Language Log

Long ago (half a century), I had occasion to translate the word "masochism" into Chinese.  At that stage, I wasn't even sure what "masochism" itself meant.  Supposedly it was "the madness of deriving pleasure from pain", I guessed especially sexual pleasure — something like that.

Wanting to give the most accurate possible translation into Chinese, I thought I should begin by investigating the etymology of the word, as is my bent.  So I pulled out my trusty 1960 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, my lexical vade mecum.  Here's what it had (has — I still keep it on my desk):

[After L. von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895), Austrian novelist, who described it.]  Med. Abnormal sexual passion characterized by pleasure in being abused by one's associate; hence any pleasure in being abused or dominated.

My recollection is that, at the time, I couldn't readily find an English-Chinese dictionary that had the term "masochism" in it, so I may have made up this rendering for it myself, although I'm not absolutely certain that I did so:

zìnüèdài kuáng 自虐待狂 ("madness of self abuse") (129 ghits)

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the most common translation of "masochism" in Chinese today is this:

shòunüèkuáng 受虐狂 ("madness of enduring / accepting / receiving abuse") (13,700.000 ghits)

It seems that nobody attempted to render "masochism" in such a way that it would reflect the fact that it derived from a person's surname.

While attending an international conference on the application of AI to the study of the Silk Road and its history, at which most of the papers were delivered in Korean, I was struck by the frequent occurrence of one distinctive word:  hajiman.  For some speakers, it almost seemed like a kǒutóuchán 口頭禪 ("catchphrase").  I had no idea what it meant, but its frequency led me to believe that it must be some sort of function word.  However, the fact that it is three syllables long militated against such a conclusion.  Also its sentence / phrase final position (though not always) made me think that it wasn't just a simple function word.

I kept trying to extract hajiman's purpose / meaning from its position and intonation (usually not emphasized, almost like an afterthought).

When, during coffee / tea breaks I asked some Korean colleagues about it, their reply — "Oh, hajiman" (with an offhand smile) only added to the word's mystique.

For the record:

"Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages", The Conversation (4/10/25); rpt. in phys.org/news (4/13/25)

Authors:

Charles Kemp
Professor, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne (PhD MIT)
Ekaterina Vylomova
Lecturer, Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne (The University of Melbourne, PhD/Computational Linguistics)
Temuulen Khishigsuren
PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne (National University of Mongolia, M.A. in linguistics)
Terry Regier
Professor, Language and Cognition Lab, University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., Computer science, UC Berkeley, 1992; frequent co-author with Paul Kay; among his most-cited work is:

"Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left",
Aubrey L. Gilbert; Terry Regier; Paul Kay; Richard B. Ivry.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2006)\

These two articles (The Conversation and phys.org/news) are journalistic accounts of the scientific study by Kemp, Vylomova, Khishigsuren, and Regier.

Stumbled upon an earliest surviving partial bible translation into Japanese made by Manuel Barreto in 1591 (known as バレト写本 or Reg. lat. 459), here's the first paragraph.

Scans can be found here:https://t.co/pW2nH8Udtj pic.twitter.com/HMehP0F6qd

— Maxim Persikov (Panates) (@gyankotsu) December 5, 2024

[This is a guest post by Conal Boyce]

Exactly what had become ‘visualizable’ according to Heisenberg in 1927,
and whence the term ‘Blurriness Relation’ in lieu of Uncertainty Principle?

As backdrop for the physics concepts and associated German vocabulary to be explored in a moment, here is a story I call “Quadrille Dance & Shotgun Wedding”:

1925. Heeding the lesson of Niels Bohr’s ill‑fated orbital theory (1913‑1918), Heisenberg is wary of developing any visual model; he wants to “get rid of the waves in any form.” Accordingly, with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, he sets forth his matrix‑mechanics formulation of quantum theory.

[This is a guest post by Hiroshi Kumamoto]

The Last Words of Helmut Humbach (1921-2017)

1

When an eminent classicist, the late Martin L. West published The Hymns of Zoroaster: A New Translation of the Most Ancient Sacred Texts of Iran, London: Tauris, 2010, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst wrote (Review in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2011, p. 379),"This book (…) comes as something of a surprise, since scholars of the difficult texts in Old Avestan, the oldest known texts in Old Iranian, do not usually emerge out of the blue". Now another surprise is brought by Heindio Uesugi, who edited Old Avestan Dictionary, Tokyo : Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa  (ILCAA), 2024 [became available in Feb. 2025] (XXVIII, 404 + VI, 116 pages). Although Adam Alvah Catt at Kyoto University, who is credited as editorial supervisor, is known from his works in Indo-Iranian and Tocharian linguistics, the name of the editor has been totally unknown in the field in Iranian linguistics.

From a Hong Kong restaurant:

Poster on a Tokyo subway, courtesy of Sanping Chen:

敦煌学大辞典第二版全新发布了！
New second edition of Dictionary of Dunhuang Studies!
敦煌学不可或缺的工具
Indispensable tool for #DunhuangStudies
郝春文 主编
70%词条已修订了
词汇量：241万 ➡️ 400万
词条数：5,000 ➡️ 12,000 pic.twitter.com/vYLaYQAHgL

— Neil Schmid 史瀚文 (@DNeilSchmid) January 15, 2025

Two colleagues noticed that the PRC government often rebukes other countries for lacking sincerity, and they asked me if Chinese had a different understanding of sincerity that permitted / encouraged them to do so.  "Sincerity" is so front and center in Chinese negotiations with other nations that one soon comes to realize, if you want smooth relations with the PRC, you must needs demonstrate to the Chinese representatives that you are utterly sincere, i.e., that you are willing to do exactly what they want you to do.  Anything less opens you to the charge of being insincere.

My colleagues asked me if there is something special about the Chinese conception of sincerity, i.e., does it have special Chinese characteristics" (jùyǒu Zhòngguó tèsè 具有中国特色)?  Just as it is an article of faith for the CCP that socialism in China comes with special characteristics (Zhōngguó tèsè shèhuì zhǔyì 中国特色社会主义).

[I wrote this piece more than a year and a half ago, but neglected to post it because I was in the midst of a long run.  Nonetheless, it's still relevant and interesting, so I'm going ahead to post it now.  Since I was able to revise some small points and we garnered several interesting new comments, it was worth a second throw.]

"Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida", by Phillip M. Carter in The Conversation (6/12/23)

Beginning sentences:

“We got down from the car and went inside.”

“I made the line to pay for groceries.”

“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”

These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.

In Miami, however, they’ve become part of the local parlance.

According to my recently published research, these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.

This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish.

I encouraged Nathan Hopson to see the last sentence of the second comment here, "Ramen Lo Mein lou1 min6" (1/9/25), which reads:  "We need Nathan Hopson / other Japanese lexicologists…".

Nathan replied with this guest post:

"Oxford English Dictionary adds seven new Korean words including ‘dalgona’ and ‘tteokbokki’:  This is the first time since September 2021 that the dictionary has added new Korean words"
Shahana Yasmin, The Independent (1/7/25)

Korean has accepted many English words into its vocabulary, including "hotdog" (except in the north, where it is forbidden).  Now, with Korean culture and economy booming globally, it is not surprising that Korean language will be spreading too.

…According to the OED’s website on Tuesday, the words “noraebang,” “hyung,” “jjigae,” “tteokbokki” and “pansori” were also added in the December update.

…Dalgona, which entered the pop culture lexicon with the release of Netflix’s hit show Squid Game in 2021, is defined as a “Korean confection made by adding baking soda to melted sugar, typically sold by street vendors in the form of a flat disc with a simple shape such as a heart, star, etc., carved on its surface”.