Language Log

This exercise video shows a woman repeating the syllable "rua" to describe a move that she makes:

Taken at a restaurant in Hangzhou:

This instructional video is a bit long (11:05) and is delivered in a seemingly childlike manner, but it is full of useful information.  So, if you've ever wondered why so many Chinese words have both one syllable and two-syllable versions, this is worth a watch.

Roger Cohen, "The French Want to Remain The French", NYT 1/27/2023:

As an exercise in style, the tweet from The Associated Press Stylebook appeared to strain taste and diplomacy: “We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college educated.”

At least it looked offensive to the French, or perhaps rather to people of Frenchness, or people with Gallic inclinations, or people under the influence of French civilization. The French noted that they had been placed between the “mentally ill” and the “disabled.”

Ten days ago, Éric Freyssinet raised that question, which matters because Twitter might lose its immunity to libel suits under U.S. law if the company were acting as a publisher rather than as an "information service provider":

Any attempt to remove my tweets that link to my other social media accounts, not violating any law, would actually make #twitter an editorial media, and no longer a social media platform, with civil and criminal liability for *any* illegal content therein. https://t.co/kwoFHVue43

— Éric Freyssinet (@ericfreyss) December 18, 2022

(Here's an image of the tweet, in case Twitter is down…)

But this is Language Log, not Defamation Law Log, so the topic here is the singular phrase "an editorial media". And as usual, the point is not to complain but to inquire.

Size-wise, Estonia (45,339 sq. km; 17,500 sq. m) is much larger than Philadelphia (369.59 sq. km; 142.7 sq. m), but, in terms of population, Philadelphia (1,603,797) is slightly bigger than Estonia (1,313,796).  I have been to Estonia, and was utterly captivated by the wealth of its art and architecture, the depth of its history, the quality of its education, and the accomplishments of its people.  Among many other distinctions, Estonia is at the forefront of research in genetics, which is what brought me there during my period of research on the mummies of Central Asia.

Now, as you will discover from this post, Estonia is worthy of wonder for its fascinating language as well.  Some of the special features of Estonian are well presented in the following article that was published a couple of days ago:

Puzzle Monday: How To Be on Time in Estonia

by Alex Bellos, Atlas Obscura (November 7, 2022)

——

In Estonia, there is no sex and no future.

As promised, here are the additional paragraphs from Vandermeersch on the roots of rationality in the earliest levels of Sinitic script.  They come from John Lagerwey who will be awarded the 3rd “Prix Vandermeersch” on November 18.  John explains:

I don’t have the time right now to give the full answer JPL deserves, but I am attaching the quotes from VDM’s Wangdao that I commented on recently during the day in his honor. This gives a number of key quotes from his work on “teleological” vs “morphological” and therefore constitutes the best answer to JPL at this time.

For the convenience of readers, I [VHM] am alternating Google translations with the original French text, section by section.  I have made a few small modifications that are marked with my initials, and a few tiny ones for idiomaticity that are not marked.

For the latest study and lexicographical material touching on the subject of this post, see below at the very bottom.

——————-

Léon Vandermeersch, Wangdao ou La voie royale II Recherches sur l’esprit des institutions de la Chine archaïque, structures politiques, les rites

Léon Vandermeersch, Wangdao or The Royal Way II Research on the spirit of institutions in archaic China, political structures, rites

Over the years, we have encountered on Language Log many instances of the fusion of Sinitic syllables into more compact units than the original expressions they derived from.  A typical example is the contraction béng 甭 ("never mind; don't; needn't; do not have to") from bùyòng 不用.

Cf. zán 咱 ("we")

Fusion of 自家 (MC d͡ziɪ^H kˠa, “self”) [Song] > Modern Mandarin zá (Lü, 1984). Fusion with 們／们 (men) produces the form with a nasal coda [Yuan], e.g. Modern Mandarin zán (Norman, 1988).

(source)

Often such contractions and fusions in speech do not get reflected in the writing system as in the above two examples.  For instance the Beijing street name Dà Zhàlán 大柵欄 = Pekingese "Dashlar" and bùlājí 不拉及, the transcription of Russian платье ("dress") is pronounced in Northeastern Mandarin as "blaji" (note the "bl-" consonant cluster, which is "illegal" in Mandarin).

So there's a particular quirk of English grammar that I've always found quite endearing: the exocentric verb-noun compound agent noun.

It appears in a definite, remarkably narrow period – not more than 150, 200 years – before dying out, leaving loads of legacy words in its wake.

— David Thomas Moore (@dtmooreeditor) September 12, 2022

The title of this article about the Belitung shipwreck (ca. 830 AD) is somewhat misleading (e.g., there is no direct evidence of Malayalam being spoken by any of the protagonists, but it is broadly informative, richly illustrated, and well presented.

"Mongols speaking Malayalam – What a sunken ship says about South India & China’s medieval ties

The silent ceramic objects that survive from medieval Indian Ocean trade carry incredible stories of a time when South Asia had the upper hand over China."

Anirudh Kanisetti

The Print (8 September, 2022)

It's intriguing, at least to me, that the author identifies himself as a "public historian".  He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India.

We've had two consecutive posts on oil-related words (see "Selected readings" below).  julie lee made this comment on the first of the two:

Old Chinese/Old Sinitic *lew is similar in sound and meaning to Welsh OLEW "oil".

[From Middle Welsh olew, form Old Welsh oleu, from Proto-Brythonic *olew, from Vulgar Latin *olevum, from Latin oleum (“oil”).] (source)

julie's observation inspired me to ask Doug Adams whether there were any Tocharian words for oil.  He replied:

There are two (sort of),  There are both ṣalype and ṣmare.  The first is 'oil (particularly sesame oil); salve, ointment' (also oil in a lamp), the second is, as a noun, 'oil' (as in a lamp) and, as an adjective, 'smooth, even, slippery.'  The first is etymologically connected to English salve and the second to English smear.

Lauren Hernández, "Teen, 16, fatally shot on Oakland street with high-powered rifle", 6/9/2022 (emphasis added):

A 16-year-old boy was killed in a shooting in Oakland on Thursday evening and police are urging witnesses to come forward, authorities said.

At about 6 p.m., Oakland police received a call of shots fired in the area of 3000 block of 64th Avenue, where one person was reported to be down and a potential second victim was “somewhere else,” Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said in a video posted to Facebook.

Officers found the teen who had been shot with a “high-powered rifle,” Armstrong said. Police also received a ShotSpotter activation for the shooting, Armstrong said. “Several shots” were fired, he said.

“We are following up on the second individual who appeared to be a victim as well,” Armstrong said, adding that police believe that victim is in stable condition. Information on that victim was not immediately released.

A motive was immediately unknown on Thursday evening, Armstrong said.

"A person, usually a woman, who is trained to assist women in childbirth."  AHDEL

But not always a woman:

Men rarely practice midwifery for cultural and historical reasons. In ancient Greece, midwives were required by law to have given birth themselves, which prevented men from joining their ranks. In 17th century Europe, some barber surgeons, all of whom were male, specialized in births, especially births requiring the use of surgical instruments. This eventually developed into a professional split, with women serving as midwives and men becoming obstetricians. Men who work as midwives are called midwives (or male midwives, if it is necessary to identify them further) or accoucheurs; the term midhusband (based on a misunderstanding of the etymology of midwife) is occasionally encountered, mostly as a joke. In previous centuries, they were called man-midwives in English.

(source)

I have often wondered about the meaning and origins of the term "midwife".  My wonderment was piqued recently by several comments on this post:  "Wondrous blue" (5/9/22).