Language Log

The words that leap to mind are pustakālaya पुस्तकालय (pustak पुस्तक ["book"] + ālaya आलय ["place"]) and granthālaya ग्रन्थालय (granth ग्रंथ ["text"] + ālaya आलय ["place"]).  Those are simple and straightforward.

There were several other Sanskrit words for library I used to know, such as vidyākośasamāśraya विद्याकोशसमाश्रय* that included the component vidya ("knowledge"), but they were more subtle and complicated, so they were harder for me to recall.

*knowledge treasury coming together (for support or shelter)

I've been saying "Erin go Bragh" my whole life and knew that it meant roughly "Ireland Forever!".

Someone complained in an inappropriate and non sequiturish place that AIO (Artificial Intelligence Overview) did not definitively solve the difficult problem of the seeming non-Sinitic etymology of Japanese waka 若 ("young; youth") that he posed to it.

Cf. Wiktionary:

Japanese

Noun

若(わか) • (waka) 

1. 1. "my lord" (towards a young master or a young heir)

I've lost a considerable amount of sleep over these two words, not just because they both have nine letters and look almost the same, differing only by a single consonant, but even more so because, while they both signify something bad or undesirable about the way situations unfold or how people behave toward others, they imply the opposite in the manner these odious actions are carried out, but have no obvious clues about their usage.

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”.

[This is a guest post by Robert S. Bauer]

The Japanese word “ramen” has been borrowed from standard Chinese 拉麵 la1 mian4 ‘pulled noodles’; ramen/la1 mian4 is a different word from Cantonese “lo mein”, i.e., 撈麵 lou1 min6 ‘wheat noodles’. While these are two distinct words, nonetheless, they still seem to be ultimately related, according to Wikipedia’s entry on “ramen” which sheds some interesting light on their historical connection as follows:

“The origins of ramen can be traced back to Yokohama Chinatown in the early 20th century. The word "ramen" is a Japanese borrowing of the Chinese word lamian (拉麵), meaning "pulled noodles", but is not derived from the northern Chinese dish of lamian. Instead, the dish evolved from southern Chinese noodle dishes from regions such as Guangzhou, reflecting the demographics of Chinese settlers in Yokohama.” (from Wikipedia entry on ramen, retrieved on January 3, 2025). The would seem to imply that Japanese “ramen” refers to Cantonese 撈麵 lou1 min6, also known as “lo mein”.

You may or may not have heard of Kucha.  For those who are interested in Tocharian or Uyghur, you almost certainly would be well aware of this oasis city on the northern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin of Eastern Central Asia. 

Coordinates: 41°42′56″N 82°55′56″E

Kucha is the historical seat of so-called Tocharian B, i.e., Kuśiññe Kantwo, the home of the renowned Buddhist translator, Kumārajīva (344-413), and an important center of Uyghur history and culture from the 7th to 13th centuries.

Nancy Friedman just published "52 interesting things I learned this year" (Fritinancy, 12/30/2024). The whole thing is worth reading, but I especially liked (10), which resonates with (17), which references LLOG.

Dr. Hu Shih (1891-1962) was arguably the greatest Chinese scholar of the 20th century, for whom I have the utmost respect.  He and I thought alike on a number of important subjects:  language, literature, and script reform, philosophy (we both were attracted to the utilitarian-pragmatist-logician and defensive strategist Mo Zi [c. 470 -c.391 BC]), recognition of the great influence of Indian civilization upon Chinese culture, dedication to public service and education, devotion to democracy, and so forth.  Overall, the only other 20th-century thinker and writer who could compete / compare with Hu Shih was Lu Xun (1881-1936), but the latter came from the left, whereas Hu Shih came from the right.  I admired them both.

Even when I was a child, I was never a theist, and I stopped going to church when I went to college and my mother wasn't around to urge me to do so.  Likewise, I suspected that Hu Shih, being a Confucian minded Chinese intellectual, was not a theist either.  So it was quite a surprise when the following notice from the Hu Shih Memorial Hall in Taipei came to my attention:

Jichang Lulu congratulated me on the completion of my continental diabasis.  Since I didn't know the meaning of that word and couldn't readily find a suitable definition for it online (I was familiar with the Anabasis of Xenophon [c. 430-probably 355 or 354 BC], the title of which means "expedition up from"), I simply had to ask him.  The following is what Lulu said in reply:

The use of the term is probably not classically warranted. I meant diabasis (διάβασις, ‘crossing, traversal, passage…’, literally ‘going through’) as a pun on Xenophon's Anabasis (the ‘march up’, i.e., inland, although most of the book is about the march back down to the coast). 

I just received the following book:  P.N. Singer and Ralph M. Rosen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Galen (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2024).  The volume has 29 chapters, the last of which is "Galen in Premodern Tibet and China: Impressions and Footprints" (pp. 658-674) by Dror Weil and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim.  Naturally, this chapter is of great interest to me.  It mentions many parallels and correspondences between Galenic and Sinitic medical practice and thought (e.g., humors, colors, purging, etc.), much of it passing through what is called "Islamicate" (Huíhui 回回) medicine and pharmaceutics, and through Persian literature as well.  The authors also take into account Sogdian, Syriac, and Sanskrit sources.

Of all the instances of Galenic thought and practice in China mentioned by the authors, the one that struck me most powerfully was this:

One record gives an account of a surgery on a boy’s head that experts in Islamicate medicine (Huihui yiguan 回回醫官) performed in order to extract a tumor. The tumor, interestingly, is described in this Chinese record by the term little cancer (xiao xie 小蟹), a literal translation of the Arabic sarṭān (cancer). (p. 664)

There is a discussion on Linguistics Stack Exchange whether wristwatch in Chinese came from the French: