[Several days ago, I had prepared a post on this topic, but Mark scooped me with his "Mushroom language?" (1/9/24). His coverage of the counterposed Adamatzky and Blatt, et al. papers is superior to mine, so I will just strip out that part of my post and leave the remaining observations with which I had […]
From Emma Knightley: Sent by my boomer parents – according to the caption how a Taiwanese village is teaching seniors how to sing "You Are My Sunshine" in English, which requires them to know a combination of Mandarin, Taiwanese ("阿粿"), English ("B"), and Japanese ("の")! (I think the calligraphy is wonderful, to boot.)
As Laura Morland said to me in a p.c., I am a "Swiftie" (I admit it, even though I'm a Penn prof), but there are plenty of things about pop culture that I do not know, including IJBOL. What Is IJBOL? A Korean word? A new boy band? This new acronym is replacing LOL and […]
奥本海默中国大陆版本剪辑情况 pic.twitter.com/Nbjxy5PJ4J — 小径残雪 (@xiaojingcanxue) September 1, 2023 [link to full tweet here]
New article by Stephen Johnson in Lifehacker (3/24/23): "These Are the Most Savage Ways to Start or End an Email: How you start and end your work email says something about your worth as a person" N.B.: This is about work email — a very different kettle of fish from personal email, email with friends, […]
"Hanmoji" is a portmanteau consisting of the first syllable of hanzi ("Chinese character") and the second part of emoji. From Bob Bauer: Have you heard of or seen the book entitled The Hanmoji Handbook: Your Guide to the Chinese Language through Emoji, MITeen Press, published August 30, 2022? The day before yesterday (Thursday, 2 March […]
[Please read all the way to the bottom of this post. There are some big surprises here, including references to a book and an article on linguistics by the novelist Tom Wolfe (1930-2018), who's clearly on the wrong side of the political fence. Despite the spate of mostly unremittingly anti-Wolfe comments, many important issues about […]
So everybody knows what we're talking about: Baozi (Chinese: 包子), Pao-tsih or bao, is a type of yeast-leavened filled bun in various Chinese cuisines. There are many variations in fillings (meat or vegetarian) and preparations, though the buns are most often steamed. They are a variation of mantou from Northern China. (source) Early on in […]
Long article by Josephine Quinn: Alphabet Politics:What prompted the development of systems of writing? The New York Review (1/19/23 [online 12/19/22]) This is a detailed review of these two books: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts by Silvia Ferrara, translated from the Italian by Todd Portnowitz Farrar, Straus and […]
No "lying flat" or "coiling up" for us! Here are Japanese words (not characters) of the year for 2022. No Time to Waste: “Taipa” Chosen as One of Japan’s Words of 2022 nippon.com (12/16/22) Quite a different set of attitudes from what young people in China are feeling nowadays. You will note that extreme abbreviation […]
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Danielle Abril, "Gen Z came to ‘slay.’ Their bosses don’t know what that means.", WaPo 12/12/2022: When 24-year-old Mary Clare Wall read a message that said her colleague would be “out of pocket,” she and her young co-workers giggled. As Generation Z workers, Wall and her peers interpreted the phrase to mean that their colleague […]
Matt Jenkins writes: I am hoping you'll indulge a question that's been bugging me. I have been trying to improve my fluency by watching as many Chinese online dramas as possible, and sóng (U+2AA0A) comes up in show after show. But the character is always quite obviously "cut-and-pasted" into the subtitles. I'm (generally) familiar with the character as […]
It'sssssssssssss finally out! ✨ The Hanmoji Handbook: Your Guide to the Chinese Language Though Emoji ✨ — by me, An Xiao Mina & @jenny8lee, published by @MITeenPress — appears in bookshops across the US and Canada today! pic.twitter.com/sTkudPAwxb — Jason Li (@jasonli) August 30, 2022