Language Log

François Lang sent in the following quandary:

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

“The Japanese and Their Language: How the Japanese Made Their Language and It Made Them,” by Samuel Robert Ramsey.

PROLOGUE

Travel the length and breadth of Japan, across the more than 6,800 islands in the archipelago, and anywhere you go, from the Tokyo megalopolis to the most remote and isolated village, every person you meet will immediately understand and speak Nihongo—Japanese. The accents you hear might vary from place to place. There will be odd and unexplained words and pronunciations peculiar to each of these places. But not one person among the more than 126 million citizens of Japan will have any trouble at all understanding the standard language as it’s normally spoken.

The Vastness of Language Variation Across the Globe
Panel. AAAS 2026 Annual Meeting.  Coming in February, 2026.

Organizer:  Lenore Grenoble, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Co-Organizer:  Jeff Good, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Moderator:  Jeff Good, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY

Panelists

"Multilingual Language Ecologies and Linguistic Diversity",
Wilson de Lima Silva, Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

"AI Approaches to the Study of Gesture, Prosody, and Linguistic Diversity",
 Kathryn Franich, Linguistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

"Sometimes Big Questions Call for Small Data",
Gareth Roberts, Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Following upon our enthusiastic, productive discussions on the main East Asian word for "slave" (奴隷 J. ドレイ M. núlì) a few weeks ago and Chau Wu's drawing of parallels with the corresponding Greek word for a person of that status several days after that, I've become deeply interested in Greek δούλος ("slave").  (See the first three items in "Selected readings".)

Would You Work ‘996’? The Hustle Culture Trend Is Taking Hold in Silicon Valley.
The number combination refers to a work schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — that has its origins in China’s hard-charging tech scene.
By Lora Kelley, NYT (Sept. 28, 2025)

The inverse of involution.

Working 9 to 5 is a way to make a living. But in Silicon Valley, amid the competitive artificial intelligence craze, grinding “996” is the way to get ahead. Or at least to signal to those around you that you’re taking work seriously.

"Superficial auditory (dis)fluency biases higher-level social judgment." Walter-Terrill, Robert, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 13 (March 24, 2025): e2415254122 

What accounts for Japan's smoothly functioning society and exquisite esthetics?  Is there a word for it?

Bunkum Alert: The Ancient Wisdom of Japan", by Howard Chua-Eoan, Opinion Today, Bloomberg; appears to be an earlier version of "The land of the rising sun isn’t a life-hack wonderland despite the busy market in its ancient wisdom", by Howard Chua-Eoan, Opinion Today, Bloomberg (12/13/24)

—

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 yoku will fix what’s wrong with your life.”

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.

Forthcoming from De Gruyter, July 14, 2024 (ISBN: 9783111382746):

Vernacular Chinese-Character Manuscripts from East and Southeast Asia, edited by: David Holm.

Volume 40 in the series Studies in Manuscript Cultures

Keywords: Asia; vernacular; ritual; library collections; recitation

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

King’s English and Cockney replaced by three new accents, study finds

Britons depart from overtly class-based post-war speech epitomised by either clipped vowels or working-class dialects

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?

Notice in a men's room at Dunhuang, far western Gansu Province:

Latest article in SupChina:

"‘Small-town test taker’ — phrase of the week"

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.