Language Log

"A Conversation with Toby Kiers, World Champion of Fungus", NYT 1/14/2026 — lots of interesting science, and this bit of sociophonetics:

Q: How do you pronounce “fungi”? Is it “fun-guy,” or “fun-jai,” or “fun-jee,” or “fun-ghee”?

A: I’m all over the place. I’ll start a sentence with “fun-jee” and by the end I’ll say “fun-ghee.” There’s no wrong answer!

Throughout my research and teaching career,  I have always emphasized that, when it comes to genuine etymology of Sinitic, what matters are the sounds and meanings of the constituent etyma, going all the way back to the fundamental roots.  The shapes of the glyphs used to write the eyma in question are far less important than the sounds and meanings.  In fact, discussion of the shapes of the glyphs is often more of a distraction than a benefit to understanding what the true etymologies of given etyma are.  We demonstrated that by the sharp disagreements we had over the meanings of the shapes of the ancient glyphs / forms / shapes of such a simple / definite / concise lexeme / morpheme as "woman; female".  That is why the sound nǚ and its attendant meaning "woman; female" are more important for Sinitic etymology than is the the three-stroke character 女, albeit the latter derived from more complicated and difficult to explain / interpret forms.

James D. Seymour, "Transmission vs. Termination of Cultures:  The Cases of the Medieval Uighurs and Modern Uyghurs", chapter 6 of David W. Kim, ed., Silk Road Footprints: Transnational Transmission of Sacred Thoughts and Historical Legacy (Wilmington, DE:  Vernon, 2025).

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VHM:  N.B.:  Please note that the pre-publication final draft linked to in the title above is virtually the same as that which appeared in the published book, but any citations or quotations, etc., should be based on what is confirmed as actually appearing  in the book. Spelling in the book is more strictly British. (Apologies for any misspelled/misspelt words in the linked version!)

Post-publication corrections/refinements are in this sans serif typeface.

Key words: Uighur Khaganate, Uighurs, Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Yugurs.

The name "Uyghur", in its various guises and at different times, has caused much confusion among students and scholars of Central Asian history.  This article, by James D. Seymour, who has been researching the topic for more than half a century, strives to straighten out the twists and turns of the history of the name and the peoples who bore it. 

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventy-ninth issue:

“Zhenzhu’s Deputy: Loyalty and Filiality in The Compass of Islam,” by Jonathan N. Lipman.
(free pdf)

There's a big snowstorm expected this weekend, and so lots of Monday events are being cancelled. One of the notices that I got today had this Subject line:

Canceled January 26 colloquium hey Siri hey Alexa, what is Monday’s date?

François Lang sent in the following quandary:

[This is a guest post by M. Paul Shore]

     Because my January 19th post about the pronunciation of "Davos" has attracted a number of comments on the general question of what degree of pronunciational authenticity mainstream and semi-mainstream broadcasters should attempt for foreign proper nouns and, occasionally, common nouns, and under what circumstances, I've decided to submit this new post on that general question rather than have my thoughts about it buried in that previous thread.

     Because discussions of the question tend to stagnate and become nearly meaningless as a result of the assumption or near-assumption that there can be only two categories of authenticity, namely "authentic" and "inauthentic", I’d like to take a stand against that binary thinking and propose that four basic levels of authenticity be recognized:

We've been discussing the oracle bone form (late 2nd millennium BC) of nǚ女 ("woman; female"):

(WP)

I've always felt that it shows the profile of a submissive, kneeling female figure with her arms crossed in front of her (I say this after examining scores of variants of OB forms of 女).

From M. Paul Shore (of partial Swiss German ancestry; former Linguistics major) to PBS News staff: 

Compared to the previous Julesy presentation, "This might be the most hated film in Korea" (see "Hangul and Buddhism" [1/16/26]), today's video is tame, but the consequences of what she describes — the advent of a phonetic script to replace a logographic / morphosyllabic script — were profound.

Our colleague and teacher, Prof. Matsumoto Akirō, passed away on January 6, 2026, at 82 years of age.

Prof. Matsumoto graduated from Waseda University in East Asian history in 1966, received his Master’s degree, also from Waseda, in philosophy in 1972, and thereafter studied at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, Iran. He taught at International University of Japan and at St. Thomas (Eichi) University and held visiting professorships at Durham University (UK) and the University of Virginia (USA). He originally specialized in Islamic theology, working in Persian and Arabic texts under the mentorship of Prof. IZUTSU Toshihiko (井筒 俊彦) in Japan and Prof. Sayed Jalaluddin Ashtiani at Ferdowsi. His research included the mystical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn Sina, Jami, Rumi, and Mulla Sadra and the 20th century Twelver Shi’ism of Ayatollah Khomeini. He also published numerous translations of Persian philosophical works into Japanese.

No sooner had I posted about a block of 11,328 proposed Small Seal characters dating back roughly two millennia being incorporated in UNICODE than a single spanking new sinograph surfaced and was urgently put forward for inclusion, and it is causing a bit of a ruckus.  That is the third-person gender-neutral pronoun [X也], which is pronounced the same as all the other characters for supposedly gendered Sinitic third-person pronouns, viz., tā (see below for their graphic forms).

N.B.:  The proposed neograph under dicussion is provisionally being written as [X也], but bear in mind that, as I have pointed out countless times, all sinographs, by the exigencies / inherent nature of the script, whether they have 1 stroke or 64 / n strokes, must be squeezed inside the same size box as all other sinographs.  In other words, [X也] perforce — once the typographers get it worked out — will eventually have to fit inside exactly the same space as 也 and biáng  (you can get an authentic plate of these belt-like Shaanxi noodles at Xi'an Sizzling Woks, 40th & Chestnut in University City next to Penn [opens at 11:30 AM, closed on Tuesdays]).  There are many Language Log posts about diverse aspects of this jabberwockyish character.  Just look it up under "biang" 

We've seen numerous blockbuster videos from Julesy, but this one is the most explosive ever:

"This might be the most hated film in Korea" (11:55)