Language Log

[N.B.:  The archeologically recovered objects, such as those described in this post, are still referred to as "Roman dodecahedron", but that is partly to distinguish them from the scientific study of such figures in chemistry, crystallography, geometry, mathematics, and so forth.  Considering the most recent archeological discoveries and studies, we will have to stop calling them "Roman dodecahedron" and may well have to begin styling them "Gallo dodecahedron" or at least "Gallo-Roman dodecahedron" (see below for the reasoning).

In geometry, a dodecahedron or duodecahedron is any polyhedron with twelve flat faces. The most familiar dodecahedron is the regular dodecahedron with regular pentagons as faces, which is a Platonic solid.

China to Enshrine Xi-Era Ethnic Policy in New Law
by Chenghao Wei, NPC Observer (3/5/26)

The following is the introductory paragraph to the prospectus for the NPC's proceedings next week:

Next week, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) is expected to adopt a Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (Law) [民族团结进步促进法]—designed to codify General Secretary Xi Jinping’s new orthodoxy for governing China’s ethnic minorities. That doctrine, known as the “Important Thinking on Improving and Strengthening Ethnic Work,” reflects the “Second-Generation Ethnic Policies” promoted by several prominent scholars. In a nutshell, this new “assimilationist” approach aims “not just to strengthen citizens’ sense of belonging to a larger, unified Chinese nation under the Party but also to mute expression of other—in the Party’s view, competing—identities.”

Well, I'm not so sure about this:

I don't recall whether we've had anything interesting to say about "Pi Day", other than a reference to SMBC's  "PIE Day" back in 2023.

Today's Frazz notes the adjacency to the Ides of March:

Grammarly recently became part of Superhuman, and then began the shockingly unethical practice of pretending to offer writing advice from living people, without getting their permission or even informing them.

The etymology, according to the OED:

Apparently cognate with Old Saxon drano, dran (with uncertain vowel length: see note) (Middle Low German drāne, drōne; German regional (Low German) drāne, drōne; > German Drohne) and probably also with Old Saxon dreno, Old High German treno, tren (Middle High German tren, all with short vowel), all in the sense ‘drone bee’, further etymology uncertain, probably ultimately < a Germanic verbal base for making a kind of loud, continuous sound (compare droun v.); the noun was apparently formed from this verbal base with reference to the loud buzzing sound made by bees and similar insects, perhaps sometimes specifically with reference to the males of some species buzzing aggressively when the hive is disturbed.

Archeological data with AI- and physics-based modeling explain typhoon-induced disasters in inland China around 3000 yr B.P.
Science Advances, 12.10 (3/4/25)
Ke Ding, Siyang Li, Aijun Ding, Houyuan Lu, Jianping Zhang, Dazhi Xi, Xin Huang, Sijia Lou, Xiaodong Tang, Xin Qiu, Lejun He, Yue Ma, Haoxian Lin, Shiyan Zhang, Derong Zhou, Xiaolu Zhou, Zhe-Min Tan, Congbin Fu, Quansheng Ge

To fully understand the significance of this paper, one must realize that the Central Plains (Zhōngyuán 中原) and Chengdu Plain in Sichuan are crucial, fertile agricultural and economic hubs with deep historical significance. The Central Plains served as the "cradle of Chinese civilization", and was a vital transport corridor in the East Asian Heartland (EAH). The Chengdu Plain has been a perennial "Land of Plenty", supported by the Dūjiāngyàn 都江堰 irrigation system, a miracle of ancient hydraulic engineering still operating today more than two millennia after it was constructed.

China to Enshrine Xi-Era Ethnic Policy in New Law

by Chenghao Wei, NPC Observer (3/5/26)

The following is the introductory paragraph to the prospectus for the NPC's proceedings this week (starting on the 5th and lasting for eight days):

Next week, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) is expected to adopt a Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (Law) [民族团结进步促进法]—designed to codify General Secretary Xi Jinping’s new orthodoxy for governing China’s ethnic minorities. That doctrine, known as the “Important Thinking on Improving and Strengthening Ethnic Work,” reflects the “Second-Generation Ethnic Policies” promoted by several prominent scholars. In a nutshell, this new “assimilationist” approach aims “not just to strengthen citizens’ sense of belonging to a larger, unified Chinese nation under the Party but also to mute expression of other—in the Party’s view, competing—identities.”

Or does it even have a tail? 

Facebook post by David J. Loftus:

Note to Sinologist colleagues:

For the last few years, I've been noticing that Chinese archeologists
and scientists publishing in English consistently refer to jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文 as
"oracle bone scripts" (note the plural), when I think they mean "oracle
bone inscriptions" or "oracle bone texts".

I'm wondering if I should make an attempt to correct this usage, or
whether it is so well entrenched in Sino-English that nothing can be
done to change it.

For those who don't know what "Chinese Text Project" (CTP) is, here's a:

Brief introduction:

The Chinese Text Project is an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world. The site attempts to make use of the digital medium to explore new ways of interacting with these texts that are not possible in print. With over thirty thousand titles and more than five billion characters, the Chinese Text Project is also the largest database of pre-modern Chinese texts in existence.

You may wish to read more about the project, view the pre-Qin and Han, post-Han or Wiki tables of contents, or consult the instructions, FAQ, or list of tools. If you're looking for a particular Chinese text, you can search for texts by title across the main textual sections of the site.

(from the CTP homepage)

My graduate seminar on Middle Vernacular Sinitic has six M.A. students from the PRC in it.  They are all advanced in Literary Sinitic / Classical Chinese  (LS/CC) .  In this seminar, which I have been offering for more than a decade, each time I focus on a different medieval text.  Because the texts I assign to the students are largely or wholly unannotated, the students are mostly sailing through uncharted waters.  For them to be able to read and understand these texts, their Sinitic philological skills have to be high, higher than for most students in Advanced LS/CC courses.

I think jargon is getting thicker with each passing day, but where are people learning it?  Perhaps they are actually being taught it in business schools.  It's so pervasive, nauseating, and suffocating that it must be somebody's job to produce it.

To put the new wave / avant garde jargon in perspective, I turned to this consummate collection compiled by WSJ from the complaints of actual endurers:

‘Leverage.’ ‘Reach Out.’ ‘Circle Back.’ The Corporate Jargon We Hate the Most.
We pinged our readers for the terms that really annoy them. The list is long.

By Demetria Gallegos, WSJ (Feb. 26, 2026)