Language Log

It's a subject that won't go away.

When I was in high school, I concocted an embarrassingly sophomoric signature:

I wrote that iteration of my youthful signature on the front flyleaf of my beloved Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1960), which, from that year till today has been one of my most precious possessions.

When I went away to college in 1961 and ever since, I adopted a signature that was the exact antithesis of that early one:  

It was / is mechanical and measured, with no flourishes whatsoever.

Most people I know have one of three basic types of signatures:

1. extravagant, fast, illegible — these are usually "important" people who have to sign their signature scores of times each week; doctors; lawyers; executives; entertainers….

2. beautiful, well-composed, flowing, legible — my sisters, most women

3. crotched, cramped, crooked, angular, unesthetic, slow — my brothers and me, engineers, scientists, who write with what I call "chicken scratches"

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

“Kanji and the Computer: A Brief History of Japanese Character Set Standards,” by James Breen.

https://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp360_kanji_computers_japanese_character_set.pdf

ABSTRACT
This paper describes the development of the character coding systems and standards that enable Japanese text to be recorded and used in computer systems. The Japanese coding systems, which were first developed in the late 1970s, pioneered the approaches to handling the large numbers of kanji characters and established a pathway that was adopted in other standards for Asian languages. The paper covers the development of the major Japanese standards and their evolution into the Unicode character standard, which is now the basis for all language coding.

I recall Malaysia-based New Zealander Nigel Richards' multiple Scrabble championships in English and French from earlier years and thought that I had written about them, but apparently not on Language Log.  Now he has won again, this time in Spanish, so it's about time that he became known to our readership, if they don't already know him..

"Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not speaking Spanish:  Nigel Richards has also been champion in English and – after memorising dictionary in nine weeks – French", Ashifa Kassam in Madrid, The Guardian (12/10/24)

In this comment to "'Neutrino Evidence Revisited (AI Debates)' | Is Mozart's K297b authentic?" (11/13/24), I questioned whether John Searle's "Chinese room" argument was intelligently designed and encouraged those who encounter it to reflect on what it did — and did not — demonstrate.

In the same comment, I also queried the meaning of "understand" and its synonyms ("comprehend", and so forth).

Both the "Chinese room" and "understanding" had been raised by skeptics of AI, so here I'm treating them together.

In recent weeks and months, we've been having many posts and comments about Taiwanese language.  Today's post is quite different:  it's all about the difference between Mandarin as spoken on the mainland and as spoken on Taiwan.

"Words of Influence: PRC terms and Taiwanese identity", by Karen Huang, Taiwan Insight (8 November 2024)

What is a ‘video clip’ in Mandarin Chinese? In Taiwan, a video clip is yingpian (影片), while in China, it is referred to as shipin (視頻). Similarly, tomatoes are called fanqie (番茄) in Taiwan, but xihongshi (西红柿) in China. These vocabulary differences between Taiwan Mandarin (Guoyu 國語) and PRC Mandarin (Putonghua 普通话) are expected. After all, it is natural for different dialects of a language to have some differences in their vocabulary—just like how ‘rubbish bin’ in British English is ‘garbage can’ in American English.

"Jingyuan Digital Platform: Font Making and Database Development for Shang Oracle Bones (Part 1)", Peichao Qin, The Digital Orientalist (9/17/24)

If you're wondering what "Jingyuan" means, it's a fancy, allusive way to say "Mirrored contexts [for thorough investigations]" ([gézhì] jìngyuán [格致]鏡原) (source), just a means for the creator of the platform to give it a proprietary designation.

A goodly proportion of Language Log readers probably have some idea of what oracle bone inscriptions are, but just to refresh our memories and for the benefit of new and recent readers who are not familiar with the history of Sinographic scripts, I'm going to jump right into the third paragraph of Qin's article, which is like a basic primer of oracle bone inscription studies.

[This is a guest post by Thomas Batchelor]

I was recently looking at a tourist bus around the Matsu Islands of Taiwan, and they have a timetable online with the route and locations for picking up passengers, as below.

[VHM:  Don't trouble yourself by trying to read the fine print of the schedule itself.  Just pay attention to the note about the pickup location at the bottom of the schedule, which is enlarged below the fold.]

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-fourth issue:  "Handling Chinese Characters on Computers: Three Recent Studies" (pdf), by J. Marshall Unger (August, 2024).

Abstract
Writing systems with large character sets pose significant technological challenges, and not all researchers focus on the same aspects of those challenges or of the various attempts that have been made to meet them. A comparative reading of three recent books—The Chinese Computer by Thomas Mullaney (2024), Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu (2022), and Codes of Modernity by Uluğ Kuzuoğlu (2023)—makes this abundantly clear. All deal with the ways in which influential users of Chinese characters have responded to the demands of modern technology, but differ from one another considerably in scope and their selection and treatment of relevant information long known to linguists and historians.

Chapter 1

A professor in China who is collaborating with a famous American professor of Chinese literature wanted to read one of my Language Log (LL) posts because he had heard that it's being widely discussed around the world.  However, because of China's rigid censorship rules, he couldn't open the LL post.

The Chinese professor asked the American professor to help him gain access to my post.

The American professor asked me to help the Chinese professor.

I suggested to the Chinese professor to use a VPN.  Without a VPN, Chinese are not able to access LL, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google, X, etc., etc.  In other words, without a VPN, Chinese are cut off from most of the information on the internet that is outside the Great Firewall, i.e., most of the cutting edge, valuable information in the world.

The Catch 22 is that it is a crime to use a VPN in China.

Can you imagine having to live in a benighted place like the PRC?

The article is in Japanese, but you should be able to get an idea of what's going on from the videos and stills.

iPad書道はいいぞ pic.twitter.com/P4hregIAl1

— 書きちらし (@kakichirashi) June 29, 2024

Things are becoming dicey for the CCP/PRC regime:

"A cartoon cat has been vexing China’s censors – now he says they are on his tail"

By Tessa Wong, Asia Digital Reporter, BBC (6/10/24)

Here's the dilemma faced by the Chinese communist authorities.   It would be very easy for the censors to shut down all VPNs and invoke strictly draconian internet controls that would make it impossible for netizens to communicate with the outside internet.  But that would mean that China would no longer have access to external information and communication, which the government desperately needs if they are going to continue to acquire advanced technology and science from abroad, not to mention operate their economic initiatives such as BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).

and finds it!

Back in early February, I asked the Lexicography at Wenlin Institute discussion group if they could help me find a rare Chinese character in Unicode, and I sent along a picture of the glyph.  It won't show up in most browsers, but you can see the character here.  You can also see it in the first item of the list of "Selected Readings" below.  In the following post, when you see this symbol, , just imagine you're seeing this glyph.

On 2/27/04, Richard Warmington kindly responded as follows:

I asked Microsoft Copilot (a chatbot integrated into Microsoft's Edge browser), "Can you tell me anything about the Chinese character ?"

The answer began as follows:

Certainly! The Chinese character is an intriguing one. Let’s explore it:

1. Character Details:
Character:
Unicode Code Point: U+24B25
[…]

Both for the flow of and access to information.

More than a week ago, the Seattle Public Library system, a large and wonderful institution that thousands rely on every day, went offline after ransomware hackers attacked it.

"Why did ransomware hackers target Seattle Public Library?", GeekWire, by Taylor Soper (May 29, 2024)

This is an excellent article that explains why the criminals went after a library, how they carried out their dirty work, and what the authorities are doing to restore services.