Language Log

In the first comment to this post on a Northeastern topolectal word for kohlrabi, "piě-le 丿了" (cf. MSM piělán 苤蓝), Jenny Chu astutely asked whether the second syllable is related to the Chinese word for the color blue, lán 藍 (also "indigo", for which see below).

That sent me scurrying, since — although I was vaguely aware of a secondary meaning besides "indigo, blue" of "cabbage" for lán 藍 — I could not recall ever hearing any convincing / satisfying explanation for what the relation between these two meanings is.

Some early Chinese authors and commentators do assert that the leaves of cruciferous vegetables (Brassicaceae, colloquially called cole crops in North America) are referred to as lán 藍 due to their color.  However, because of my background knowledge of words for cabbage, kale, etc. in many other languages, I did not find that a satisfying explanation.  So I decided to dig deeper into the mystery of the dual identity of lán 藍:  indigo and cabbage.

I believe that what I came up with will illuminate the conundrum.

This is a followup to "Japanese words that are dying out: focus on diabetes" (11/21/23).  Because it's history of science / medicine for specialists and too technical for the majority of readers, I will not provide transcriptions for all but a few of the most common terms.

[The following is a guest post from Nathan Hopson]

Advisory to staff of the embassy of Japan in Beijing:

ALPS shori mizu no kaiyō hōshutsu kaishi ni tomonau chūi kanki (2023-nen 8 tsuki 25-nichi)

ALPS処理水の海洋放出開始に伴う注意喚起（2023年8月25日）

Warning regarding the start of ocean discharge of ALPS-treated water (August 25, 2023)

Kinō (24-nichi), fusoku no jitai ga hassei suru kanōsei wa haijo dekinai tame chūi shite itadaku yō onegai shimashitaga, ika no ten ni tsuite ryūi shite itadakimasu yō aratamete onegai itashimasu.

(1 ) Gaishutsu suru sai ni wa, fuhitsuyō ni nihongo o ōkina koe de hanasanai nado, shinchōna gendō o kokorogakeru.
(2 ) Taishikan o hōmon suru hitsuyō ga aru baai wa, taishikan shūi no yōsu ni saishin no chūiwoharau.

昨日（24日）、不測の事態が発生する可能性は排除できないため注意していただくようお願いしましたが、以下の点について留意していただきますよう改めてお願いいたします。

（1）外出する際には、不必要に日本語を大きな声で話さないなど、慎重な言動を心がける。
（2）大使館を訪問する必要がある場合は、大使館周囲の様子に細心の注意を払う。

"Yesterday (24th), we asked you to be careful because the possibility of unforeseen circumstances cannot be ruled out.

 (1) When going out, try to be cautious in your behavior, such as not speaking Japanese in a loud voice unnecessarily.
(2) If it is necessary to visit the embassy, pay close attention to the surroundings of the embassy."

(source) (GT romanization and translation)

tl;dr: RFK Jr. asserted recently that "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people", while "the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese", also implying that this "racial and ethnic differential" means that the virus may have been created as an "ethnic bio weapon". In response to objections, he defended his assertion on the basis of total misrepresentation of a scientific publication, itself problematic. Details below…

Plus Indic, plus Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese, Hokkien (Taiwanese), Hakka, and Fuzhou (Eastern Min).

For an exciting read / ride, be sure to follow the whole thread, travelling through time and space.

零 originally didn't mean 'zero,' but 'small rain, drizzle.' Makes it easy to learn: Rain 雨 above, pronunciation 令 below (ok, tone is different). 2/ pic.twitter.com/e0fwV6wBdx

— Egas Moniz-Bandeira ᠡᡤᠠᠰ ᠮᠣᠨᠢᠰ ᠪᠠᠨᡩ᠋ᠠᠶᠢᠷᠠ (@egasmb) May 21, 2023

Courtesy of Egas Moniz-Bandeira ᠡᡤᠠᠰ ᠮᠣᠨᠢᠰ ᠪᠠᠨᡩ᠋ᠠᠶᠢᠷᠠ

Eve Armstrong, "I Murdered Conan O'Brien and Nobody Will Ever Know — an exercise in inference sabotage", 3/30/2023:

Abstract: I employ an optimization-based inference methodology together with an Ising model, in an intentionally ineffectual manner, to get away with murdering an obstreperous scientific collaborator. The antics of this collaborator, hereafter "Conan O'Brien," were impeding the publication of an important manuscript. With my tenure date looming, I found myself desperate. Luckily, I study inference, a computational means to find a solution to a physical problem, based on available measurements (say, a dead body) and a dynamical model assumed to give rise to those measurements (a murderer). If the measurements are insufficient and/or the model is incomplete, one obtains multiple "degenerate" solutions to the problem. Degenerate solutions are all equally valid given the information available, and thus render meaningless the notion of one "correct" solution. Typically in scientific research, degeneracy is undesirable. Here I describe the opposite situation: a quest to create degenerate solutions in which to cloak myself. Or even better: to render measurements incompatible with a solution in which I am the murderer. Moreover, I show how one may sabotage an inference procedure to commit an untraceable crime. I sit here now, typing victoriously, a free woman. Because you won't believe me anyway. And even if you do, you'll never prove a thing.

From the Temu website.

Isaac Schultz, Gizmodo (12/20/22):

The Coolest Archaeological Discoveries of 2022

Let's revisit the best old stuff that made headlines this year.

Some of these are gruesome, e.g., the parasitic worms found in 2,700-year-old toilet, which reminds me of my experiences in Nepal.  Many of them have implications for language and linguistics (see the references and links below).  Most of them attest to cultural contacts across wide distances.

My favorite is King Tut's space dagger, made out of meteoritic iron, which is especially interesting, given that the Iron Age didn't begin until a century after King Tut's death.

The researchers did chemical analyses on the dagger and also turned to ancient Egyptian literature, where they found references to a special dagger gifted to King Tut’s grandfather by a foreign ruler.

(source:  here, here)

Andrew Gelman, "The psychology of thinking discretely", 10/20/2022:

Sander Greenland calls it “dichotomania,” I call it discrete thinking, and linguist Mark Liberman calls it “grouping-think” (link from Olaf Zimmermann).

All joking aside, this seems like an interesting question in cognitive psychology: Why do people slip so easily into binary thinking, even when summarizing data that don’t show any clustering at all:

It’s a puzzle. I mean, sure, we can come up with explanations such as the idea that continuous thinking requires a greater cognitive load, but it’s not just that, right? Even when people have all the time in the world, they’ll often inappropriately dichotomize. I guess it’s related to essentialism (what isn’t, right?), but that just pushes the question one step backward.

As Liberman puts it, the key fallacies are:

1. Thinking of distributions as points;
2. Inventing convenient but unreal taxonomic categories;
3. Forming stereotypes, especially via confirmation bias.

(TCM = Traditional Chinese Medicine) 

Photograph of a small portion of specimen jars at the Won Institute of Graduate Studies northeast of Philadelphia in Warminster, Pennsylvania:

During the recent decade and more, we have had dozens of posts dealing with the importance of archeology for studying the spread of ancient languages.  A major subtheme of this research has been the accumulation and assessment of archeological and linguistic evidence for the dissemination of metallurgical technology (see "Selected readings") below.

A new study of an early Chinese text sharpens our understanding of key terms relating to the composition and smelting of bronze during the first millennium BC.  Here is a popular account of this pathbreaking investigation:

Researchers decode metal-making recipes in ancient Chinese text:  Study identifies mystery elements in Kaogong ji, shedding light on how early bronzes were produced

Sascha Pare, The Guardian (8/10/22)

When I was a little boy, among the gifts from my parents that I treasured most were science kits that allowed me to construct my own instrumentation and use it for various experiments and observations, e.g., microscopes, radios and other electronic circuitry, chemistry sets, ingenious language games, and so on.  (This was in the late 40s and 50s in rural Stark County, northeast Ohio, mind you, when I was between the ages of about 5 and 15.)  But my favorite of all was a box full of materials for computer construction.  It consisted of a peg board, switches, wires, screws, small nuts and bolts, metal bands and clips, batteries, little light bulbs, etc.  Please remember that this was long before personal computers were invented.

Oil is one of the most important substances used by human beings.  It can be an essential food for consumption, a medium for cooking and frying, a lubricant, a material for the transmission of pressure through closed channels, a soothing substance for the skin, a substance to burn for propulsion and illumination, a polishing agent, and so forth.  It can even be used metaphorically and literally to signify a calming agent:

The figurative expression pour oil upon the waters "appease strife or disturbance" is by 1840, from an ancient trick of sailors.

Another historical illustration which involves monolayers, was when sailors poured oil on the sea in order to calm 'troubled waters' and so protect their ship. This worked by wave damping or, more precisely, by preventing small ripples from forming in the first place so that the wind could have no effect on them. [J. Lyklema, "Fundamentals of Interface and Colloid Science," Academic Press, 2000]

The phenomenon depends on what are called Marangoni effects; Benjamin Franklin experimented with it in 1765.*

(source)

[*What did not excite the curiosity of the founder of the University of Pennsylvania?]