Bilingualism – Arnold Zwicky's Blog (original) (raw)
Archive for the ‘Bilingualism’ Category
Yo soy Johnny Peso
August 23, 2025
In the 8/22 Bizarro strip, Wayno presents us with Johnny Peso, an intricately constructed Mexican-Spanish and Mexican-culture counterpart to Johnny Paycheck as a performer on the Grand Ole Opry stage. If you don’t know about Johnny Paycheck and the Grand Ole Opry, you’re doomed; the cartoon will be incomprehensible. If you know who they are, you’ll get the joke; and the more you know about them, the more you’ll see in Wayno’s cartoon (I suspect there are still more things that I’ve missed). And then there’s a lot to say about the way Johnny Peso introduces himself. The cartoon:
(#1) The joke in the cartoon comes the two bilingual puns: Spanish peso punning on English paycheck, Spanish olé punning on English vernacular ole; the puns are, in addition, what I’ve called (semiotically) satisfying puns (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
And then there’s a lot more.
Posted in Bilingualism, Clothing, Hats, Interjections, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Puns, Spanish, Understanding comics | 7 Comments »
Arabic? Irish? Whatever
October 18, 2021
That’s the personal name /émǝn/, in a fully anglicized rendition of either of two very different names: the (Egyptian) Arabic name of MSNBC commentator Ayman Mohyeldin; or the Irish name of Google software engineer Éamonn McManus (who’s also a friend of mine). Time for a multicultural, multilingual moment.
Posted in Bilingualism, Linguists, Names | 9 Comments »
The BSDR files
February 7, 2020
This posting represents the intersection of two posting topics that have pretty much gotten out of hand for me, so I’ll be extracting pieces from the larger material.
Topic 1 is the 1993 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, at which I gave (on 1/9/93) my 1992 Presidential Address to the society, “Mapping the ordinary into the rare: Basic/derived reasoning in theory construction”. In trying to retrieve memories of the event, I discovered that my computer files for the paper (the BSDR files) were in a format that was inaccessible to me and that all my paper files had been destroyed. So I put an appeal out on 12/21/19, on several sites, for help in finding a copy of (at least) my (very detailed) BSDR handout.
Topic 2 is recent gifts to me of many kinds: symbolic roses for me, in accord with a 1/29/20 posting of mine on a line from the Sacred Harp: “Give me the roses while I live” (SH340 Odem (Second)). I’m an old man, currently writing things under the Python Queen of Scots cry “Not Dead Yet”. I have been given some excellent roses.
One of these wonderful gestures to me was a reconstruction of the BSDR handout — with formatting preserved — done for me, purely in the spirit of colleagueship, by Luigi Talamo, now at the Univ. of the Saarland. Whose labors I will celebrate here, with some notes about Luigi and his interests. But first I exhibit his gift.
Posted in Academic life, Bilingualism, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, My life, Sardinian, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
100 years of independence
December 6, 2017
Though today is one of the dark days of early December alluded to in my recent posting — it’s Mozart’s death day, a sad occasion indeed — it’s also St. Nicholas’s day (gifts!), and Chris Waigl’s birthday (eggcorns, remote sensing of wildfires in the Arctic, Python, knitting, and more, in three languages!), and Independence Day in Finland. As Riitta Välimaa-Blum reminds me, this year’s Independence Day is something spectacular: the centenary of Finland’s declaration of independence from Russia.
(#1) The Finnish flag
So raise a glass of Lakka (Finnish cloudberry liqueur) or Finlandia vodka, neat, to honor that difficult moment in 1917 — the year should call to your mind both World War I (still underway then) and the Russian revolution, and these enormous upheavals were in fact crucial to Finland’s wresting its independence from Russia.
Posted in Art, Bilingualism, Books, Constructions, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and plants, Language and politics, Linguistics in the comics, Linguists, Pragmatics, Prosody, Syntax, Word order | 4 Comments »
Ten language cartoons
February 25, 2017
On the Comic Kingdom site on the 21st, “Tuesday’s Top Ten Comics on Language” (where language is understood broadly), with comments from the site.
Posted in Animal communication, Bilingualism, Implicature, Linguistics in the comics, Paralinguistics and kinesics, Style and register | Leave a Comment »
Toon animal time
October 30, 2016
Two cartoons in today’s feed, a Bizarro on the perennial meme of the Ascent of Man; and a One Big Happy on animal bilingualism and its advantages:
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
(#2)
Posted in Animal communication, Bilingualism, Evolution, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
The Gray Lady goes bilingual
October 3, 2016
From univision news:
The New York Times prints first editorial in Spanish, asks Latinos to vote
On Sunday [October 2nd] the paper published an editorial in Spanish and English asking Hispanics to register to vote. The idea came from two writers who wanted to highlight the importance of the Latino vote in November.
Posted in Bilingualism, Language and politics | 3 Comments »
Boxing
March 17, 2016
A Daily Jocks ad (for their underwear club, but featuring Pump! wear) from the 14th, with the man we know as Lukas (sometimes as Joe) in the Pump! Cruise Boxer (with pockets), in Pump!’s home town of Montréal:
(#1)
And Lukas’s boyfriend Ken, doing a cock tease in his Pump! Touchdown Cruise Boxer (with a fly):
(#2)
My caption for #1:
He boasted he was
Monosexual – “Only guys,
All the time” – not any kind of
Multisexual, but he was
Aggressively multicultural,
Multilingual, working in
Gay porn in several languages,
Hustling guys in many countries,
Lukas in Czech in his
Native land, Joe in English with his
Boyfriend Ken in San Francisco.
Eventually, proudly, Lukas everywhere:
Finland (for Helsinki Athletica),
Montréal (for Pump!), and he’s a damn good
Papi.
Posted in Bilingualism, Captions, Gender and sexuality, Language of advertising, Underwear | 1 Comment »
Doc and Raider
May 25, 2014
A recent card from Chris Ambidge with a Doc and Raider: one in a series about travails with their cat.
D&R is a (a) gay, (b) Canadian (c) cartoon, often touching as well as funny. A couple samples to follow.
Posted in Bilingualism, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | Leave a Comment »
English-Klingon bilingualism
October 13, 2013
From a reader of this blog:
A linguist named d’Armond Speers has been in Colorado news lately because his wife is running for the school board in Denver. Some years ago, Speers decided to speak to his baby son only in Klingon, while his wife used English. This continued for five years until the kid refused to respond to Klingon. I am wondering what your opinion is of an experiment like this? Good for the kid, or just notorious for the dad?
Posted in Bilingualism, Language acquisition | 4 Comments »