This NYT link text needed a second reading for me to break the initial prepositional phrase after "Bruce Springsteen", and start the main-clause subject conjunction with "Bob Dylan":
Like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tina Turner and others have all sold rights to their music for eye-popping prices.
Read the rest of this entry »
Commenting on "Educated (and not so educated) guesses about how to read Sinographs" (11/16/21), Chris Button asked:
I’m curious what you mean by “pseudo explanation”? The expected reflex from Middle Chinese times is xù, but yǔ has become the accepted pronunciation based on people guessing at the pronunciation in more recent times. Isn’t that a reasonable explanation?
To which I replied:
It's such a gigantic can of worms that I'm prompted to write a separate post on this mentality. I'll probably do so within a few days, and it will be called something like "Morphemes without characters".
Stay tuned.
Read the rest of this entry »
On the wall of an apartment complex in Dali, Yunnan, southwestern China:
Read the rest of this entry »
Mezurashii / めずらしい / 珍しい ("amazing; wonderful; rare"). Love 'em! Such creativity! Such imagination!
"Japan’s Words of 2021: Nominees Announced for Annual List"
Language Nov 4, 2021
On November 4, the publisher Jiyū Kokumin Sha announced its list of nominees for the words and phrases best representing the year 2021. Our complete list of the nominees with explanations.
New Words for a Pandemic Year
Each year Jiyū Kokumin Sha, the publisher of Gendai yōgo no kiso chishiki (Basic Knowledge on Contemporary Terminology), an annual guide to the latest terms in use in the Japanese language, holds its contest to decide the Words of the Year. For 2021, the nominating committee selected a list of 30 terms that have made themselves a part of the spoken and written landscape in Japan this year.
….
Read the rest of this entry »
From Zihan Guo:
A Japanese expression I came upon in a reading from Takami sensei's class reminded me of the "om" you mentioned weeks ago in our class.
Read the rest of this entry »
In Massachusetts, booster shot is spelled borcester shot
— Adam Blickstein (@AdamBlickstein) August 17, 2021
Read the rest of this entry »
Article by Colm Keena in The Irish Times (8/2/21):
"Decision on Mandarin Leaving Cert exam ‘outrages’ Chinese communities:
Exam subject that students can sit from 2022 will only allow for simplified Chinese script"
Here are the first four paragraphs of the article:
Chinese communities in Ireland are “outraged” by the decision of the Department of Education to use only a simplified script in the new Leaving Certificate exam in Mandarin Chinese, according to a group set up to campaign on the issue.
The new exam subject, which students can sit from 2022, will not allow for the use of the traditional or heritage Chinese script, which is used by most people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other, mostly non-mainland-China locations.
The decision by the department is a “discrimination against the heritage Chinese learners in Ireland,” according to Isabella Jackson, an assistant professor of Chinese history in Trinity College, Dublin, who is a member of the Leaving Cert Mandarin Chinese Group.
“It is wrong for our Irish Government to deny children of a Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau background the right to sit an examination using the Chinese script that is part of their heritage.”
Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote to a colleague who helped me edit a paper that it had been accepted for publication. She wrote back, "I’m glad it is excepted".
Some may look upon such a typo as "garden variety", but I believe that it tells us something profoundly significant about the primacy of sound over shape, an issue that we have often debated on Language Log, including how to regard typographical errors in general, but also how to read old Chinese texts (e.g., copyists' mistakes, deterioration of texts over centuries of editorial transmission, etc.).
Often, when you read a Chinese text and parts of it just don't make any sense, if you ignore the superficial semantic signification of the characters with which it is written, but focus more on the sound, suddenly the meaning of the text will become crystal clear. In point of fact, much of the commentarial tradition throughout Chinese history consists of this kind of detective work — sorting out which morphemes were really intended by a given string of characters.
Read the rest of this entry »
[This is a guest post by Tom Mazanec]
Read the rest of this entry »
From a Reliable Source:
I thought you might enjoy this as yet officially unreported dispute about a sign being posted in Phil. The sign originally said, "Boxer's Trail," because Joe Frazier famously ran along it to train, and later Ali ran on it once to psyche out Joe (Ali worked out in Overbrook, apparently). Someone or other complained that more than one boxer had used the trail, and so they had to move the apostrophe. Meanwhile, people are arguing about whether the trail should be dedicated to Frazier, or to all boxers. And then someone of course had to throw in a question about whether any of the boxers had boxers (dogs) and if then it should say boxers' boxers trail or boxer's boxers trail, and so on.
Read the rest of this entry »
@JDMayger May 4:
Any Nordics in China want to explain what’s going on here? @brandhane ? pic.twitter.com/xlaRJtyfxk
— James Mayger (@JDMayger) May 4, 2021
Read the rest of this entry »
From Bryan Van Norden:
I found interesting these paired poems by the 15th-century Japanese Zen monk Ikkyū (1394-1481) and by his mistress, the blind singer Mori. He writes his poem in Classical Chinese, because he is a man, but her poem is in hiragana, because she is a woman. Below are photos of the original scroll, showing paintings of Ikkyū and Mori, from Arntzen's translation, and a more recent translation by Messer and Smith. I am researching Ikkyū for what will ultimately be a five-minute segment in my class lecture on Zen this week. I find that students have trouble appreciating what is at stake in the debate over metaphysical monism vs dualism. Ikkyū, a monk who frequented bars and brothels, shows one way of rejecting dualisms (like sacred vs profane, mind vs. body, monk vs. layperson).
Read the rest of this entry »
