Language Log

The word direction is common in the English versions of the "operational updates" from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine . For example, from the August 6 update:

In the direction of Bakhmut, the enemy from tanks, barrel and jet artillery shelled the areas of the settlements of Bakhmutske, Toretsk, Bilohorivka, Krasnopolivka, Pivnichne and Vershyna.

It led offensive battles in the direction of Yakovlivka-Vershyna and Kodema-Zaitseve, it was unsuccessful and left.

Leads an offensive in the direction of Bakhmut, hostilities continue.

It led an offensive in the direction of Lozove-Nevelske, was unsuccessful, withdrew.

When I lived in Nepal (1965-67), I heard of the Kusunda, but never had a chance to go visit them.  Now they are in the news, because their language — an isolate that linguists believe is unrelated to any other language in the world — is on the verge of extinction, with only one remaining speaker, 48-year-old Kamala Khatri.

"The language that doesn't use 'no'", by Eileen McDougall, BBC (8/9/22)

Selections from the article:

…

The Kusunda are highly marginalised and impoverished within Nepali society. Today, most live in west Nepal's Dang district, a sleepy region of yellow mustard fields and misty, wooded hills. It is here the Language Commission of Nepal has been running Kusunda classes since 2019 in an effort to preserve the language.

…

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)

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Pronouncing [ṡṡċċḣḣẇẇȧȧ] is easy; you just say it like the 'x' in 'fire'."

The city of Wilkes-Barre is only about a hundred miles north of where I've been living in the Philadelphia area for the past half century, but I've never had the slightest clue about how the name should be pronounced.  My guess has always been that it is something like "wilks-bare", but I've always been uncomfortable with that stab in the dark.

Now we have a thorough accounting of the toponymic pronunciation problem from "The Diamond City" by the Susquehanna itself:

"How should Wilkes-Barre be pronounced? Are you sure about that?" By Roger DuPuis, Times Leader (8/5/22)

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title — "Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)"

The FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago is featured in the news this morning,– and also of course on Twitter, with the difference that many tweets abbreviate "Mar-a-Lago" as "MAL" or "MaL", e.g.

The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantisFL) August 9, 2022

From Charles Belov:  seen on a street-sign pole in the Mission District of San Francisco:

Three years ago, we visited a proposal for "Classical Chinese computing" (12/19/19).  The post began thus:

Several colleagues called this article to my attention:

"Programming Language for the ancient Chinese"

Here's the introduction:

文言, or wenyan, is an esoteric programming language that closely follows the grammar and tone of classical Chinese literature. Moreover, the alphabet of wenyan contains only traditional Chinese characters and 「」 quotes, so it is guaranteed to be readable by ancient Chinese people. You too can try it out on the online editor, download a compiler, or view the source code.

The home page then goes through "Syntax", "Compilation", and "Get (Source Code; Online Editor; Reference".

From Xiaowan Cai:

In "Trends in book titles" (8/5/2022) I discussed the title-page complexity's of P. Sproson's 1740 work "THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity", and observed that "There's also more to say about Mr. Sproson's reader".

One thing to start with: Sproson provides a series of  reading lessons featuring sequences of words of increasing length and complexity. And some of them achieve a sort of accidental Seuss-ish poetry, e.g. this section of  a lesson "consisting of words not exceeding two letters in each":

is my ox to go
my ox is to go
of us or to us
of me or to me
to us or of us
to me or of me
is it to be so
it is to be so
to be so it is
is it so to be
it is so to be
is it so to me
is it so to us

Meta is inviting everyone to try out its BlenderBot3:

By releasing the chatbot to the general public, Meta wants to collect feedback on the various problems facing large language models. Users who chat with BlenderBot will be able to flag any suspect responses from the system, and Meta says it’s worked hard to “minimize the bots’ use of vulgar language, slurs, and culturally insensitive comments.” Users will have to opt in to have their data collected, and if so, their conversations and feedback will be stored and later published by Meta to be used by the general AI research community.

So following up on my earlier-reported "Conversations with GPT-3" (6/25/2022), here's BlenderBot3 chatting with a young person interested in philosophy:

From Claudia Rosett:

I have a question about a phrase that China’s foreign ministry attributed to Xi in his call with Biden last week:

In English:  “Those who play with fire will perish by it.”

That phrase, in English translation, is exactly the same as threats Chinese officials issued against Hong Kong during the protests in 2019.

I am wondering if this is a standard threat in Chinese — much as it is a proverb in the West — or something that for effect in English they have swiped from us.

I’m not sure it’s of any great importance which way that goes, but in the cataloguing of PRC threats made in English, it stands out as memorable, a phrase the press latches onto. Perhaps because it is so familiar to us.

If you have any insights on this, I’d be grateful.