos (Greek: Μιξοπάρθενος) was a Greek mythological figure, a variety of Siren somewhat akin to a Mermaid, traditionally hailing from the Black Sea region. The name means "half-maiden" and is the surname of the Furies. The form of the Mixoparthenos is distinctive – above the waist, a beautiful woman, but covered with scales from waist down, ending in a double snake-tail. Some versions have the Mixoparthenos ending in a double fish-tail.
In Herodotus's Histories (4.9.2), Heracles marvels at a Mixoparthenos when he meets one, and mates with her, producing three sons, the youngest of which eventually became the founder of the Scythian nation.
The Starbucks logo depicts a Mixoparthenos, of the double fish-tailed variety.
The Mixoparthenos is a mythical creature whose image, to this day, is seen in the coastal areas around the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, where wheat has been a major crop since ancient times.
Herodotus writes that the horses of Heracles were stolen by the Mixoparthenos, who promised to return them if he mated with her. How could Hercules resist! From their union came three sons, the youngest, Scythes, the only son who could bend the bow of Hercules. He became king of the people who would be called Scythian. There were many Scythian wheat growers around the Black Sea.
[sources here and here]
I knew of this figure before, when Miriam Robbins Dexter and I wrote Sacred Display (see Selected readings below) but my attention was drawn to it today by this article:
"Legacy of the Scythians: How the ancient warrior people of the steppes have found themselves on the cultural frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine", Peter Mumford, aeon (3/18/24)
This is a bipolar presentation, swinging between politics and history-culture. I'm not very much interested in the former, but fortunately there is plenty enough material concerning the latter that we can use it to ruminate on the trans-Eurasian aspects of the Scythians and other peoples of the steppes and Central / Inner Asia.
…
The Scythians are known today from the substantial surviving archaeological evidence, much of it exquisite golden artefacts from warriors’ tombs, and from historical accounts from the ancient world. A warrior people of Iranian ethnic origin famous for their skills in mounted archery and their nomadic lifestyle, their presence in Ukraine and Russia has left a historical and archaeological legacy to both countries. Some evidence of a more symbolic cultural presence can be found in Russia, where elements of nationalist thought and political philosophy have conceptualised the Scythians as embodying both the warlike side of Russian identity and its sense of cultural superiority[...]
lly the vinegar — that's only a cinematographic prop [at a dumpling stall on the street]) for him to deliver this deathless line.
The article continues:
“Netflix you don’t understand ‘The Three Body Problem’ or Ye Wenjie at all!” read a comment on social media platform Weibo. “You only understand political correctness!”
Others came to the show’s defense, saying the scene closely follows depictions in the book — and is a truthful reenactment of history.
“History is far more absurd than a TV series, but you guys pretend not to see it,” read one comment on Douban, a popular site for reviewing movies, books and music.
Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative.
The English version of the book, translated by Ken Liu, put the scenes at the novel’s beginning, with the author’s blessing.
…
“3 Body Problem” was adapted for Netflix by “Game of Thrones” co-creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and the American producer Alexander Woo.
…
The Netflix adaptation featured an international cast and placed much of the action in present-day London — thus making the story a lot less Chinese.Some Chinese viewers criticized the alteration, saying it construed a plot line that glorifies the West for saving humanity from a disaster planted by China decades ago.
…
All of this rancorous dissension surrounding the Netflix version of "The Three Body Problem" reminds me of what transpired after the airing of "River Elegy" (Héshāng 河殇), which was written during the latter part of the 80s. This was a six-part documentary aired by China Central Television on June 16, 1988 that employed the Yellow River as a metaphor for the decline of Chinese civilization. Because I strongly believe that it was this artistic production created by Premier Zhao Ziyang's (1919-2005) zhìnáng tuán 智囊团 ("think tank") in an inclusive sense that precipitated the Tiananmen protests and massacre one year later, I will give here a synopsis of "River Elegy".
The film asserts that the Ming dynasty's ban on maritime activities is comparable to the building of the Great Wall by China's first emperor Ying Zheng. China's land-based civilization was defeated by maritime civilizations backed by modern sciences, and was further challenged with the problem of life and death ever since the latter half of the 19th century, landmarked by the Opium War. Using the analogy of the Yellow River, China was portrayed as once at the forefront of civilization, but subsequently dried up due to isolation and conservatism. Rather, the revival of China must come from the flowing blue seas which represent the explorative, open cultures of the West and Japan. Authors also cite several narratives to make arguments, including the "oriental despotism" and the "hydraulic empire" from Karl August Wittfogel, "Eurocentrism" from Hegel, as well as the "decline of Chinese civilization and remaining of Western civilization" from Arnold J. Toynbee.
(source)
The difference is that "River Elegy" was a documentary created in China by critical, progressive intellectuals, whereas the Netflix version of "Three Body" is a film adaptation of a Chinese sci-fi novel infused with Western ideas and standards by its American producers, making it a much more complicated proposition.
Let's see if the chemistry is there in Netflix's "Three Body" to cause the sort of ramifications that ensued from CNN's "River elegy". Selected readings
* "Ken Liu reinvents Chinese characters" (12/5/16) — translator of The Three Body Problem
* "Ted Chiang uninvents Chinese characters" (5/13/16)
* "Bringing back the Cultural Revolution — in English" (5/28/21)
* "Thought panzers" (2/24/2) — on "River Elegy"
* "The Three-Body Problem: The 'unfilmable' Chinese sci-fi novel set to be Netflix's new hit 3[...]
Language Log
The textbook racket industry
SMBC dramatizes an all-too-common dynamic in the textbook industry. The initial negotiation:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_TextbookScamX1.png
That "one other matter":
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_TextbookScamX2.png
The solution?
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_TextbookScamX3.png
The aftercomic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_TextbookScamAfter.png
A series of more recent takes on a related issue, from Dumbing of Age:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DoA_Textbook1.png
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DoA_Textbook2.png
(The mouseover title for that one is worth noting: "dang gendered spellings")
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DoA_Textbook3.png
For those unfamiliar with the DoA cast, the key characters in this sequence are Robin, Jason, and Dorothy…
And for a smidge of linguistic relevance, here are the online "lecture notes" (==texts) for recent editions of a couple of my courses: ling0001 and ling2250.
(…and no, Penn's Linguistics Department doesn't have –or contemplate having — 9,999 courses. It's just that Penn's Registrar recently outsourced itself to a company whose data model insists rigidly that all courses must have four-digit numbers…)
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
max out
to reach a maximum limit
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hang on (1)
If you hang on to something, you hold it tightly.
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Idiom of the Day
in all honesty
In one's sincere opinion; without any disingenuousness. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
banneret
Definition: (noun) A knight honored for valor, entitled to display a square banner and to hold higher command.
Synonyms: knight of the square flag.
Usage: The banneret proudly led his troops into battle and pressed forward unafraid.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Before Facebook you had to just text your friends selfies. Or was that just @deadeyebrakeman?
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: jeer
This word has appeared in five articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
footy
Australian Rules Football, Aussie Rules Football
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
factor in
to include a certain item when calculating or planning something
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to appear next to
you can't insist of censorship of the entire platform
if you insist on censorship of the
entirely platform
even where your advertising doesn't appear
uh then uh
obviously we won't- we will not uh
want them as an advertiser
It's not easy — this clip sounds roughly like [ɑvsu], but it's really "obviously" (co-articulated with the /w/ of "we"…):
Your browser does not support the audio element.
For lagniappe, here's his response to the follow-up question:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
well first of all uh
almost all of our advertisers are coming back
platform
so it's a very short list of
advertisers who are not coming back ((to the)) platform
um
and uh
our advertising revenue is rising rapidly
uh and
our subscription revenue is rising rapidly,
and I feel very optimistic about the future of the X platform
Obviously there are many dimensions of variation here, and a lot of work to do if we want an accurate picture whose speech is doing what, when, where, and why.
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Idiom of the Day
in a sorry state
In a pitiful or abject condition. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
buskin
Definition: (noun) A foot and leg covering reaching halfway to the knee, resembling a laced half boot.
Synonyms: half boot.
Usage: He wore pale yellow buskins that covered the scars just above his ankles.
Discuss
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the water holding aloft the hero's sword can also be found in a medieval Chinese tale from Dunhuang. That review is available electronically from ScienceDirect, if your library subscribes to it. Otherwise, I think this version on the Web is a fairly faithful copy.
* Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2010)
* Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mair, "Sacred Display: New Findings", Sino-Platonic Papers, 240 (Sept. 2013), 122 pages
[h.t. Wang Chiu-kuei]
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Body Problem", BBC (3/19/24), by James Balmont
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf; June Dreyer; Violet Zhu; Haining Bao; Diana Zhang; Zhaofei Chen; Annie Wang]
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Language Log
"The Three Body Problem" as rendered by Netflix: vinegar and dumplings
"The Three Body Problem" as rendered by Netflix: vinegar and dumplings
Basic background: The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; lit. 'Three-Body') is a story by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin which became the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy—though the series as a whole is often referred to as The Three-Body Problem, or simply as Three-Body. The series portrays a fictional past, present and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.
(Wikipedia)
CNN article:
"Netflix blockbuster ‘3 Body Problem’ divides opinion and sparks nationalist anger in China"
By Nectar Gan, CNN, 3 minute read Published 6:24 AM EDT, Fri March 22, 2024
—–
A Netflix adaptation of wildly popular Chinese sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem” has split opinions in China and sparked online nationalist anger over scenes depicting a violent and tumultuous period in the country’s modern history.
Reactions have been mixed on Chinese social media since the Thursday premiere of the eight-part, English-language series “3 Body Problem,” which is based on the Hugo Award-winning novel by Liu Cixin, the country’s most celebrated sci-fi author.
Netflix is not available in China, but viewers can watch its content using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass strict geo-restrictions — or by consuming pirated versions.
Liu’s novel, part of a trilogy, is one of China’s most successful cultural exports in recent years, boasting legions of fans worldwide including former US President Barack Obama.
Among the country’s more patriotic internet users, discussions on the adaptation turned political, with some accusing the big-budget American production of making China look bad.
The show opens with a harrowing scene depicting Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which consumed China in bloodshed and chaos for a decade from 1966. On the campus of the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, a physics professor is brutally beaten to death on stage by his own students and denounced by his colleague and wife, while his daughter Ye Wenjie (played by Zine Tseng) watches in horror.
Such “struggle sessions” were a frequent occurrence during the decade-long period of upheaval, where “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, beaten and tortured by Mao’s frenzied Red Guards.
Midway through her article, Nectar Gan cites some online commentators who accused the show’s producers of “making a whole tray of dumplings just for a saucer of vinegar” ("wèile yī dié cù bāole yī dùn jiǎozi 為了一碟醋包了一頓餃子"). That was a real stumper for me, even after she explained that it is a popular saying used to describe an ulterior motive — in this case, critics of the Netflix version argued that the American producers made a whole TV series just to paint China in a bad light.
It turns out that this "popular saying" is a sort of panacea that you can use to subtly and sarcastically comment on many different types of problematic situations. China's Zhihu 知乎 platform asked its readers what they thought it meant, and they came up with 109 different answers.
Nectar, or the online commentators whom she cites, most likely got this saying from its usage in Jiāng Wén's 姜文 "Hidden Man" (Xié bù yā zhèng 邪不压正) (2018). Its occurrence in the film is highly insinuative and conveys the notion that the speaker, the main actor Lan Qingfeng (played by director Jiang Wen) metaphorically makes a relatively large investment (the tray of dumplings) for a saucer of vinegar, but the latter will enable him to establish a valuable social / political connection (not litera[...]
Idiom of the Day
in a pig's ear
An exclamation of emphatic denial, dissent, or disbelief of something. Likely a variant of "in a pig's eye," meaning the same. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
spelunker
Definition: (noun) One who explores caves chiefly as a hobby; a caver.
Synonyms: potholer, speleologist.
Usage: The spelunkers were lost in the cave and worried that their minimal rations, two granola bars and a bag of salted peanuts, would not last long.
Discuss
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Language Log
A charlatanistic malapropism returns
In "At the rind of the debate" we noted an odd use of the word exegesis in the Charlatan Magazine: "the foreign-born population has grown by 4.5 million under Biden's exegesis". Readers diagnosed this as a malapropism for aegis, and another example from a more recent issue of the same publication ("Nightingale", 3/17/2024) confirms the analysis:
While a woman's role within the home was written into the original 1937 constitution under the exegesis of the Catholic Church in Ireland, 2015's Gender Recognition Act and Marriage Act has re-imagined these roles within the once traditional home.
The obligatory screenshot:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Exegesis2.png
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