Language Log

My basement is full of unpublished manuscripts.  I call it the "Dungeon", because it is dark, dank, and crowded with books and papers — much worse than my office, which has achieved a fabled reputation for its crampedness — and very cold in the winter, though it does have a wonderful bay window on the eastern side where I can look out at the flora, fauna, and foliage to rest my eyes and mind from time to time.

Three of the most significant manuscripts in the Dungeon that remained unpublished for decades are:

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

"On the Origins of the Alphabet: Orion/Osiris in Need of a Head/Seed, the Roots of Writing, the Neolithic Europe Word as Sun/Seed System (NEWS), and a Solution to the Tartaria and Gradeshnista Tablets," by Brian R. Pellar.

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp341_alphabet_orion_osiris.pdf

From Jeff DeMarco:

A Chinese friend has been experimenting with AI, the result being guǐzi 鬼子 ("ghost characters"). We’ve seen something similar, but the hànzì 汉字 ("sinoglyph") manipulation is almost artistic. Have you encountered this before?

Sign outside a Tokyo restaurant:

(source)

From the Facebook account of Wai-hung Wong:

Photograph accompanying a New York Times article, with the following caption: "Merle Goldman explaining the Chinese characters for the word China":

(source)

The breathless moment when "zei 税" is written by Mori Seihan, the head priest of the magnificent Kiyomizudera in eastern Kyoto (1:32):

"Eddie Bauer changed its logo because Gen Z doesn’t read cursive" (Fast Company, Oct. 6, 2023)

[This is a guest post by Zhengyuan Wang]

Calligraphy Practicing Sheets and the Trussing Structure of Chinese Characters

One thing essential for every elementary-level Chinese learner is to learn to write the characters in the same size in one single passage. This is not a unique case that only exists in Chinese. But this can be a challenging task in reality, in regards to how different the Chinese characters can be to each other with the number of strokes ranging from as simple as characters with one stroke only (for instance, 一 yī and 丨gǔn [yes, this is a character]) to complex ones with up to twenty-eight strokes (矗 chù, the character with most strokes among the 3,500 common used Chinese characters). Not to mention, there are characters less common but with way more strokes, such as 麤 cū, with thirty-three strokes, 龘 dá/tà, with fifty-one strokes, and the most famous one biáng (as in figure 1) with forty-two or fifty-six strokes.

(figure 1: from left to right: biáng in traditional Chinese with 56 strokes, biáng in simplified Chinese with 42 strokes, and yī with only one stroke. How can you write them in the same size, which has to be not so big in the first place?)

From Nathan Hopson:

I have been reading some handwritten documents from the 1960s and 1970s, and have been reminded that even beyond abbreviations, there were still "nonstandard" kanji in use. I guess this took me off guard mostly because these are school publications.

On the abbreviated side, the most obvious example is:

第 → 㐧

The "nonstandard" kanji that interested me most were these two:
1. 管 → 官 part written as 友+、

2. 食缶 as a single character, but paired with 食 to be 食[食缶]

An alternative name for M Hànzì / J Kanji / K Hanja / C hon3 zi6 漢字 ("sinoglyph; Chinese character") is fāngkuàizì 方塊字 ("square shaped character").  I learned that the very first year of my Chinese language studies more than half a century ago.  From kindergarten and elementary school on up, Chinese children learn to practice writing characters with the concept of fāngkuài 方塊 ("square shaped") firmly in mind.  To assist them in that endeavor, they use a zìtiè / zìtiě 字帖 ("copy book") with the squares clearly marked.

Long, richly illustrated, highly biographical article in CBC (10/8/23):

Writing the story of a changing North

In the 1950s, Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk began Sanaaq, which would end up becoming the first novel written in Inuktitut. Her words continue to inform our understanding of Inuit life.

Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its tech-heavy schools

Charlene Pele, AP (9/10/23)

Accompanied by 10 photographs showing young children (3rd grade?) practicing handwriting.

As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills.

The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether the country's hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.