Language Log

The genius logic of the NATO phonetic alphabet (title of the YouTube video)

Imagine running propaganda and forgetting to blur the Top Gun logo. Peak CCTV. Even the Chinese can’t bear to see it! #TopGun pic.twitter.com/p0gs5X1MK7

— The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动 (@TGTM_Official) September 23, 2025

Following up on our previous post, "Sakas, Kushans, and Hephthalites: the sources in Greek, Latin, Persian, and Chinese" (9/24/25) by Taishan Yu, we turn now to Étienne de La Vaissière's "A Military Origin for New Persian?", which was published lightning fast by Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.

Received: 26 April 2025 • Accepted: 3 July 2025
Published Online: 5 August 2025

[This is a guest post by June Teufel Dreyer, with an added note by VHM]

Watching a Netflix detective film entitled Capitani with instructions that I could listen in either English or Luxembourgish. Never having heard of the latter, I chose Luxembourgish, discovered it was mostly German with some French (always ‘merci,’ never danke), several words with long vowels like Dutch, a few words that seemed neither (nay for no; dai for das) and some words I didn’t get at all.  Still wondering why Luxembourgish is considered a language, I googled, found that it was actually classified as a language only in the 20^th century.  One has to become fluent to obtain citizenship.

From a Facebook page with Army background in Taiwan:

Facebook page for Voice of Han Broadcasting Network
(漢聲廣播電台 hànshēng guǎngbō diàntái)
from Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense

The internet has been in an uproar over the sacking by Xi Jinping of two of China's topmost military men.

Exclusive | "Was fallen Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe compromised by hostile force?  A rare form of words that the Communist Party normally only applies to those accused of betrayal was used in the indictment against him", by William Zheng, SCMP (7/10/24)

China’s fallen former defence minister Wei Fenghe may have been compromised by a hostile force as the peculiar wording of the official indictment hinted.

In an unprecedented move, Wei, along with his successor Li Shangfu, was officially impeached by the Politburo headed by President Xi Jinping on June 27. The duo were expelled from the party and could face further legal action.

[Since Wei and Li were in charge of the PLA Rocket Force, which gets into nuclear missiles and what not, the situation could not be more dire.  Maybe they did not accede to Xi's wishes regarding a launch.  Who knows?  No matter what, Xi was royally peeved.]

While Beijing has not revealed details of their offences, one particular phrase from the official impeachment against Wei caught the attention of seasoned Chinese experts.

Of the all top generals who fell in Xi’s war against corruption, Wei was the only one described as “zhongcheng shi jie” 忠诚失节 or “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity”.

We have occasionally mentioned Sarmatians on Language Log, but usually in association with the Scythians, of whom we have often spoken (most recently here, with extensive bibliography).

These two peoples of ancient times both spoke languages in the Iranian language family and lived in the area north of the Black Sea. The languages and cultures of the Scythians and Sarmatians were related but distinct. In particular their styles of warfare were different. The Scythians were noted as mounted archers. They may have been the inventors or one of the inventors of the stirrup. The stirrup enabled mounted archers to fire (shoot) arrows reasonably accurately while riding. The Scythians attacked in a mass firing of arrows. If their adversaries were not overwhelmed by the hail of arrows then the Scythians turned and rode to a safe distance for regrouping to mount another mass attack.

Chinese drone drops propaganda leaflets on Taiwan's Kinmen
Kinmen Defense Command says fliers 'typical cognitive warfare trick'

By Keoni Everington, Taiwan News | May. 27, 2024

If you're curious about the Chinese original of "typical cognitive warfare trick", it is "diǎnxíng rènzhī cāozuò jìliǎng 典型認知操作伎倆", which might also be rendered as "typical cognitive operation tactic".

A note on the name of the islands:

Kinmen (金門) means 'golden gate'. The name was first recorded in 1387 when the Hongwu Emperor appointed Zhou Dexing to administer the island and protect it from pirate attacks. The spelling "Kinmen" is a postal romanization. This transcription system is a variation of Nanking Syllabary, a system developed by Herbert Giles in 1892. It was adopted by the Chinese Imperial Post, part of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service led by Irishman Robert Hart. It is based on pronunciation in the Southern Mandarin, or Jianghuai, dialect. This dialect is widely spoken in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, including the city of Nanjing. The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses "Kinmen," while the United States Board on Geographic Names gives "Kinmen Island." Jinmen is the island's name both in Tongyong Pinyin and in Hanyu Pinyin. Chin-men / Chinmen is the Wade–Giles romanization of the county and island's name.

Quemoy, pronounced /kɪˈmɔɪ/, is a name for the island in English and in other European languages. It may have originated as a Spanish or Portuguese transcription of the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation of the name, Kim-mûi. This is the most common form of the islands' name in English. For example, works that deal with the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (the Quemoy Incident) and the 1960 United States presidential election debates when the islands received prominent worldwide news coverage all use the word Quemoy. In addition, the former National Kinmen Institute of Technology was renamed National Quemoy University in 2010. Kinmen scholar Wei Jian-feng advocates the use of the word Quemoy to better connect the island to "international society or achieve more recognition in the world". Kimoi is a Hokkien-derived spelling also used in the postal romanization system.

(Wikipedia)

Vacillating Chinese terminology for think tanks

Mark Metcalf wrote to tell me:

Global Times*just ran an article that might be of interest regarding PRC think tanks and a new book related to this topic: “Researchers, scholars explore methods to boost China’s influence of thoughts”.

*an appendage of People's Daily

I was caught up short by the clumsy expression "influence of thoughts".  But something else about this new development bothered me much more.  Mark tracked down the title of the book in question:

《Sīxiǎng tǎnkè: Zhōngguó zhìkù de guòqù, xiànzhuàng yǔ wèilái 思想坦克：中国智库的过去、现状与未来》("Thought tanks [armored vehicles]: the past, present, and future of China's wisdom warehouses"]) [VHM — intentionally awkward translation for special effect, to be explained below]

What jumped out at me in the title was the use of tǎnkè 坦克 for (think) tank. In my Chinese studies, I learned that tǎnkè 坦克 was a military weapon and not a repository. And when you Google images of tǎnkè 坦克, all you see are images of tracked vehicles. That's how all my Pleco dictionaries translate the term, as well. However, when you put the term into Google Translate, it provides both the tracked vehicle and an alternative translation: "a large receptacle or storage chamber, especially for liquid or gas" with yóuxiāng 油箱 ("oil / gas[oline] / fuel tank") as a synonym. Yet GT can't translate the term sīxiǎng tǎnkè 思想坦克.  [VHM:  And well it should not.  See more below.]

Going out on a limb, could the expression sīxiǎng tǎnkè 思想坦克 have the dual meaning (i.e., a pun) for an offensive organization ("vehicle") that is used to control / defend the narrative of the CCP?

This picture troubled me:

(source)

Photo of a Taiwan Naval Academy recruitment ad in the Taipei MRT which references the One Piece ワンピース manga series from Japan:

From karts deffle:

jin defang asked: 

New expression, or at least new to me: soup sandwich.  All that meant to me was an option at Panera, which didn’t fit the context. So I asked the last person who used it, Fred, and this is his reply.  (I also didn’t know what FUBAR meant but that was on google).

Fred's reply to jin defang:

I think it’s a Navy saying, at least that’s where I first heard and used it.

It’s used kind of like FUBAR only it’s an intentional mixed metaphor or non sequitur…like the saying “it ain’t rocket-surgery”.  

Saying it’s a ‘soup-sandwich’ is essentially saying it’s FUBARed.