Language Log

Judging from these alarming top level official government proclamations, one might think that the Chinese language is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's all because of the deleterious effects of the internet, strict policing of which is absolutely necessary.

Rénmín wǎng: Rénmín rè píng: Jǐnfáng hēi huà làn gěng de yǐnxìng qīnshí 

Lín Fēng 2024 nián 10 yuè 13 rì 10:31 | Láiyuán: Rénmín wǎng-guāndiǎn píndào xiǎo zìhao jìnrì, zhōngyāng wǎng xìn bàn, jiàoyù bù yìnfā tōngzhī, bùshǔ kāizhǎn “qīnglǎng·guīfàn wǎngluò yǔyán wénzì shǐyòng” zhuānxiàng xíngdòng. Zhuānxiàng xíngdòng jùjiāo bùfèn wǎngzhàn píngtái zài rè sōu bǎng dān, shǒuyè shǒu píng, fāxiàn jīngxuǎn děng zhòngdiǎn huánjié chéngxiàn de yǔyán wénzì bù guīfàn, bù wénmíng xiànxiàng, zhòngdiǎn zhěngzhì wāi qǔ yīn, xíng, yì, biānzào wǎngluò hēi huà làn gěng, lànyòng yǐnhuì biǎodá děng túchū wèntí.

人民網 ：人民熱評：謹防黑話爛梗的隱性侵蝕
林 風
2024年10月13日10:31 | 來源：人民網-觀點頻道
小字號

近日，中央網信辦、教育部印發通知，部署開展“清朗·規范網絡語言文字使用”專項行動。專項行動聚焦部分網站平台在熱搜榜單、首頁首屏、發現精選等重點環節呈現的語言文字不規范、不文明現象，重點整治歪曲音、形、義，編造網絡黑話爛梗，濫用隱晦表達等突出問題。

Sean Swanick, "Shaikh Zubayr", Duke University Libraries Blog, 4/13/2016:

A man lost at sea, having drifted far away from his native Iraqi lands, comes a shore in England. In due time he will be nicknamed the Bard of Avon but upon landing on the Saxon coast, his passport reportedly read: Shaikh Zubayr. A knowledgeable man with great writing prowess from a small town called Zubayr in Iraq. He came to be known in the West as Shakespeare and was given the first name of William. William Shakespeare of Zubayr.

[N.B.:  If you don't have time to read through this long and complicated post, cut to the "Closing note" at the bottom.]

Lately when I do Google searches, especially on obscure and challenging subjects, AI Overview leaps into the fray and takes precedence at the very top, displacing Wikipedia down below, and even Google's own responses, which have been increasingly frequent in recent months, are pushed over to the top right.

AI Overview, on first glance, seems convenient and useful, but — when I start to dig deeper, I find that there are problems.  As an example, I will give the case of the name of the Snake River, and maybe mention a few other instances of AI Overview falling short, but still being swiftly, though superficially, helpful.

[This is a guest post by German Dziebel, commenting on "PIE *gene- *gwen-" (8/10/23).]

I will strike a dissenting note here. The two roots in question – *g’enH1 and *gʷenH2 are likely cognates. There seems to be a non-random distribution of palatalized and labialized velars in IE stems with nasals – palatovelars are favored in stems with m, while labiovelars are favored in stems with n. E.g.,

nGʷ roots: *nogʷno- 'naked', *nogʷt- 'night', *snoigʷho- 'snow', *h₂ongʷo- 'anoint', *h1ngwni- 'fire', *negʷhro- 'kidney', *gʷenh₂ 'wife', *kʷoino- 'price', *penkʷe- '5', *h₁lengʷʰ- 'light', *gʷʰen- 'slay, strike', *sengʷh- 'sing', *neigʷ- 'wash' 

vs.

mG'-roots: *H3moiǵhlo- (assimilated to njegull(ë) in Gheg Alb), *meǵh₂s 'great', *meh₂ǵ- 'smear, anoint', *ǵheyōm 'winter', *dheǵhōm 'earth', *ḱoimo- 'household, family', *mreǵh-, *mosgho- 'brain', *h₂melǵ- 'milk', *smeḱur 'chin, beard', *deḱm̥ '10', *h1ḱm̥tóm '100' *h₂émǵʰu- 'narrow' (Hitt hamenk- 'tie, bind').

[This is a guest post from Mok LIng*.  Asterisked notes by VHM are given below.]

Since October is the month of Halloween**, I figured I'd share an appropriately macabre folk etymology.

These are two premodern words for Chinese watercraft that have worked their way into the English lexicon.  Their etymology, however, is not as straightforward as it might seem.

"Language Matters | Where did English get the words ‘sampan’ and ‘junk’ from? Probably Cantonese and Javanese:  Scholars are split on the roots of ‘sampan’ and ‘junk’, with some pointing to Chinese and others to Old Malay and Javanese respectively", by Lisa Lim, SCMP (9/30/24)

Sampans – typically small, light, wooden boats with a relatively flat bottom, propelled by a pole, oars, or a single long stern sculling oar – have a long history in East and Southeast Asian coastal and river waters.

Usually open, with a shelter aft, they were – and still are – used as a means of transporting passengers and goods over short distances; fishing; or to get to larger vessels out at sea. They also constituted homes for sea-dwelling communities, including the Tanka or Séuiseuhngyàn “people born on or of the water”, of coastal southern China and Hong Kong and Macau.

There's a chain of about half-a-dozen fast food restaurants called Gyro Shack in Boise, Idaho, where I find myself now.  They're cool little shops, just as Boise is a cool (big-)little city spread across a broad, flat plain (nearly three thousand feet in elevation) that lies at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Several things about gyros perplex me.  One is how the cones of meat on the vertical, rotating spit cohere and do not fall to pieces, but docilely hang in place oozing their mouthwatering juices waiting to be sliced off, layer after layer.  One traditional gyro meat recipe states:  "Processing the meat in the food processor and overworking it ensures that the proteins in the meat stick together, like sausage." (source)  I still don't get it, since sausage has a casing to hold it together.

Never mind about that physical matter for now,  What really bothers me (and lots of other people), is how to pronounce that four-letter word.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-seventh issue:  “Resurrecting an Etymology: Greek (w)ánax ‘king’ and Tocharian A nātäk ‘lord,’ and Possible Wider Connections,” by Douglas Q. Adams. (pdf)

ABSTRACT

Examined here is the possible cognancy of Homeric Greek (w)ánax ‘king’ and Tocharian A nātäk ‘lord’ and their respective feminine derivatives (w)ánassa ‘queen’ and nāśi ‘lady.’ ‘King/lord’ may reflect a PIE *wen-h₂ǵ-t ‘warlord’ or the like. Further afield is the possibility that a Proto-Tocharian *wnātkä might have been borrowed into Ancient Chinese and been the ancestor of Modern Chinese wáng ‘king.’ 

In a comment on "Trump's rhetorical 'weave'", J.R. Brewer wrote:

This thread has had the side effect of causing me to learn (at least taking wiktionary at face value and not digging deeper into other reference sources) that the "weave" of "bob and weave" etc. is a homophone etymologically unrelated to the "weave" meaning "create fabric from fibers" rather than the former being, as I had naively supposed, a metaphorical extension of the latter that had somehow drifted semantically to the point that it was no longer particularly obvious.

Below, some etymological backup from the Oxford English Dictionary…

It's a card game with a strange name.  "Throwing eggs"  is a shedding-type card game in which the players (2 pairs of 2 partners) try to get rid of all their cards before their opponents.

The characters in Guandan (掼蛋) literally mean "Throwing Eggs". The second character is a homophone of the character 弹, meaning bomb, which is also suggested as an origin for the game's name. An alternative name for the game is Huai'an Running Fast (淮安跑得快), referencing the city where the game originated.

(Wikipedia)

I've overheard card players in the West refer to decisive card plays as "throwing a bomb", so the name makes sense after all, if you think of "dan" metaphorically.

As a starting point for pierogi, here's a basic definition:

Pierogi, one or more dumplings of Polish origin, made of unleavened dough filled with meat, vegetables, or fruit and boiled or fried or both. In Polish pierogi is the plural form of pieróg (“dumpling”), but in English the word pierogi is usually treated as either singular or plural.

(Britannica)

Now, turning to Asia, we are familiar with the Tang period scholar, poet, and official, Duàn Chéngshì 段成式 (d. 863), as the compiler of Yǒuyáng zázǔ 酉陽雜俎 (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang), a bountiful miscellany of tales and legends from China and abroad.  Yǒuyáng zázǔ is especially famous for including the first published version of the Cinderella story in the world, but it also contains many other stories and themes derived from foreign sources.

Like me, you may have been puzzled by Donald Trump's repeated references to Hannibal Lecter in his rally speeches. Given the contexts, I figured it was a connection between "political asylum" and "insane asylum" — and Miles Klee has the receipts ("Why Is Trump So Obsessed With Hannibal Lecter?: A Complete Timeline", Rolling Stone 7/30/2024):

How an off-script moment from early in the election cycle led to a bizarre MAGA ritual celebrating a fictional cannibal

[…] How did Trump end up name-checking Lecter as part of his pitch to the MAGA base? Responding to a request for comment on the matter, campaign communications director Steven Cheung replied, “President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture is one of many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters. Whereas, Kamala [Harris] is as relatable as a worn-out couch.”

Absent any further explanation, a forensic review of the former president’s speeches over the past year is in order. What’s clear is that this all began with a simple misunderstanding — or several.

[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson]

I recently received the following delightful question from Hilary Smith (University of Denver) about the origins of the term for protein in Chinese (dànbáizhì) and Japanese (tanpakushitsu). Thanks to her for pointing me down this lovely rabbit hole!

The hanzi/kanji used are identical (蛋白質), though in written Japanese the term is often タンパク質 or たんぱく質 because the 蛋 character is not one of the “regular use” kanji (常用漢字 jōyō kanji) selected by the officially announced by the Japanese education ministry for mastery during compulsory education.