Language Log

Some funny things happen when one tries to straighten out the relationships among these three names for one of the world's most challenging board games.

First of all, if I put wéiqí 圍棋 / 围棋, the Chinese name of the game, into Google Translate (GT) and ask it to translate that into Japanese, out comes Iku 行く ("to go"), but if I ask GT to translate wéiqí 圍棋 directly into English, out comes "go", the English name of the game.

So that we don't get sucked more deeply into a quagmire of nomenclatural confusion, I will put some basic linguistic facts about these names here.  It would be good for other Language Log readers to inform us how the name of the game is handled in other languages.

From Laura Morland:

Plane plunge

A United Airlines 777 leaving Hawaii made a scary plunge toward the ocean shortly after takeoff, flight tracking data shows. The incident occurred in December when the plane dived toward the ocean for 21 seconds a little over a minute after takeoff. Neither United nor the FAA indicated anyone was injured on the flight. Still, passengers on board were startled after the plane lost more than half its altitude and came within 775 feet of sea level, according to data from FlightRadar24. "There were a number of screams on the plane," a passenger told CNN. "Everybody knew that something was out of the ordinary, or at least that this was not normal." United said it conducted an investigation with the FAA and the pilots union "that ultimately resulted in the pilots receiving additional training," adding the investigation is ongoing.

[Source: CNN's daily newsletter, "Five Things"]

"Word of the Week: Huminerals (人矿 rén kuàng)", Alexander Boyd, China Digital Times (2/13/23)

The new word “humineral” (人矿 rén kuàng) has taken the Chinese internet by storm and is now a sensitive word subject to censorship. First introduced in a now-censored Zhihu [VHM:  a forum website] post on January 2, 2023, “humineral”—a portmanteau of 人 rén (“person”) and 矿 kuàng (“ore,” “mineral deposit,” or “mine”) in the original Chinese—describes a person relentlessly exploited by society until they are eventually discarded on the refuse pile. The original Zhihu post elucidated 10 tenets of the “humineral,” three of which CDT has translated below: 

1. Huminerals: You are a resource, not a protagonist. You are a means, not an end. Your life’s work will go towards the fulfillment of others instead of the pursuit of your own desires.

2. The life of a humineral can be divided into three stages: extraction, exploitation, and slag removal. Investment in your education over your first decade or so is oriented at extracting your potential—turning you into usable ore. The middle decades are a process of exploitation and consumption. When you’re finally useless, they’ll use the least polluting method possible to dispose of you.  [emphasis added]

8. Huminerals power the motors that turn the wheels of history. Huminerals have few other choices: either fuel history’s engine, or be ground beneath its wheels. Of course the inverse is true. If huminerals were to stop propelling history, then those other huminerals who abstained would not be crushed. Yet there are always huminerals who see more value in a lifetime of being fuel than to risk being flattened.  [Chinese]

No, I wasn't reading "a long list of ex-lovers".  I was sitting there writing a Language Log post about DeepL (probably next up after this one).  Across from me was a man with a big red beard.  I was writing a LL post on my beloved little, old MacBook Air and he was writing a long list of components, parts, and numbers, mixed in with some sketched diagrams on a white legal pad.

He seemed to be diligent, and he looked like a constructor, a builder of houses.  Finally, curiosity got the best of me, so I walked over and asked him, "What is that you're writing?" 

"I'm working on a kwow", he replied.

"A what?" I asked.

"A kwow," he repeated.

I thought maybe he was saying "crow", but doing something funny with the "r".  So I asked him to write it down on a piece of paper.

I borrow my title from a Tweet by one Shivam that is part of a Twitter Storm sweeping over India these days.  It is playfully described in this BBC article today:

Tu v Aap: The Indian woman who sparked a Twitter battle on pronouns

By Geeta Pandey and Meryl Sebastian, BBC News, Delhi

Never mind how one says "you" in French or German, it matters much how one says "you" in different parts of India.

Today's Tank McNamara:

Once again, DH to the rescue:

AI Deciphers Ancient Babylonian Texts And Finds Beautiful Lost Hymn

Eat your heart out, ChatGPT.

Tom Hale, IFLScience (2/7/23)

It used to be that paleographers and philologists labored mightily trying to piece together bits and pieces of old manuscripts, using only their own mental and visual powers. Now they can call on AI allies to provide decisive assistance.

Researchers have crafted an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of deciphering fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. Dubbed the “Fragmentarium,” the algorithm holds the potential to piece together some of the oldest stories ever written by humans, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the "old days", when you were departing from a store or other premises, people would say to you, "have a good day".  In some cases, they might replace "good" with "great".  Within the last year or two, however, I've been hearing people who work in shops more and more say "Have a good rest of the day" or "Have a good rest of your day".  When I first heard such goodbyes, especially the latter variant, I thought they were unnatural.  I am still somewhat taken aback when I hear this sort of adieu, but since so many shopworkers and other people are saying it to me nowadays, I am gradually beginning to take it for granted, and am almost tempted to say it to others instead of "goodbye" once in a while, but it will take some time, maybe years, before I grow accustomed to saying it myself.

An eloquent cri de coeur:

How Can China’s People Demand Freedom if We Can’t Even Say It?

Mengyin Lin, NYT (Feb. 10, 2023)

Notice that she speaks in the first person plural and has some very thought-provoking things to say about the recent Chinese protests in favor of freedom, such as:

The demonstrations are best remembered for the blank sheets of paper held by many protesters. It was a clever way to avoid trouble: making a statement without actually saying anything. But to me those empty sheets also visually, and literally, represented how my generation is losing its voice, perhaps even control of its own language.

The Communist Party’s monopoly on all channels of expression has helped prevent the development of any resistance language in Mandarin, especially since 1989, when the brutal military suppression of the Tiananmen Square student movement demonstrated what happens to those who speak out. If language shapes the way we think,* and most people think only in their own language, how can China’s youth conjure up an effective and lasting resistance movement with words that they don’t have?

*Please take a look at this and other links provided by the author.

David Leonhardt, "Did He Say 'bird'?", NYT 2/10/2023:

As President Biden was reciting a list of bipartisan accomplishments during his State of the Union address this week, he seemed to use a phrase that I had never heard before: toxic bird pits.

Was it some major news story that I had missed while on leave over the past few months? Or was it the latest Biden malapropism, destined to dominate post-speech commentary? I tried to figure out the answer by typing the words into Google and Twitter, but they offered no clarity. Google had nothing for me. A Twitter search yielded dozens of people tweeting a version of “toxic bird pits???” and not much else.

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.

I'm often surprised by the number of terms in modern Japanese that have their roots in ancient Buddhist usage.  Some of the most common ones are introduced in this article by Brendan Craine from The Japan Times (2/2/23):

"The Buddhist terms that find their way into everyday conversation"

A good example is aisatsu あいさつ /  挨拶:

    [noun] a greeting, a salutation, a polite set phrase
    [noun] an address given at an official function or ceremony
    [noun] greetings or respects such as given at holidays or funerals
    [verb] to greet, to say hello, to address

This derives from ichiaiissatsu / いちあいいっさつ / 一挨一拶:  "dialoging (with another Zen practitioner to ascertain their level of enlightenment)​" (source).

By now I must have listened to Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" a hundred times.  The first fifty times I heard a crucial line in it as "Got only Starbucks lovers" or "Not only Starbucks lovers", and it was driving me crazy because I couldn't make sense of it.  Sometimes I forced myself to believe that she was saying "Got only starcrossed lovers", but that didn't make sense either.  Then, on December 4, 2014, I read Mark Liberman's "All the lonely Starbucks lovers" on Language Log, and I learned — much to my astonishment — that, according to the lyrics, she was supposedly saying — repeatedly in the song — "Got a long list of ex-lovers".  Still today, after listening to the song and watching the video countless more times, plus reading the printed lyrics, I hear her sing "Got / Not only Starbucks lovers", never "Got a long list of ex-lovers".

Thus I am simultaneously assailed by multiple Taylor Swift mondegreens and polyphonic earworms ("trouble, trouble, trouble; shake, shake, shake it off").