Language Log

Tao Lin et al., "The audience shapes the information content of the honey bee waggle dance", PNAS 3/23/2026: We show that the honey bee waggle dance changes depending on how many followers a dancer has and how many appropriately aged bees are available to follow it. When followers were scarce, dancers became less precise, even […]

Regional names for alleyways… [image or embed] — Clare Downham (@downham.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 4:51 AM Wikipedia has a Street suffix page, which lists 208 street words "recommended by the U.S. Postal Service" and 55 "suffix forms suitable for use in Australia with clear connotations of the class and type of road, recommended by […]

From Frederick Newmeyer: "A sign in the breakfast room of a not very classy hotel in Amsterdam:" "The middle language is Esperanto! Who could have decided on Esperanto as the third language and who can read it? The hotel receptionists have no idea." I don't have much to add, except that Google Ngrams suggests that […]

Sima Kotecha, "Soham murderer Ian Huntley taken off life support, BBC understands", BBC 3/6/2026: Soham murderer Ian Huntley is close to death after being taken off life support following an attack in prison, the BBC understands. The 52-year-old has been in hospital since 26 February after being beaten over the head with a makeshift weapon […]

For the past couple of years, internet advertising has been promoting (increasingly unexpected) things to me as "tactical": tactical shorts, tactical pants, tactical belts, tactical gloves, tactical hoodies, … These are basically imitations of military garments (to be worn in action as opposed to on parade), and I guess if my internet profile were different, […]

From Coby L: I wonder if you can refer me to a discussion of the appropriateness of the very common omission of "the" when a person's name is preceded by their position or occupation and is not a title or rank (like Professor, Colonel or President). For example, linguist Mark Liberman, writer Stephen King and […]

As Wikipedia explains, Sealioning […] is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of […]

In part 1 of this post, "The (ir)reality of the MingKwai typewriter" (10/17/25) and many preceding, related posts (see "Selected readings" and the links to which they lead), we saw what a boondoggle and fiasco the Chinese typewriter (especially Lin Yutang's MingKwai) was.  Yet people are still glorifying and extolling the clumsy, clunky, cumbersome Chinese […]

[N.B.:  The archeologically recovered objects, such as those described in this post, are still referred to as "Roman dodecahedron", but that is partly to distinguish them from the scientific study of such figures in chemistry, crystallography, geometry, mathematics, and so forth.  Considering the most recent archeological discoveries and studies, we will have to stop calling them "Roman […]