4 Dead in Mushroom Poisoning Outbreak in California
State health officials discouraged foraging this year, saying that toxic mushrooms can easily be confused with safe ones to eat.
The New York Times > Language and LanguagesMandarin vs. Dongbei accent
A Julesy bonus For a deeper dive into Dongbei, one would want to ask why it is that this particular topolect has become so unique and widely known in the Mandarin megaverse. Ditto for Sichuanese in its diverse manifestations. Selected readings "OMG moments induced by allegro forms in Pekingese" (1/26/12) "Triple topolectal reprimand" (5/20/16) […]
Language LogSi odias a Bad Bunny, te tengo malas noticias
La cultura pop estadounidense es cultura pop mundial, y viceversa.
The New York Times > Language and Languages"La Cosa" ("the thing"), bigger and more intimidating than "Cosa Nostra" ("our thing" ["Mafia"])
From Keith Barkley: There was a story on Morning Edition this morning about using “thing” as code for something you don’t want the government to overhear: 'La cosa': In Cuba, this single phrase carries coded truthsEyder Peralta, Morning Edition, NPR (February 6, 2026) Listen to the 4-minute audio recording (linked in the title above) and […]
Language LogThe Culture War Is Over. Bad Bunny Won.
American pop culture is global pop culture, and vice versa.
The New York Times > Language and LanguagesFYI: Call for Abstracts - Edited Volume: “Language and Food: Macro, Meso and Micro Analysis of Food Discourse”
Editors Takako Kawabata tk70@soas.ac.uk Daniela Cesiri daniela.cesiri@unive.it Call for Abstracts Overview and scope Language and food both function as semiotic systems that rely on shared conventions to convey meaning and to organize social life. As Roland Barthes (2008: 24) argued, food is not simply nourishment but “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior.” In much the same way, language is never a neutral tool. It structures
The LINGUIST List > For Your InformationA Personal Encounter with the Submissive Woman/Bound Slave Rorschach Test
[This is a guest post by Michael Broughton.] I had an interesting Rorschach encounter with the oracle bone graph for woman a couple of years back. Oddly, this experience came in a rather roundabout way through an investigation into the character for interpretation, yi 譯. At the time, I was starting my Chinese translation business […]
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Strange Chinese on South African album cover
From Charles Belov: YouTube music's algorithm suggested to me an album,24 Hours in Soweto, in theamapianogenre that I love which mostly comes from the Zulu community in South Africa. I was struck by the album cover, which seems to have some random Chinese characters, some garbled. Wondering if it's AI art. Can you make any […]
Language Log
FYI: Call for Book Chapters - Medical Humanities: Languages in Contact, Linguistic Justice, and Health Equity
Medical Humanities: Languages in contact, Linguistic Justice, and Health Equity Editors: Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Ingrid Cobos López, Tirant lo Blanch Description of the work: Medical/Health Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that brings together the humanities, social sciences, and medicine. This approach aims to understand and address people's experiences with health, illness, care, and medical practice itself from multiple perspectives. Intending to guarantee access to healthcare
The LINGUIST List > For Your InformationFYI: GRAPHIA Invites Linguists to Provide Research Questions
As part of GRAPHIA, a European research project working to make Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) data easier to discover, connect, and reuse through a shared knowledge graph, we are looking for your suggestions. We believe that for linguistics researchers, this work is especially relevant. Linguistic data—corpora, lexicons, annotations, grammars, language resources, and metadata—often exists in rich but siloed forms across projects and infrastructures. Knowledge graphs provide a way to
The LINGUIST List > For Your InformationFYI: Next Acquisition Sketch Project Meeting - Tues. Feb. 10 / Weds. Feb. 11
The next Acquisition Sketch Project Meeting is on "An in-progress look at the Bikol Acquisition Sketch”, presented by Louward Allen Zubiri. It will be held on Tuesday February 10 (Americas, Europe) and Wednesday February 11 (Australia) as follows: Los Angeles = 2 pm Tuesday Feb. 10 Mexico City = 4 pm Tuesday Feb. 10 New York = 5 pm Tuesday Feb. 10 Berlin = 11 pm Tuesday Feb. 10 Melbourne = 9 am Wednesday Feb. 11 Zoom link = https://anu.zoom.us/j/86372174150?pwd=MHQDwhItsinIBR9
The LINGUIST List > For Your InformationEnglish proficiency tests
From Tim Leonard: I wonder if any English proficiency tests include deciphering things like this. VHM: It was only twenty or so years ago that I learned about the word "beater" for a cheap, high-mileage, beat-up car that still performs reasonably well. Selected readings "List of language proficiency tests" American Council on the Teaching of […]
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