Archive for Dialects
May 10, 2013 @ 5:50 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Dialects, Endangered languages, Fieldwork, Phonetics and phonology
A topic which I have raised here and elsewhere a number of times is that of Sinitic topolects and languages (www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf), and I have also called attention to the increasing domination of Mandarin in education and the media. Even native speakers within China sometimes don't appreciate quite how varied the Sinitic group of languages can be. People often say that someone can move from one valley to the next, or one village to the next, and just not be able to make themselves understood. But until you've been in that situation yourself, it doesn't really hit home. Before long, I'll post on Shanghainese and will provide audio recordings that will demonstrate clearly just how different it is from Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM). There are countless other varieties of "Chinese" that are just as different from each other as Shanghainese (or Cantonese or Taiwanese, for that matter) are from MSM.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
May 8, 2013 @ 3:42 pm· Filed by Ben Zimmer under Announcements, Dialects, Dictionaries, Research tools, Resources
A month ago, I posted an "SOS for DARE," detailing the impending financial threat faced by the Dictionary of American Regional English, a national treasure of lexicography. At the time it appeared that the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, where DARE is based, would be unable to provide support to offset the loss of federal and private grant money. But now there's finally some good news out of Madison, in the form of new funds from the University and external gifts.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
April 20, 2013 @ 12:56 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Borrowing, Dialects, Writing systems
The Dungan people are a group of Sinitic speakers whose Muslim ancestors fled to Central Asia (mainly in parts of what are now Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) over a century ago when the Qing (Manchu) government suppressed their revolt (1862-1877), one of many Muslim uprisings in the course of Chinese history since Islam arrived in East Asia during the Middle Ages.
When they came to Central Asia, the Dungans were mostly illiterate peasants from northwest China who spoke a series of topolects from Shaanxi, Gansu, and other areas. From 1927 to 1928, they wrote their language with the Arabic alphabet, and from 1928-1932 they used the Latin alphabet. In 1952-53, the Soviet government created for the Dungans a writing system based on the Cyrillic alphabet, which they continue to use till today.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
April 7, 2013 @ 5:52 pm· Filed by Ben Zimmer under Announcements, Dialects, Dictionaries, Research tools, Resources
Many Language Log readers are no doubt familiar with the Dictionary of American Regional English, which I hailed in a Boston Globe column last year as "a great project on how Americans speak — make that the great project on how Americans speak." At the time, I was previewing DARE's fifth volume, which completed the alphabetical run all the way to zydeco. Since then, a sixth volume of supplemental materials has also been published, and plans are underway to launch the digital version of DARE, which would serve as an online home for future expansions and revisions. But now DARE editor Joan Hall passes along some troubling news about the dictionary's financial fate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
March 10, 2013 @ 9:20 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Dialects, Transcription, Writing systems
Chinese speakers have phonetically transcribed the word "geek" as jíkè 极客, qíkè 奇客, etc., and these transcriptions are fairly widely used and recognized, even among Mandarin speakers (the initials would be velars in many non-Mandarin topolects, so they would sound more like "geek" than do the Mandarin pronunciations). So far, I don't know of any Chinese character transcription for "nerd", certainly none that is broadly circulating.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
March 5, 2013 @ 5:54 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Dialects, Language and culture
The question of whether or not there's a word for "nerd" in Chinese has recently come up, in Mark Liberman's "'Your passport has just been stamped for entry into the Land of Bullshit'".
Mark quotes Tom Scocca, who cites three terms: fáwèi de rén 乏味的人 ("a dull and tasteless person"), diànnǎomí 电脑迷 ("someone excessively enthusiastic about computers"), and shūdāizi 书呆子 ("bookworm; pedant").
But none of these expressions comes close to functioning the way "nerd" does in contemporary American society. The first, fáwèi de rén, is a makeshift, ad hoc dictionary definition that explains a small part of what "nerd" signifies, but is not a set term that has the social-intellectual resonance and reach of "nerd". The second, diànnǎomí, is simply incorrect as even a translation of "nerd", since some people have called me a nerd, but I am absolutely terrified of computers (all of my good friends know that very well), though it might serve as a partial definition-explanation of "geek" (more about that below). The third, shūdāizi, is often invoked as a Chinese functional equivalent of "nerd", but even many of the people who mention it do so a bit sheepishly and admit that it's not really the same thing as "nerd", whereas most people (myself included) will say that it's not even remotely equivalent to "nerd".
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
December 11, 2012 @ 11:14 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Dialects
I've often felt that the percentage of loanwords in a language is one index of the strength and resilience of that language (witness English and Japanese, each of which has an enormous number of borrowings). An abundance of loanwords in a language makes it lively, colorful, and au courant.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
December 4, 2012 @ 11:41 am· Filed by Sally Thomason under Dialects, Language change, Language contact
A recent article in Science Daily has the headline `Linguist makes sensational claim: English is a Scandinavian language'. The claim in question is Jan Terje Faarlund's conclusion that `English is in reality a Scandinavian language' — that `Old English quite simply died out while Scandinavian survived, albeit strongly influenced of course by Old English.' The core of Faarlund's argument is that, in addition to many words that originally belonged to Norwegian and/or Danish, English has syntactic structures that are Scandinavian rather than West Germanic in origin. Specifically, Faarlund argues that `wherever English differs syntactically from the other Western Germanic languages — German, Dutch, Frisian — it has the same structure as the Scandinavian languages.' Faarlund then gives a few examples of syntactic parallelism between English and Scandinavian [that is, the Germanic languages of Scandinavia] and concludes that `the only reasonable explanation' for this parallelism `is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and a continuation of the Norwegian-Danish language which was used in England during the Middle Ages.'
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as the saying goes. The evidence cited in the article is nowhere near extraordinary. Assuming that he is quoted accurately, there are some serious problems with Faarlund's claims.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
November 14, 2012 @ 2:13 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Dialects, Dictionaries, Errors, Etymology, Research tools, Resources, Words words words
As soon as I heard that the 5th edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) had come out, I rushed to the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore (yes, they still exist — that was Borders that closed) and plunked down two Bens (hundred dollar bills) to buy three copies at $60 each: one for my office at Penn, one for my study at home, and one for a friend. The 5th ed. was actually published in November, 2011, but I was in China then, and didn't get a chance to buy my own copies until the day I arrived back on American soil.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
October 1, 2012 @ 1:26 pm· Filed by Geoff Nunberg under Dialects, Words words words
Commenters on Mark's post about my remarks to the BBC about Briticisms asked if I really had it in for Briticisms in general, and in particular, what was I found so objectionable about "spot on." For the first, the answer is no; as I told Ms Hebblethwaite, some loans are quite useful, like "sell-by date" and "one-off." And I like "twee," with its evocation of Laura Ashley preciosity, though it seems to have lost some of those associations in its application to a genre of indie pop.
But there are others which add nothing more than the fact of their Englishness—what I think of as "motorcar" words. "I liked the funny bits"—what does that convey that "the funny parts" doesn't, other than to say that the speaker is familiar with how the English talk? And given that Anglicisms generally flow to us via a narrower pipe than the one that pours Americanisms into British speech, and one that with some exceptions tends to deposit its effluvia into the cultural upper stories, the practice often suggests a whiff of pretension. But with "spot on," there's something else going on. I don't think I would have called it ludicrous, as Ms H reports me as saying. But I might very well have said "awfully silly."
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
September 30, 2012 @ 12:54 pm· Filed by Barbara Partee under Awesomeness, Dialects, negation, Variation, Words words words
I just really like this sentence from the Baltimore Orioles' Nolan Reimold, who is recovering slowly from a herniated disk in his neck. "I can do pretty much whatever minus not being stupid." I find that a great sentence that could be used in a lot of situations, e.g. retirement …
No big linguistic point. Just three nice little dialectal variants in a row — that use of "whatever"; "minus" in place of "except for", and the inclusion of "not" in such a context. I think they've all been discussed in posts at one time or another, but this three-in-a-row is a gem, plus [oh, there's a 'plus'; I'm infected] I love the sentiment.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
September 20, 2012 @ 2:59 am· Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Dialects, Ignorance of linguistics, Phonetics and phonology
On Lingua Franca today, Allan Metcalf of the American Dialect Society has a cute piece on dialect description citing numerous examples of different regional dialects being characterized by the same layperson's description: the utterly undefined but oh-so-popular phrase "nasal drawl." They come from from all over: Missouri, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, California, Massachusetts, the Deep South, Texas, Chicago, anywhere. There's no phonetic reality to this imaginary sound quality: Metcalf says "If you want to say something specific about a person's pronunciation but aren't too comfortable with phonetic terminology, you can say 'nasal drawl' and people will understand. It means—well, it's hard to say what it means…" It's only language you're talking about; just make stuff up.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
September 12, 2012 @ 7:21 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Dialects, Language and culture
A few days ago, I wrote a post called "The Westernization of Chinese", in which I linked to a virtuoso video performance by "Miss Lin". Steve Kass asked, "Has anyone transcribed this whole thing?" I don't think so, but with the help of Sophie Wei and Chia-hui Lu, who always wish me a good day / evening / morning / weekend / mood, I am pleased to present the complete transcription (in pinyin and Chinese characters) and English translation of Miss Lin's performance. Even those who do not read Chinese will immediately apprehend the extraordinary degree to which English is mixed in with Mandarin.
Preparing this transcription and translation was a long and arduous task, and I'm sure that there are still some imperfections, for which I ask the forgiveness of Language Log readers. At least the transcription and translation will provide a good idea of the nature of the language employed by Miss Hold.
Each segment of the monologue consists of three parts:
a. characters plus English
b. pinyin transcription
c. English translation
When she speaks English, all three components are identical.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink