One of the first bits of Nagoya-specific Japanese I picked up was 来名 (raimei), i.e. "come to Nagoya." It added a bit of local color to my lexicon of directional Japanese, which was mostly commonplace but remarkable locutions such as 上京 (jōkyō, go "up" to Tokyo), which gives us the 上り (nobori, Tokyo-bound) and 下り (kudari, away-from-Tokyo-bound) train and expressways. Another of those standard phrases is 来日 (rainichi, come to Japan), which stuck out to me in the same way world maps with Japan in the center had when I first came here as a student almost 25 years ago. The discovery of this new politics of place was one of those experiences that really stuck with me.
Anyway, I feel like Japan is using 来日 less these days. In its place, I see 訪日 (hōnichi) for tourists — not much of that these days, tbf, but 訪日外国人 (hōnichi gaikokujin) was all anyone could talk about last year — and now, in my role as head of a program teaching almost exclusively international students here in Japan, 渡日 (tonichi). I feel like 渡日 is not in common circulation, but is primarily administrative jargon for organizations like mine — and the education ministry over us.
There's been a lot of political reaction to what Donald Trump said in Chris Wallace's 7/19/2020 interview. But I haven't seen any reactions to a curious linguistic innovation — or maybe it was a mistake? — that happens at about 10:52 of the interview:
hey Dr. Fauci said don't wear a mask our surgeon general terrific guy said don't wear a mask everybody was saying don't wear a mask all of a sudden everybody's got to wear a mask and as you know masks cause problems too with that being said I'm a believer in masks I think masks are good but uh I leave it up to the governors many of the governors are changing they're more mask into they like the concept of masks but some of them don't agree
From Politico's "China Watcher" Potpourri this morning (6/18/20):
Chinese now has a term for “mansplaining”: die wei, or “daddy flavor.” Chinese internet users are increasingly using it as a derogatory term to describe anyone — male or female — who claim unwarranted authority and give unsolicited advice, reports Shen Lu. Chinese feminist organizer Lü Pin tells China Watcher that the term’s popularity shows growing resistance from young people — mostly women — to a patriarchal culture. But she adds, the term is mainly “internet catharsis; the hierarchy in real life is not likely to change.”
Yesterday, as my colleagues and I were gearing up for our first virtual faculty meeting to plan our online teaching for the remainder of the semester, someone mentioned "social distancing". Immediately, another faculty member said that he heard on television that an MIT professor had advised against that expression because, in fighting the coronavirus, we need to keep our social structures intact. Instead, the MIT professor recommended "physical distancing".
As it turns out, of all the new vocabulary associated with the fight against the novel coronavirus, "social distancing", as we shall see below, and as I'm hearing from practically everybody I know, is one neologism associated with the pandemic that is likely to outlast the pandemic itself.
I am editing parts of the "Xi'an Investment Guide" (every major city in China issues one of these every year) and I came upon an interesting use of the abbreviation "IP" which might interest you:
"Xīn shídài xīn Xī'ān xīn IP 新时代 新西安 新IP"
It is placed on the third page of the handbook, right after a short introduction of the city and a map of the ancient Silk Road.
I have never encountered such a use of "IP" and I find it quite interesting. The Graduate students tasked with the translation rendered it as "New Era, New Xi’an, New IP", which obviously does not truly represent its meaning. Apparently, even the Chinese are not too sure what it means, as they were also unable to define it.
No, that's not the literal meaning of "yǎowén Jiáozì 咬文嚼字", it's the lexical, figurative meaning. The literal meaning of "yǎowén Jiáozì 咬文嚼字" is "to bite on phrases and chew on characters". Other lexical, figurative interpretations of "yǎowén Jiáozì 咬文嚼字" ("to bite on phrases and chew on characters") are "be punctilious about minutiae of wording: chop logic; pay excessive attention to wording and choice of characters; to nitpick like a grammar Nazi; to talk pedantically").
I'll list the words first, then explain which one is my favorite.
A prefatory note: nearly half of the words on these lists are based wholly or partly on borrowings from English, though they are assimilated into Japanese in such a manner that they are unrecognizable to monolingual English speakers.
A recent paper by Alex Joske features Sitar སྲི་ཐར་ (Wylie Sri thar, Chinese transcription Sita 斯塔), a senior CCP united front cadre. Sitar's career included decades at the Central United Front Work Department, of which he was a vice head between 2006 and 2016. He later became a deputy director of the office of the Party's Central Coordination Group for Tibetan Affairs (Zhōngyāng Xīzáng Gōngzuò Xiétiáo Xiǎozǔ 中央西藏工作协调小组). On at least two occasions, he led Central United Front Work Leading Small Group inspection groups, thus earning mention in Joske's paper, of which said Group is the main topic.
‘Xi Jinping Thought’, another 1499 Tibetan neologisms, and more
A more recent thing Deputy Director Sitar has presided over should perhaps earn him a mention on this Log, by virtue of its subject-matter. On 28 April 2018, Sitar was the top cadre speaking at the presentation of “more than 1500” Tibetan neologisms coined since the 18th Party Congress (held in November 2012), compiled by the National Tibetan Terminology Standardisation Commission (Rgyal yongs Bod skad brda chad tshad ldan can las don u yun lhan khang རྒྱལ་ཡོངས་བོད་སྐད་བརྡ་ཆད་ཚད་ལྡན་ཅན་ལས་དོན་ཨུ་ཡོན་ལྷན་ཁང་, Quánguó Zàngyǔ Shùyǔ Biǎozhǔnhuà Gōngzuò Wěiyuánhuì 全国藏语术语标准化工作委员会). I know this because it was reported on various media and other government websites that reported, in Chinese and Tibetan, on the Commission membership change taking place on that day.
Tiny Hong Kong with a little over 7 million population facing off against ginormous PRC with its population approaching 1.5 billion, yet the Hongkongers have held out with their large (as many as 2 million people at times) protests for 8 weeks now — despite the pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds that police have fired at them, and the metal and wooden sticks and rods wielded against them by triad gangsters. The central government is displeased and keeps threatening to send in the PLA.
Meanwhile, the Hongkongers employ every means at their disposal to counter the CCP, above all wit and satire. Part of the latter is their linguistic irreverence, as we have demonstrated in numerous posts (see "Readings" below). One of the ways that the Hongkongers get their points across is to create new characters conveying potent messages, which is more effective even than the coining of neologisms from already existing characters — they are also very good at making up new words.
One never ceases to be amazed at the articles one comes upon in Wikipedia. First, in this comment to a discussion on anti-Westernism in China ("War on foreign names in China" [6/22/19]), I encountered the notion of "Westoxification" in contemporary Iranian discourse. Reading the Wikipedia article on this subject is so interesting that I copy passages of it here for Language Log readers (the whole article is fascinating and well worth reading):
So “-bachi” is now an English suffix for any food prepared live by Asians on a metal plate. Etymology: 火鉢 [hibachi] ‘charcoal brazier’ = 火 [hi] ‘fire’ + 鉢 [hachi] ‘crock’ pic.twitter.com/WDEtYoKKz2
