Language Log

Is it a "foo fighter" a fighter that fights foos? Or is it a fighter that IS foo? This should show up in the stress pattern, as in the difference between a "German teacher" as a teacher who teaches German (normally with stress on the first word), or a teacher who IS German (normally with stress on the second word).

Dave Grohl clears this up for us in a brief video clip:

A recent Jesse Welles song, inspired by the defunding of Public Broadcasting:

"The endangered Tanka language in Hong Kong: phonological variations and lexical convergence with Cantonese", Cong Wang, Daxingwang Peng, Yanmei Dai & Chong Qi, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 12, Article number: 1133 (July 19, 2025)

The first thing we need to take care of is to discuss their name:

According to official Liu Zongyuan (773–819) of the Tang dynasty, there were Boat Dweller people settled in the boats of today's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The term "Tanka" (蜑家) may originate from tan (Cantonese: "egg") and ka (Cantonese: "family" or "people"), although another possible etymology is tank ("junk" or "large boat") rather than tan. "Tanka" is now considered derogatory and no longer in common usage. The Boat Dwellers are now referred to in China as "people on/above water" (Chinese: 水上人; pinyin: shuǐshàng rén; Cantonese Yale: Séuiseuhngyàn), or "people of the southern sea" (Chinese: 南海人; Cantonese Yale: Nàamhóiyàn). No standardised English translation of this term exists. "Boat People" is a commonly used translation, although it may be confused with the similar term for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. "Boat Dwellers" was proposed by Dr. Lee Ho Yin of The University of Hong Kong in 1999, and it has been adopted by the Hong Kong Museum of History for its exhibition.

Both the Boat Dwellers and the Cantonese speak Cantonese. However, Boat Dwellers living in Fujian speak Min Chinese.

(Wikipedia)

A recent Elle Cordova video:

It's not every day that you get a chance to experience Old Uyghur (language; script). Recently, when I was looking through albums of photographs of medieval Buddhist wall-paintings, I spotted an Old Uyghur inscription:

(click to embiggen)

That's from a Five Dynasties (907-979) transformation tableau (biànxiàng 變相) depicting the story of the Buddhist saint, Mahāmaudgalyāyana, rescuing his mother from hell.  It is located on the north side of the corridor to the antechamber to Cave 19 at Yulin Grottoes toward the western extremity of Gansu Province, part of the larger complex of medieval Buddhist caves at Dunhuang, which we have often mentioned on Language Log.  For the complete and heavily annotated translation of the transformation text on Mahāmaudgalyāyana (Mùlián 目連), see Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

[This is a guest post by Elizabeth J. W. Barber]

A linguist friend specializing in Iranian linguistic reconstruction has a word that means weft, but also has something to do with a boat and weaving.  To me, that immediately meant the "boat shuttle"–Gm. Schiffchen, Fr. navette, etc.  Once the horizontal treadle loom was invented, the (flat, horizontal) shed could be opened wide enough that you could flick the weft bobbin all the way across the loom, catch it, change the shed, and shoot (shoot > shuttle) it back.  HUGE time-saver!!!

The treadle loom seems to have been invented in China during the Han dynasties (206 BC-220 AD) — I can find no more than that.  Don't know when some genius added the boat-shaped shuttle that floats the weft bobbin across the loom, riding atop the lower half of the warp.

The last couple of months have seen some interesting publications about AI systems that are small by modern standards.

"China changed village names 'to erase Uyghur culture'", Anna Lamche, BBC (6/20/24)

I thought about this phenomenon again today, a year after that BBC article was published, because this morning Robert Thurman, the Columbia Tibetologist, told me about his concept of "ethnicide".  This, forced name changes, is one way to do it.

China has changed the names of hundreds of villages in Xinjiang region in a move aimed at erasing Uyghur Muslim culture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.

According to a report by the group, hundreds of villages in Xinjiang with names related to the religion, history or culture of Uyghurs were replaced between 2009 and 2023.

Words such as "sultan" and "shrine" are disappearing from place names – to be replaced with terms such as "harmony" and "happiness", according to the research, which is based on China's own published data.

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Achilles was a mighty warrior, but his Achilles' heel was his heel."

I don't know why, but the first time I came upon this marvelous site, in Mark's March 5, 2021 post, it didn't make much of an impression on me.  Maybe I was too busy to explore it at that time or was just not in the right mood.  Four days ago, however, when my old Peace Corps buddy, Bob Kambic, called it to my attention, Radio Garden just blew my mind away.  I kept exclaiming, "This is the most exciting, happiest day of my life!"

From Yann LeCun's presentation at the AI, Science and Society event in Paris last February:

Since I wrote The True History of Tea (2009; now available in a number of foreign languages and coming out in pb on 1/27/26), I've been a tea aficianado and connoisseur, so I was stunned when five days ago I learned of the existence of two types that are completely new to me.

The first is called Adeni tea, and I was privileged to taste it at Haraz Coffee House that recently opened next to Penn.  It is run by Yemenis, who really know their coffee and serve mouth-watering pastries, many of which I had never encountered before.

I already had a good impression of Yemeni food purveyors when I stopped at a Country Market by the side of Old Route 30 in Svensen WA run by a mother and her son, though I didn't have any hot, freshly brewed tea that time.