Language Log

I recall that when I began learning Mandarin, one of the things (!) that troubled me greatly was why the word for "thing" was written with the characters for "east" and "west":  dōngxi 東西.  My classmates came up with all sorts of outlandish, speculative explanations for the supposed etymology.  All along, I suspected that the meaning "thing" for the disyllabic word dōngxi 東西 was not derived from the characters used to write it but was the phonetic reflection of a borrowing or the representation of some colloquial, topolectal term.

From Mok Ling:

A friend of mine, Lucy, is in a Mandarin learning group. She told me about the bizarre etymology she was taught for the word dōngxi 東西. Apparently, 東西 being used to mean "thing, item" is based on the conception of the Five Phases (wǔxíng 五行 [VHM:  formerly translated as Five Agents or Five Elements, which brings out the correspondences with the Four Elements of Western classical thought, also in the metaphysics of Indian, Tibetan, and other cultures]): East is represented by the element of Wood (木) and West is represented by the element of Metal (金). Objects are made of metal and wood, therefore "east-west" became a shorthand "thing" — obviously pretty ridiculous.

Prof. Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭 has passed away today at the age of 89. His groundbreaking work on ancient Chinese scripts has significantly shaped the study of Chinese palaeography and grapholinguistics. A monumental loss for academia. https://t.co/Jn0aLn19kI pic.twitter.com/OmHxTgAqbz

— Maxim Persikov (Panates) (@gyankotsu) May 8, 2025

[Update — mistaken identity corrected…] Someone with the same name as Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, published a paper in 1985 evaluating the application of Bayes' Theorem to the question of God's existence.  The paper ("Swinburne, Mackie and Bayes' Theorem" ) was published in the International journal for philosophy of religion.

 Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) was a Presbyterian minister, but the theorem that bears his name was presented in a posthumously-published work on gambling, "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances".  The Economist once called Bayes' Theorem "the most important equation in the history of mathematics", but Rev. Prevost's paper argued that "the Bayesian method of evaluating the adequacy of theistic explanation … [falls] short both in practice and in principle".

From r/chatgpt:

I tried the "Create the exact replica of this image, don't change a thing" 101 times, but with Dwayne Johnson
byu/Foreign_Builder_2238 inChatGPT

[This is a guest post by June Teufel Dreyer, with an added note by VHM]

Watching a Netflix detective film entitled Capitani with instructions that I could listen in either English or Luxembourgish. Never having heard of the latter, I chose Luxembourgish, discovered it was mostly German with some French (always ‘merci,’ never danke), several words with long vowels like Dutch, a few words that seemed neither (nay for no; dai for das) and some words I didn’t get at all.  Still wondering why Luxembourgish is considered a language, I googled, found that it was actually classified as a language only in the 20^th century.  One has to become fluent to obtain citizenship.

From Mok Ling:

As I'm writing this (evening of 3 May), my friends across the Strait of Malacca in Singapore are eagerly awaiting the results of their most recent general elections. As I've found out, in Singapore, voting in elections is not only a civic duty but mandatory by law!

I happened to come across this image showing the reverse of a poll card issued to all voters:

The reverse of a poll card issued for the Singaporean presidential election, 2011.
The polling station in question was at the void deck of Block 115 Clementi Street 13
in the Holland-Bukit Timah Group Representation Constituency.  (source)

Ever since I learned a bit of Vietnamese in 1970, I've been curious about the apparent areal feature of monosyllabism in southeast Asia. I did some poking around on Google Scholar yesterday, and came across something that's definitely worth following up on.

Caitlin Cassidy, "Spruiking, fake tradies and corflute stoushes: how to understand the Australian election", The Guardian 4/29/2025:

Australians pride themselves on their distinctive federal elections. It’s among a handful of nations that enforces compulsory voting, boasting a turnout rate of more than 90%. The preferential voting system, in theory, means no votes are wasted and choice matters. In recent years, Australians even have an emblem for their civic duty – a democracy sausage – the natural conclusion of voting on a Saturday at schools eager to raise funds.

Also unique is Australian campaign vernacular, which is, year after year, keenly adopted by the media and politicians alike. From donkey voting to corflute stoushes and spruiking, here are some of the weird idioms you need to know to keep abreast of what’s been happening in the lead-up to Saturday’s federal election

Designers Do a Double Take at the Lettering on Pope Francis’ Tombstone
Irregularly spaced letters spelling “F R A NCISC VS” have caused a stir among typography nerds who specialize in spacing and fonts. One called them “an abomination unto design.”
By Adeel Hassan, NYR (5/4/25)

It seems a small matter to get exercised over, but then it's the pope, after all, and for those who care about it, kerning is a serious business.

The simple slab has only 10 letters, but the spacing between them can make it read like “F R A NCISC VS.”

Mrs. Frazzled performs "gentle parenting" on the Signalgate group:

I was going very slowly down the stairwell of my house, especially slowly because I was carrying something bulky.  As a result, my left elbow was sticking outward, protruding  toward the wall.  When I was about halfway down, my elbow scraped against a pointed metal picture hanger, and it hurt like the dickens. 

As soon as the sharp metal object scraped against the skin on my elbow, I shouted "ow!", but then the momentum of my step carried me downward continuing to scrape against the picture hanger, and the "ow" became "owwwccchhhh!" 

From Elle Cordova, yesterday:

SMBC from a couple of days ago: