Linguistics

During the recent decade and more, we have had dozens of posts dealing with the importance of archeology for studying the spread of ancient languages. A major subtheme of this research has been the accumulation and assessment of archeological and linguistic evidence for the dissemination of metallurgical technology (see "Selected readings") below. A new study […]

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "Pronouncing [ṡṡċċḣḣẇẇȧȧ] is easy; you just say it like the 'x' in 'fire'." See also Gull, Lasenby, and Doran, "Imaginary numbers are not real—the geometric algebra of spacetime", Foundations of Physics 1993 — discussion in "Getting real", 1/20/2011. And for a sketch of the IPA's relationship with imaginary sounds, see "On […]

The city of Wilkes-Barre is only about a hundred miles north of where I've been living in the Philadelphia area for the past half century, but I've never had the slightest clue about how the name should be pronounced. My guess has always been that it is something like "wilks-bare", but I've always been uncomfortable […]

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title — "Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)" To which we can add — "Linguistics: Theoretical (64,300), Quantum (148), High-energy (None), Computational (876,000), Marine (3), Astro- (10)" A free year's subscription to Language Log if you can design a plausible project in "High-energy linguistics"…

The FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago is featured in the news this morning,– and also of course on Twitter, with the difference that many tweets abbreviate "Mar-a-Lago" as "MAL" or "MaL", e.g. The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get […]

From Charles Belov: seen on a street-sign pole in the Mission District of San Francisco: The writing says: zìyóu Xīzàng 自由西藏 ("free Tibet") Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Not to me, though. As soon as I read it, my grammar antennae went up. The way it's stated just doesn't sound like authentic Chinese. It grates […]

Three years ago, we visited a proposal for "Classical Chinese computing" (12/19/19). The post began thus: Several colleagues called this article to my attention: "Programming Language for the ancient Chinese" Here's the introduction: 文言, or wenyan, is an esoteric programming language that closely follows the grammar and tone of classical Chinese literature. Moreover, the alphabet […]

From Xiaowan Cai: yùyīng shì 育婴室 is translated into English as "Nursery Room", which is fine. On the other hand, lǎogōng jìcún chù 老公寄存处, as you can see, is analogously rendered as "Husband Nursery". More literally, it should be "husband storage", as Google Translate has it, "husband depository", following Bing Translator, or "husband deposit office", […]

In "Trends in book titles" (8/5/2022) I discussed the title-page complexity's of P. Sproson's 1740 work "THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity", and observed that "There's also more to say about Mr. Sproson's reader". One thing to start with: Sproson provides a series of reading […]

Meta is inviting everyone to try out its BlenderBot3: By releasing the chatbot to the general public, Meta wants to collect feedback on the various problems facing large language models. Users who chat with BlenderBot will be able to flag any suspect responses from the system, and Meta says it’s worked hard to “minimize the […]

From Claudia Rosett: I have a question about a phrase that China’s foreign ministry attributed to Xi in his call with Biden last week: In English: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” That phrase, in English translation, is exactly the same as threats Chinese officials issued against Hong Kong during the protests […]

I've been interested for some time in the way that (written) English sentence lengths have evolved over time — see "Trends", 3/27/2022, or the slides from my 5/20/2022 talk at SHEL12, "Historical trends in English sentence length and syntactic complexity". It's well known that the titles of published books have undergone an analogous process, but […]

In learning Mandarin, after words for "hello", "how are you?", "goodbye", "yes", "no", "thank you", "where", and a couple dozen other basic expressions, one graduates to the next level of linguistic subtlety by learning "polite talk" (kèqì huà 客氣話) such as "bù hǎoyìsi 不好意思" and "bù gǎndāng 不敢當". Both are well-nigh untranslatable, at least not […]

Trilingual tablet at the altar ofGenghis Khan(ca. 1162-1227) inKandehuo Enclosurein the town ofXinjie, in theEjin Horo Bannerin theOrdos Prefectureof Inner Mongolia: (source) The Mongolian says: Dotono Sanagulumǰi Mongġol ündüsüten-ü ulamǰilaltu yoso surtaqun-du emegteyičiül ni sülde0yin mandal-du derge ber ġardaġ ügei. Degedüs-eče ulamǰilaǰu iregsen ariġun ĵurśil-i ebdeǰü, öber-ün bey-e-dü aśiġ ügei kemen üǰedeg. Örgen olan ĵiġulčin […]

Intriguing t-shirt that is making the rounds these days: (source) The characters say: zúgòujìn 足夠近 "close enough" The Pinyin says: chàbùduō 差不多 "almost" The two idiomatic terms, though expressed in quite different ways with dissimilar orientations (to be explained in detail below), amount to roughly the same thing, so it is reasonable to gloss one […]

Someone referred to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan as "foolhardy". That prompted the following response from a sensitive and perceptive Chinese observer: Foolhardy – reminds me of the phrase, cuàn fǎng 竄訪, used to report Pelosi's visit in all official Chinese news / channels. Whether appropriate or not, I have to marvel at how the single […]

Someone asked me recently about (sources for exploring) the history of idioms like "low-hanging fruit" in business jargon. Unable to suggest any truly suitable data sources, I did a few of the obvious things. There's Google Books Ngrams, which verifies a few decades of increased use: There's the OED's entry, glossed as "n. figurative the […]

Today's Dumbing of Age: Mouseover title: "the pronouns are coming from INSIDE the sentence!!!" The strip shows the third exhibit in Mary's Halloween "Hell House of Original Sin: Past, Present, and Future". The mouseover title, of course, is an instance of the "The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House" trope, most famously used in […]

Many of us first learned about the Balkan red pepper sauce / relish / spread called "ajvar" in this post: "Bosnian menu" (7/28/22). Simplicissimus contributed a nice comment in which it was averred that the BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) "word ‘ajvar’ and the English word ‘caviar’ both derive from the same etymon, the Ottoman Turkish word ‘havyar’ […]

In a baseball game yesterday afternoon, the Phillies' catcher J.T. Realmuto batted several times against the Pirates' starting pitcher JT Brubaker. And one of the radio commentators pointed out that this was J.T. against JT, one with periods and one without. This usage is echoed by Wikipedia entries for Jacob Tyler Realmuto and Jonathan Trey […]

For many reasons, here at Language Log we have had a longstanding interest in the Narts, their language, literature, and lore: The Nart sagas (Abkhaz: Нарҭаа ражәабжьқәа; Nartaa raƶuabƶkua; Adyghe: Нарт тхыдэжъхэр, romanized:Nart txıdəĵxər; Ossetian: Нарты кадджытæ; Narty kaddžytæ; Nartı kadjıtæ) are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of […]

When I was a little boy, among the gifts from my parents that I treasured most were science kits that allowed me to construct my own instrumentation and use it for various experiments and observations, e.g., microscopes, radios and other electronic circuitry, chemistry sets, ingenious language games, and so on. (This was in the late […]

From Mark Swofford in Taiwan: In sympathy with the poor sign-makers, I would have to say that the spelling of "government" is not exactly transparent, especially if we're going by how it sounds. But wait a minute! Some dictionaries put the "n" in the pronunciation key for this word. Most people I know pronounce "government" […]

On Facebook, this conversation thread followed from a post by Bill Benzon, commenting on his recent blog post, "Once more around the merry-go-round: Is the brain a computer?" Here's the graph from Google Books Ngrams Viewer that Bill shared:  As long as I've been learning Mandarin (since 1967), computers have always been referred to […]

Nick Tursi sent in this Bosnian menu from a cafe near Kravica waterfalls in Herzegovina: Some of the entries are amusing. For example, "dodaci" is rendered as "appendices" — it includes things like fries, seasonal salad, grilled vegetables, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Also under this category is "ajvar", which signifies roasted red pepper sauce / spread […]

Photographs by Mark Swofford from Fuxing District of Taoyuan City: I have provided a generous sampling so that you can get an idea of the interesting configuration of vowels and consonants in the Austronesian Atayal (Tayal) alphabetical spelling system. Desultory notes liánzhèng 廉政 ("clean and honest government") is charmingly rendered as "anti-corruption" The word "tayal" […]

Mark Swofford, who is visiting the Jiaobanshan (Jiaoban Mountain) Park in Fuxing District of Taoyuan City, sent me this photograph of a sign introducing the area: Featured in the park are the remains of a retreat-palace built byPresident Chiang Kai-shek(1887-1975) in 1960. The Mandarin writing itself is odd enough (e.g., being one, long sentence), but […]

Over the years, I have come across the expression "red thread" in various and sundry circumstances. The latest instance was conveyed to me by the French journalist and documentary director, Philippe Grangereau. As we were working together on an illustrated piece of reportage about the Tarim mummies, he would remind me from time to time […]

Today's Dinosaur Comics: The mouseover title: "for my next trick, i'm turning a four-dimensional hypercubical linked list, which is a concept i just made up, into allegory". T Rex's "euphemism" analogy is misleading — which is fine, it's a comic… The point of a euphemism is to avoid the negative associations or social censure associated […]

Latest article in SupChina: "‘Small-town test taker’ — phrase of the week" A “small-town test taker” is a self-deprecating — or slightly insulting — phrase to describe a country bumpkin who works their butt off in pursuit of success. Andrew Methven (7/22/22) One would not expect a strongly class consciousness and behavior in a presumably […]