Toyota and Japanese orthography
A radio quiz program suggested that Toyota uses a character written with eight strokes, while Toyoda uses one with ten, and that eight is a more auspicious number. This is strange for at least two reasons.
It turns out that BBC News contributor Kathryn Westcott published an article last week addressing the question, “Why is the car giant Toyota not Toyoda?” which does a pretty good job explaining the apparent inconsistency.
Logo Contest (Deadline: May 1, 2010)
In order to form a more perfect Society for Linguistic Anthropology and provide the SLA with a recognizable visual identity, we would like to have a logo that we can use as an avatar in diverse social media contexts (Twitter and Facebook, especially). To that end we are having a logo design competition, open to anyone involved directly or indirectly with the SLA.
The deadline for this contest is May 1, 2010, and we will award a prize of $100 for the winning design.
