Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

It's against the law in North Korea to use South Korean words

 From Radio Free Asia:

North Korea sentences 20 young athletes for ‘speaking like South Koreans’. Skaters and skiers were caught on video using banned words while playing a game during training.  By Jieun Kim for RFA Korean

"About 20 aspiring North Korean winter athletes were abruptly sentenced to three to five years of hard labor in prison camps after they were found to have used South Korean vocabulary and slang while playing a word game, sources in the country say.

"It’s the latest example of authorities imposing draconian punishments to try to stamp out use of the “puppet language” and “capitalist” influences in daily life – despite the flood of illegal South Korean dramas and songs that many North Koreans secretly watch after obtaining them on thumb drives smuggled into the country.

"The ice skaters and skiers, all high school graduates under the age of 25 from Ryanggang province, were publicly disgraced at a square in Hyesan on April 3, a resident in the city on the Chinese border told Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Residents think that it is excessive that they were sentenced between three and five years” of hard labor, another source in the city said. “It would be impossible to count how many hundreds or thousands of South Korean movies and dramas are easily available to us.”

...

"Apparently, one of the athletes took a video of the young people playing a word game called mal kkori itgi, where the object is to make a sentence that starts with the final word of the previous player’s sentence, and some of the athletes used vocabulary that was distinctly South Korean, a second source from the same province said.

"The video was found on the phone of one of the female athletes during a random inspection raid by police of her home – a frequent occurrence in North Korea when police look for contraband – and was reported to authorities. It wasn’t clear if she had taken the video or if it was sent to her, the first source said.

...

"The North Korean government recently passed the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act, which underscores that the Pyongyang dialect is the standard language, and doles out severe punishments for speaking like a South Korean, or the death penalty for teaching others how to."

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Fox News reports news fulsomely, says Lachlan Murdoch

 Languages, like markets, are human artifacts, although we don't always think of them that way.  And so language can also suffer from coordination failure, when words that mean one thing sound like they mean another, and so over time may be used to mean multiple things, leading to confusion about what is being said.

This is the case with the word "fulsome," which sounds like "full," so that reporting news "fulsomely" might sound to some like reporting it "fully."  (I'll have the dictionary definition at the bottom of this post.)

Here's a story in the Guardian which quotes one of the wealthy owner/managers of Fox Corporation on how Fox news covers the news:

Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News.   by Edward Helmore

"So far, Fox is standing by its stars. On Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, heir apparent and executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation, voiced support for management, its roster of stars and backed Fox New’s editorial standards.

A news organization has an obligation – and it is an obligation – to report news fulsomely, wholesomely and without fear or favor. That’s what Fox News has always done and that’s what Fox News will always do,” he said.

***********

And here's the Cambridge Dictionary:

fulsomely
adverb
   formal
US 
 
/ˈfʊl.səm.li/
 UK 
 
/ˈfʊl.səm.li/
in a way that expresses a lot of admiration or praise for someone, often too much, in a way that does not sound sincere:
He thanked her fulsomely for her help.
She praised the team's head coach fulsomely.


In Mirriam Webster, this meaning is now only conveyed in definitions 2-4:
aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive
fulsome lies and nauseous flatteryWilliam Congreve
the devil take thee for a … fulsome rogueGeorge Villiers
3
exceeding the bounds of good taste OVERDONE
the fulsome chromium glitter of the escalators dominating the central hallLewis Mumford
4
excessively complimentary or flattering EFFUSIVE
an admiration whose extent I did not express, lest I be thought fulsomeA. J. Liebling
Webster's first definitioin is perhaps what Mr. Murdoch had in mind:

fulsome

adjective

ful·​some ˈfu̇l-səm 
1
a
characterized by abundance COPIOUS
describes in fulsome detailG. N. Shuster
fulsome bird life. The feeder overcrowdedMaxine Kumin
b
generous in amount, extent, or spirit
the passengers were fulsome in praise of the plane's crewDon Oliver
fulsome victory for the far leftBruce Rothwell
the greetings have been fulsome, the farewells tenderSimon Gray
c
being full and well developed
she was in generally fulsome, limpid voiceThor Eckert, Jr.

Friday, January 20, 2023

Repugnant and deleted blog posts: AI and the Justice Stewart test

 As someone who sometimes writes and speaks about repugnant transactions and controversial markets, I'm aware that people may object not only to the things I write about, but also to the fact that I write about them. So I was surprised but not shocked when I got a notice earlier this week that two of my blog posts had been deleted by Google, which runs the site that hosts this blog.  And another two were put behind a warning that readers have to acknowledge before being allowed to read them.

The emails had a link at which I could request that the deletions be reviewed, and my two deleted posts were promptly restored.  But which posts were deleted, by what I assume was an algorithm?

Here are the subject lines from the two emails about deleted posts (and the now restored posts themselves):

Your post titled "NY Times debate: Is Prostitution Safer when It's Legal?" has been deleted

Sunday, May 20, 2012

and

Your post titled "Legal prostitution and crime in the Netherlands" has been deleted

Thursday, November 9, 2017

So I guess the word "prostitution" plays a role in the decision to delete these two posts, but that can't be the whole story, since I now have about 80 posts that I labeled as concerning prostitution, at least in part. (To put things in perspective, I have well over a thousand posts labeled as concerning 'repugnance'.) Also, the algorithm that deleted them is probably new, since the posts themselves were old but were only deleted and then restored this week.

The two  (also old) posts  that were put behind an "adult" warning screen also seem to have now been released from this distinction: here are the email headings and posts, which you can once again see without certifying your adult status:

Your post titled "Ethnic dating sites" has been put behind a warning for readers

Friday, September 3, 2010

and

Your post titled "Markets for adult entertainments" has been put behind a warning for readers

Saturday, February 21, 2009

So algorithms searching for inappropriate content (even those employed by the leader in algorithmic search) still fall short of Justice Stewart's famous 1964 declaration about pornography, that it was difficult to define, but "I know it when I see it.

***********

Earlier related post:

Monday, October 19, 2020

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Gender neutral words in gendered languages

Novel pronouns haven't been widely adopted in English, but committees now have chairs or chairpersons, and there are some attempts not merely to avoid assigning male or female genders to words when they're not needed (like chairman), but also to avoid suggesting genders at all.  That's going to be tougher in languages in which all words have genders, or in which the conjugation of verbs involves choosing a gender.  Take Spanish for instance.

The NY Times has the story:

In Argentina, One of the World’s First Bans on Gender-Neutral Language. The city of Buenos Aires blocked the use of gender-inclusive language in schools, reigniting off a debate that is reverberating across the world.   By Ana Lankes

"Instead of “amigos,” the Spanish word for “friends,” some Spanish speakers use “amigues.” In place of “todos,” or “all,” some write “todxs.” And some signs that would say “bienvenidos,” or “welcome,” now say “bienvenid@s.”

...

"Similar gender-neutral language is being increasingly introduced across Latin America, as well as in other languages, including English and French, by supporters who say it helps create a more inclusive society.

...

"The city government in Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital, last month banned teachers from using any gender-neutral words during class and in communications with parents. 

...

"The policy, among the first anywhere to specifically forbid the use of gender-neutral language, provoked a swift backlash. Argentina’s top education official criticized the rule and at least five organizations, a mix of gay rights and civil rights groups, have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn it.

"Jaime Perczyk, Argentina’s education minister, compared the measure to prohibitions against left-handed writing under the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain.

...

"Argentina is a surprising place for such a heated debate on gender-neutral language because the country has largely embraced transgender rights. In 2012, it became one the first countries in the world to pass a law allowing people to change their gender on official documents without requiring the intervention of a doctor or a mental health therapist."

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Repugnant language: "How the N-Word Became Unsayable" in the NY Times, by John McWhorter

 The linguist John McWhorter, author of the book Nine Nasty Words,  may be familiar to some readers of this blog through his podcasts with the economist Glenn Loury.  McWhorter, who is Black, published an essay adapted from his book in the NY Times yesterday, called

 How the N-Word Became Unsayable.

He writes:

"Its evolution from slur to unspeakable obscenity was part of a gradual prohibition on avowed racism and the slurring of groups. It is also part of a larger cultural shift: Time was that it was body parts and what they do that Americans were taught not to mention by name — do you actually do much resting in a restroom?"

The fact that the essay spells out the N-word (frequently, in different variations) caused the NYT to publish with it a brief essay about the editorial process, and their decision that an essay about the evolution of a particular word, and how it became repugnant, couldn't be written without printing the word itself :

Why Times Opinion Decided to Publish This Slur. On today’s guest essay by John McWhorter.

"His article both uses and refers to several obscenities — most notably a slur against Black people, the use and history of which is the topic of the essay. Instead of using a phrase like “the N-word” or “a slur against Black people” in this article, we print the word itself. It’s an unusual decision for The Times — and we want to share the reasoning behind it with you."

Monday, October 19, 2020

Censoring repugnant words by algorithm

 Some people like to say things that other people think they shouldn't say.  In the age of the internet, politeness can be (somewhat) automated, by banning certain words.  But of course, words have contexts. Here's a funny story from the Guardian:

Overzealous profanity filter bans paleontologists from talking about bones--A virtual conference was thrown into confusion when the platform hosting the event came with a pre-packaged ‘naughty word’ censor by Poppy Noor.

"Participants in a virtual paleontology session found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place last week, when a profanity filter prevented them from using certain words – such as bone, pubic, stream and, er, beaver – during an online conference.

"The US-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) held its annual meeting virtually this year due to the pandemic, but soon found its audience stifled when they tried to use particular words.

"Convey Services, which was was handling the conference, used a “naughty-word filter,” for the conference, outlawing a pre-selected list of words.

"“Words like ‘bone’, ‘pubic’, and ‘stream’ are frankly ridiculous to ban in a field where we regularly find pubic bones in streams,” said Brigid Christison, a master’s student in biology attending the event

...

"Some discovered bias in the algorithm, too. Jack Tseng, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Berkley pointed out that the filter had banned the common surname Wang but not Johnson – even though both are frequently used as slang words to describe a man’s genitals."

********

Here's Dr. Tseng's tweet:

Z. Jack Tseng, @Tseng_ZJ

"Wang" is banned but not "Johnson" (both used as slangs). This western-centric filter erasing the surname of 90+ million Chinese but not <2 million people of European descent is unexpectedly on brand for 2020,  ! My PhD advisor is X. **** by the way. "

**********

Previous related posts:


HT: Muriel Niederle


Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The market for English language editing: Caveat emptor

Those of us who can publish in our native language are fortunate, and so there is a useful market for editing services for non-native speakers (and, frankly, everyone can sometimes profit from a little editorial assistance).

But buyers beware. Here's the beginning of an ad I received by email:

"Research Manuscript Editing Services
 -Are you from a non-English speaking country but wishes to publish your article in an English journal?
-Has your manuscript been rejected for publication due to bad English?

-Does your article requires editing and proofreading but do not have the time to revise it?"

Monday, September 12, 2016

Repugnant language: some reflections on profanity

The Canadian magazine Maclean's has a very polite (but nontheless interesting) essay on profanity
Are we wearing out obscenities?
"Profanity sinks deep emotional roots in our brains. When words develop duelling meanings, the bad stuff almost always wins out.
...
"In short, if English should lose its surprisingly small profane vocabulary set through overusage, we would be forced to invent new obscenities. That would be no easy task, given the polished perfection of what biology, time and chance has already bequeathed us."