Language Log

When I was in the British Museum bookshop several weeks ago, I was pleased by the numerous offerings of books on language.  Two types stood out:  those on the origins of speech and those on the origins of writing.  As we would say in Mandarin, they are iǎngmǎshì 兩碼事 ("two different things").  The best stocked / selling one on scripts was Andrew Robinson's The Story of Writing, and its counterpart for speech was Daniel Everett's How Language Began:  The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention.

In this post, I will focus on the latter volume and its author, with whom Language Log readers are well acquainted (see the bibliography below).  I will not discuss his lengthy fieldwork among the hunter-gatherer Pirahã of the Lowland Amazonia region (to be distinguished from the piranha or piraña fish which has such a fearsome reputation and also lives in the Amazon), but will emphasize his radical theories of the origins of language.

Yesterday on YouTube, "Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon sits down with Dasha Burns, POLITICO's White House bureau chief". At the end of the interview, there's a conventional exchange of thank-yous. From Dasha Burns:

All right Steve, I know you got a show to record,
thank you so much for- for beaming in here
and uh sorry for the technical difficulties everyone.
Steve thanks so much.

And Steve Bannon's response:

Dasha thank you,
and thank Politico for having me.

[This is a guest post by Christopher Paris (website).]

I just wanted to thank you for your 2009 essay on the misinterpretation of “wēijī” as meaning both opportunity and crisis.

This controversy takes on dramatic new importance as the misinterpretation has been used to justify the invention of a school of thought that “risk is positive.” When challenged with English language dictionaries dating back to the 1700s, showing risk as typically meaning a potential threat or harm, the proponents of “positive risk” run to the wēijī trope. They say, “the Chinese came up with this 3000 years ago, so English dictionaries don’t matter.”

Xu Wenkan is well known to readers of Language Log, both because he was memorialized in an obituary here — "Xu Wenkan (1943-2023)" (1/10/23) — and because he was cited in many posts on IE languages (especially Tocharian), Sinitic lexicography / lexicology, and the Sinographic writing system.  Today he was featured in a Chinese newspaper article, two years after his passing, and that reminded me of another important aspect of his language skills and activities.  Namely, without any doubt whatsoever, he was the most prolific letter writer I have ever met.

I sent the above photograph of a body lotion (bodirōshon ボディローション) bottle to Nathan Hopson and asked him why it has so many katakana words, also why they have to give a phonological gloss for yuzu, which should be a fairly common word in Japanese (even I know it!).

Marketoonist (3/26/23):

[This is a guest post by Penglin Wang]

            Identification of the Xiongnu word ninghu (寧胡) as meaning ‘six’ in the phrase ninghu yanshi ‘the sixth consort’ (Wang 2024) and its connection with Jurchen ninggu (寧谷) and Manchu ninggun ‘six’ has opened up the possibility for thinking about the Xiongnu official title danghu (當戶) in relation to Jurchen tanggu (倘古) and Manchu tanggū ‘hundred’. Xiongnu used gradient decimal numerals as the echelons for its military and administrative organization, in which a century stands between a decad tier and a chiliad tier and is commanded by a centurion. Presumably, the centurion was gradually generalized as an official in addition to their regular low-ranking position and hence promoted to a mid and mid-high rank bearing the prefix da (大) ‘grand’.

            Chinese records may serve to illustrate where the Xiongnu official titles grand danghu and danghu fit in the government system. According to Shiji (110.2890f), there are wise kings of the left and right, guli (谷蠡) kings of the left and right, grand generals of the left and right, grand commandants of the left and right, grand danghu of the left and right, and gudu (骨都) marquises of the left and right; From wise kings of the left and right down to danghu, the big one is ten thousand horsemen, the small ones are several chiliads; All the twenty-four chiefs have their own chiliad chiefs, century chiefs, decad chiefs, small kings, ministers, commandants, danghu, qiequ (且渠) and the like. Having paid attention to the title danghu used in Hanshu, the ancient commentators such as Yan Shigu (顏師古 581-645, Hanshu 8.266, 17.650) and Meng Kang (孟康 Hanshu 8.271) living in the third century were united in their opinion that danghu and danghu of the left and right were Xiongnu official titles.

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”.

Kim Jong-un’s bizarre new ban for North Koreans:
The hermit kingdom has outlawed popular items in recent months as part of a massive crackdown on Western cultural influences.
Heath Parkes-Hupton, news.com.au (1/6/25)

"Weird", as some attendees at the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote last evening might have said.

I've based several past posts on passages from Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Recently I happened to notice some large differences among different editions, and so I took a look at the Library of Congress page "Finding Benjamin Franklin: A Resource Guide", which lists 16 "significant" early editions of Franklin's Autobiography, as well as a guide to that work's "complex early history". From that I learned that, well, its history is complicated — which is also clear from the Wikipedia entry. But in the course of making some textual comparisons, I happened on a passage that (in all its variants) raises the question, what did Franklin have against Edinburgh?

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote was last night, and the overall WotY winner was rawdog. You can read the whole list and voting tallies in the ADS press release.