I just spent two weeks in Japan. But if you think I’ve brought back exotic pearls of wisdom, you’ll be disappointed. That’s because I’ve been talking to my Tokyo-based colleague Gearoid Reidy — a great admirer of Japan but a cold critic of Western fetishization of almost everything out of the country. As he describes it in a recent column: “Talking to first-time tourists or perusing online forums, I often find astonishment: Why does everything work so well? How else could public safety and famed attention to detail be sustained, if not from some secret knowledge the West has lost?” The search for alleged life hacks out of Japan has resulted in a plethora of books on “the Japanese secret to everything: Eat less, save money, be more productive. Ikigai, wabi-sabi or shinrin yokuwill fix what’s wrong with your life.”
Just published is a volume edited by David Holm, Vernacular Chinese-Character Manuscripts from East and Southeast Asia (De Gruyter), in their Studies in Manuscript Cultures series.
One of my favorite expressions of ineffability in Chinese is yǒuyuán 有緣, which is what two people feel when they are drawn together by some inexplicable, indisputable attraction. Considerations of beauty and practicality are not what matter. They simply are fated / predestined to be together. They have an undeniable affinity for each other.
I first gained a serious appreciation for the idea of affinity in college when I read Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), the third novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The concept was taken up in chemistry (Robert Boyle [1627-1691] — check out his hair!), then sociology (Max Weber [1864-1920]), then in psychology to describe the magnetism between individuals, and in dozens of other fields (commerce, finance, and law; religion and belief; science and technology; business; music; literature; history; mathematics; language studies; etc.). Needless to say, "affinity" is a powerful, productive concept, just as it is an actual force in relations between entities in the microcosm and macrocosm.
Topics: Asian Literature; Asian and Pacific Studies; Dialectology; Linguistics and Semiotics; Literary Studies; Literature of other Nations and Languages; Southeast Asia; Textual Scholarship; Theoretical Frameworks and Disciplines
Britons depart from overtly class-based post-war speech epitomised by either clipped vowels or working-class dialects
By Charles Hymas, The Telegraph, Home Affairs Editor
I vaguely recall an earlier study from about ten years ago that came to similar conclusions (including the emergence of a "multicultural" accent). It's not surprising that differences would gradually diminish, especially under the influence of enhanced, pervasive mass communications and increased population mobility.
What we see, though, is that, as the older, established accents wither away, new ones arise among various shifting cultural, ethnic, and social regroupings.
Remember the Valley Girl accent, which people used to talk about a lot ten or twenty years ago? Where is it now?
A “small-town test taker” is a self-deprecating — or slightly insulting — phrase to describe a country bumpkin who works their butt off in pursuit of success.
Andrew Methven (7/22/22)
One would not expect a strongly class consciousness and behavior in a presumably classless communist society, but that seems to be the case in the PRC, especially in the entertainment sector, of all places.
Our phrase of the week is: small-town test taker (小镇做题家 xiǎo zhèn zuò tí jiā).
Context
Chinese pop singer Jackson Yee (易烊千玺 Yì Yángqiānxǐ) and two other celebrities are facing controversy after the National Theatre of China (国家话剧院 guójiā dà jùyuàn) hired them as staff performers, sparking calls on social media for more transparency amid concerns that they gained privileged access.
Western observers of Japanese society generally believe that sararīman サラリーマン ("salaryman") have a super strong work ethic. According to a survey of Japanese employees in their twenties and thirties conducted by the management consulting company Shikigaku, however, 49.2% said that there was a hatarakanai ojisan (middle-aged man who does no work) at their company.
The article has colorful charts listing responses to four main questions. Here I omit the charts, while rearranging and summarizing some of the findings.
Phrase bai lan gains popularity as severe competition and social expectations leave many young people despondent
Vincent Ni, The Guardian (5/25/22)
This one is borrowed from NBA usage: "let it rot", referring to players who are on astronomical contracts but are not performing well. As the son of an organic gardener who also raised earthworms, I can attest that the NBA metaphor was borrowed from the language of composting.
Susan Blum, Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths (Rowman, 2007), p. 130:
…Though language was viewed as having pragmatic consequences in the past, during revolutionary China and especially during the Cultural Revolution the social effects of language were consciously emphasized, as an entire propaganda department took over the government. All words and communication were politically charged, and people had to become completely conscious of the effects of their utterances, knowing they would be scrutinized. At the same time, a premium was placed on the spontaneous eruption of profound feelings of revolutionary ardor. This forced many people to pursue a path of performance, of masking feelings they could scarcely acknowledge to themselves.
Woman says her date's performance under lockdown left much to be desired"
By Liam Gibson, Taiwan News (1/14/22)
This extraordinary report begins thus:
An unmarried Chinese woman surnamed Wang (王) had her blind date dramatically extended by several days after authorities announced an immediate lockdown.
New article in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), "The rise and fall of rationality in language", Marten Scheffer, Ingrid van de Leemput, Els Weinans, and Johan Bollen (12/21/21)
