Friends

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3981

I'm glad I'm not in the business of setting rules for the use of taboo language in film or broadcasting. I'd be tearing out my bleeping hair trying to articulate some non-abitrary, empirically defensible set of standards.

The difficulties are highlighted in a blog post for The Telegraph by Brendan O'Neill (5/25/2012). Evidently, the British Board of Film Classification is going for nuance, trying to distinguish between degrees of offensiveness of the word c**t. O'Neill writes:

If, as in Ken Loach's new movie The Angels' Share, the characters in a film say that word in an "aggressive" fashion, then the film will be stamped with an 18 certificate. But if they were to utter the c-word in a "non-aggressive" fashion, then the film could be granted a more lenient, box office-friendly 15 certificate. So Loach, whose new film is based in Glasgow, where the c-word abounds, has been forced to excise the more aggressive uses of the word in order for his film to be a 15. He is rightly annoyed that he has effectively been forced to censor "a word that goes back to Chaucer's time".

As O'Neill further notes:

…it isn't the language itself, the actual words, which terrifies the likes of the BBFC and other members of the great and good. It's the question of who is using those words and to what end. So certain uses of the c-word are now positively celebrated, with Sex and the City types and feminists uttering it as "a word of sexual potency". They rarely get any flak for describing the c-word as "a cherished part of [our] lexical armour". Likewise, when the ironic superhero film Kick-Ass showed an 11-year-old girl calling a group of men "c***s", there was, in the words of the Guardian, only a "half-hearted whimper from the Daily Mail" - everyone else thought that funky use of the c-word was hilarious and Kick-Ass got a 15 from those unelected defenders of common decency at the BBFC.

However, when a bloke - worse, a Glaswegian bloke - uses the exact same word, and not as an expression of "sexual potency" but rather as part of a heated-but-friendly exchange or as a term of abuse, we reel in horror, and the BBFC insists that only over-18s may have their ears defiled by such shocking lingo.

O'Neill is upset because he sees the variable standard as linguistic class warfare; what's considered an obscene bomb when dropped by a working class Glaswegian becomes "edgy" or empowering" from the lips of "floppy-haired posh people".

He may be right to complain about this. On the other hand, I'm inclined to be sympathetic to the BBFC's quandary: obscenity, of course, is not about specific words so much as it as about specific words in context. If it were just about the words, it would be completely mysterious why I can get away with discussing the infixation possibilities of the morpheme fuck in a linguistics class, but would propel my students straight to the dean's office if I ever handed back their assignments saying "I've marked your fucking papers".

This is what makes swearing such an exquisite skill, hard to master outside of one's native language. Swearing with just the right degree of coarseness is all about nuance.

The BBFC's determination of context may well be flawed; but it's at least partly right to recognize that the offensiveness inherent in taboo words has to take into account "who is using those words and to what end". Only partly right, of course. The right metric for offensiveness would also have to consider who is hearing those words. And good luck trying to build that into any definition of acceptable standards.

(A Twitter hat tip to @hyperlingo.)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3980

In the Ukrainian Vekhovna Rada (parliament) Thursday evening, there was a full and frank exchange of views on language policy:

Andrew Roth and J. David Goodman, "Push Comes to Shove, and Punch, in Ukraine Parliament", NYT 5/25/2012:

What began as a legislative debate over Ukraine’s official language policy escalated into a fist-swinging, clothes-ripping brawl between screaming, sweaty lawmakers that reverberated around the Internet on Friday, embellishing the country’s standing in the pantheon of parliamentary punchfests that are captured on camera. […]

The 450-deputy Verkhovna Rada, as Parliament is called in Ukraine, was debating a measure that would elevate the status of Russian to a second language, equal to Ukrainian, in about half the regions of the country, including Kiev. The proposal’s passionate advocates and foes reflect the deep political divisions in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic where some regions harbor deep-seated resentment of Russians.

“You’re a corpse, you have two days left to live, we will crucify you on a birch tree,” the author of the legislation, Vadim Kolesnichenko, said his lawmaker adversaries told him.

"Row over status of Russian language threatens to split Ukraine", The Guardian (Reuters) 5/25/2012:

Ukraine's ruling party has triggered violent protests with a move to upgrade the official role of the Russian language, a sensitive issue in the former Soviet republic and one that opponents say will effectively split the country.

A draft law by President Viktor Yanukovich's Regions party rekindled an emotional debate in Ukraine. Russian is the mother tongue of most people in the east and south of the country, while Ukrainian – the state language – predominates in parts of the centre and in the west.

This is everyone's favorite line from the debate:

Author Michele Fogal did a remarkable interview with me recently. She asked questions no one has before!

http://michelefogal.com/blog/author-interview-lynn-flewelling

With a very nice retrospective by my wonderful editor, Anne Groell. You readers owe her a lot!

http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2012/05/50-page-fridays-lynn-flewelling.html

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3979

Semih İdiz, "The Uludere raid and pickled cabbage", Hürriyet Daily News 5/25/2012:

The American Ambassador to Ankara, Francis J. Ricciardone, made the headlines in Turkey, shortly after taking up his post in Ankara, when he used a local saying which is not easy for foreigners to understand, let alone pronounce in Turkish, as he bravely did.

“Bu ne pehriz, bu ne lahana turşusu” he said - much to everyone, except Prime Minister Erdogan’s, amusement. He was referring to the banning of a politically controversial book by journalist Ahmet Şık before it was even published.

The Turkish saying roughly translates into “How do you tally eating this pickled cabbage pickle your diet.” In other words it is meant to highlight a contradiction or an odd situation that simply does not add up.

That's how the start of the story read in the paper version, which I read over breakfast. And the cited Turkish saying, as translated there, is certainly hard for foreigners to understand: "How do you tally eating this pickled cabbage pickle your diet."

The online version offers a less inscrutable translation: "How do you tally eating this pickled cabbage with your diet."

Still, I felt that something in the original was missing, given the parallelism "bu ne … bu ne …". I'm sorry to say that I don't know any Turkish; but using various online sources, my guess at an interlinear gloss is something like the following (replacing the HDN's "pehriz" with the apparently correct spelling "perhiz" = "diet"):

bu	ne	perhiz		bu	ne	lahana	turşu+su
this	what	diet		this	what	cabbage	pickle+possessed ="its pickle"
What's this diet? What's this pickled cabbage?

The culturally-appropriate meaning of the saying — the suggestion of inconsistency — is indeed not completely transparent. Perhaps the "bu ne X bu ne Y" structure has a general implication in Turkish of "given X, what's the story with Y?"

The "pickled cabbage" here is a statement that Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan recently made in Pakistan, urging a full U.S. apology for the mistaken air raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the Salala border post last November. The contextual "diet" is the Turkish government's refusal to apologize for the mistaken air raid last December that killed 34 Kurdish civilians from the Uludere district on the Iraqi border.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3978

Although quaint, the English on the following sign cannot be classified as Chinglish:

DO NOT DISTURB

TINY GRASS IS DREAMING

The real problems of this sign are not with the English, but with the Chinese, which reads:

Xiǎocǎo xiūhù, qǐng wù kángjiǎo
小草休扈，请勿扛搅.

I should note that the Chinese may not be the original after all. Instead, the person who made the sign may have started with the English (which is widespread in China [see below]) and attempted to back-translate into Chinese, with disastrous results.

The Chinese sign is untranslatable, because neither *xiūhù 休扈 nor *kángjiǎo 扛搅 mean anything, at least they are not intelligible in the context of the sign, and they certainly do not mean "dream", which is the most conspicuous element of the English:

*xiūhù 休扈 ("rest-retinue")

*kángjiǎo 扛搅 ("shoulder[vb.]-stir/disturb/annoy")

For the first error, I suspect that the sign-writer was somehow confused by the homophonous expression xiūhù 修护 ("under repair / maintenance"). It would have been more natural to say that the tiny grass is xiūxī 休息 ("resting") or, to match English "dream" in what I suspect might have been the impetus for the wording, zuòmèng 做梦 ("is dreaming"), mèngxiǎng 梦想 ("dream"), or some other poetic expression for "dream" containing mèng 梦.

The second error is probably orthographic, since it would be perfectly acceptable to write dǎjiǎo 打搅 ("disturb") in that position. When written hurriedly and sloppily, dǎ 打 and káng 扛 resemble each other. It would also be perfectly acceptable to write dǎrǎo 打扰 ("disturb"). The fact that dǎrǎo 打扰 ("disturb") and dǎjiǎo 打搅 ("disturb") are synonyms and sound similar may also have contributed to the confusion.

The idea that grass can dream is a widespread meme in China. I have seen dozens of variants on this theme almost everywhere I travel in China that grass can be made to grow. Here's another version:

Chinese:

xiǎocǎo xiūxī, qǐng wù dǎjiǎo
小草休息，请勿打搅
("the little grass is resting; please do not disturb")

English:

Do not disturb — tiny grass is dreaming

The Russian rendering is the poorest of all the translations, using a form of the verb vkhodyat входят ("enter") instead of bespokoit' беспокоить ("disturb"), and mentioning nothing at all about tiny grass that is dreaming.

The Japanese is by far the cutest and most imaginative of the four translations:

Hitoyasumichū, nokku suru no o goenryo kudasai
一休み中、ノックするのをご遠慮ください。
Taking a little rest (lit.: in the middle of a little break); please refrain from knocking.

The Korean is replete with grammatical niceties and honorifics, but I shall leave it to readers who are specialists in the language to explain them if they wish to do so:

Puldeuri swigo isseuni banghaehaji masipsiyo(yo ->o)
풀들이 쉬고 있으니 방해하지 마십시요
("The grasses are resting, so please don't disturb them.")

(The last graph 요 [yo] is apparently a misspelling of 오[o]; we must bear in mind that there is often a considerable difference between Korean transliteration based on Hangeul orthography and transcription based on actual pronunciation, plus we now have to contend with the new Revised Romanization and the customary McCune-Reischauer system; it is my experience that there is still a long way to go before a consensus on the romanization of Korean is achieved; indeed, I am afraid that exception will be taken to some of the readings I have given here — I hope that they are not too far off the mark)

And now it's time for me to take a rest; please don't disturb my dreams.

[A tip of the hat to Mark Liberman and thanks to Nathan Hopson, Hiroko Sherry, Daniel Sou, Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Minkyung Ji, Haewon Cho, and Sungshin Kim]

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2012/05/dirty-linen-in-public-moses-finley-and-the-archives.html

I have lived in Cambridge for more than 30 years, and generally I think it is extremely nice to stay in the same place for so long. I guess my Mum and Dad felt the same about Shropshire, which I left too long ago really to recall.

In Cambridge, I like going to the University Library and talking to the same people on the entrance desk, when I come to borrow my books, as I did years and years ago..we've all grown older together and have grown up with a similar set of self ironies about stamping books, and libraryfines and whatever. (Let it be said to all those in charge that I have a glow of pleasure when I walk in to the UL, and have a human encounter before plunging into the stacks..no more computerisation at the entrance desk please, and if we could have the Georges back, that would be great. Much nicer than the worthy modern stuff we now have.

And I like the conversations you still have across the generations. Our house was once the house of A N L Munby (he soon moved on to better and posher premises) and I smile when I go to the Rare Books Reading Room in the UL, which is named after him. And after a few decades of working on the later nineteenth century, I can walk around town and say.. "J E Sandys used to live there" vel sim.

It all sort of joins up.

 So far, so nostalgic... and comfortable. But a few days looking at the bits of Moses Finley's papers in the UL have given another side.

OK there's some of the reassuring,  "well I never",  to be found in the 20 or so boxes of half sorted Finley papers. I had a little jump when I found out that the place that Finley had rented when he first came to Cambridge is 1954 was 15 Oxford Road (above), about two minutes round the corner from my place (now as the picture suggests) quite posh.

But for me it wasn't quite all so cosy. I'm looking at the Moses Finley papers for a paper I'm doing on Finley's centenary. And I think that it's been the first time I've ever gone through the archives of someone I actually knew (Jane Harrison wasn't all that remote, but I actually sat down at dinner with Finley -- Harrison was dead almost 50 years before I first showed up in Cambridge).

I've talked before, I think, about feeling slightly uneasy about reading other peoples' private letters, not meant for your eyes. It was even weirder finding cards and letters in this archive whose writing I already recognised.. because I'd received them myself.

There was Hugh Plommer's comments on Finley's manuscripts. He had used to take me out on weekend trips to Northants churches when I was an undergraduate in a way that would not pass the harrassment police now (actually one of the most brilliant teaching experiences I ever had).

And then I spotted in one file the distinctive handwriting of (the longish dead) Simon Pembroke (one of the smartest and least productive students of Greek religion ever). I knew it was Simon because I still have a card from him on my study mantelpiece. It was written soon after the division into first and second class post came in.. "SECOND CLASS ONLY" it reads, "FIRST CLASS TOO GOOD FOR BEARD". And there he was writing quite deferentially to Finley.

I found some amazing stuff (more later), but I had a very strong sense that I shouldnt actually be rummaging through it all.

 

"The evening meal was simple but satisfying. Spring greens and vinegar, pan fried trout with wild sage and thyme, a casserole of winter vegetables from the root cellar, and jam tarts."

I love writing food!


"Thero traced another intricate series of patterns on the air, trying the summoning out spell again, but with the same result. Something was wrong. If this was a curse, then the ritual should be working. Either it was something else, or he wasn’t performing it correctly. The latter hardly seemed possible; Nysander had drilled him in the steps and Thero had a perfectly infallible memory."

I love writing arrogant Thero, too!

Cover art for my novelette "Faster Gun,"  (Working title: "John Henry Holliday is Sick of the These Time-Traveling Assholes") forthcoming on Tor.com this summer.

The artist is Richard Anderson.

If there is anything in the culinary world messier to work with than tahini, I have yet to find it. Join me for lunch!

Hummus Light

2 cups canned chickpeas (pref. organic)
2 lrg. cloves garlic
4 to 6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons tahini
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup low fat yogurt

I can't eat raw garlic, so I sauté it in the olive oil. Process everything until smooth in food processors or blender. Chill for a few hours to combine flavors. Serve with pita bread, or carrot sticks.