Language Log

François Lang sent in the following quandary:

[This is a guest post by M. Paul Shore]

     Because my January 19th post about the pronunciation of "Davos" has attracted a number of comments on the general question of what degree of pronunciational authenticity mainstream and semi-mainstream broadcasters should attempt for foreign proper nouns and, occasionally, common nouns, and under what circumstances, I've decided to submit this new post on that general question rather than have my thoughts about it buried in that previous thread.

     Because discussions of the question tend to stagnate and become nearly meaningless as a result of the assumption or near-assumption that there can be only two categories of authenticity, namely "authentic" and "inauthentic", I’d like to take a stand against that binary thinking and propose that four basic levels of authenticity be recognized:

We've been discussing the oracle bone form (late 2nd millennium BC) of nǚ女 ("woman; female"):

(WP)

I've always felt that it shows the profile of a submissive, kneeling female figure with her arms crossed in front of her (I say this after examining scores of variants of OB forms of 女).

From M. Paul Shore (of partial Swiss German ancestry; former Linguistics major) to PBS News staff: 

Compared to the previous Julesy presentation, "This might be the most hated film in Korea" (see "Hangul and Buddhism" [1/16/26]), today's video is tame, but the consequences of what she describes — the advent of a phonetic script to replace a logographic / morphosyllabic script — were profound.

Our colleague and teacher, Prof. Matsumoto Akirō, passed away on January 6, 2026, at 82 years of age.

Prof. Matsumoto graduated from Waseda University in East Asian history in 1966, received his Master’s degree, also from Waseda, in philosophy in 1972, and thereafter studied at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, Iran. He taught at International University of Japan and at St. Thomas (Eichi) University and held visiting professorships at Durham University (UK) and the University of Virginia (USA). He originally specialized in Islamic theology, working in Persian and Arabic texts under the mentorship of Prof. IZUTSU Toshihiko (井筒 俊彦) in Japan and Prof. Sayed Jalaluddin Ashtiani at Ferdowsi. His research included the mystical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn Sina, Jami, Rumi, and Mulla Sadra and the 20th century Twelver Shi’ism of Ayatollah Khomeini. He also published numerous translations of Persian philosophical works into Japanese.

No sooner had I posted about a block of 11,328 proposed Small Seal characters dating back roughly two millennia being incorporated in UNICODE than a single spanking new sinograph surfaced and was urgently put forward for inclusion, and it is causing a bit of a ruckus.  That is the third-person gender-neutral pronoun [X也], which is pronounced the same as all the other characters for supposedly gendered Sinitic third-person pronouns, viz., tā (see below for their graphic forms).

N.B.:  The proposed neograph under dicussion is provisionally being written as [X也], but bear in mind that, as I have pointed out countless times, all sinographs, by the exigencies / inherent nature of the script, whether they have 1 stroke or 64 / n strokes, must be squeezed inside the same size box as all other sinographs.  In other words, [X也] perforce — once the typographers get it worked out — will eventually have to fit inside exactly the same space as 也 and biáng  (you can get an authentic plate of these belt-like Shaanxi noodles at Xi'an Sizzling Woks, 40th & Chestnut in University City next to Penn [opens at 11:30 AM, closed on Tuesdays]).  There are many Language Log posts about diverse aspects of this jabberwockyish character.  Just look it up under "biang" 

We've seen numerous blockbuster videos from Julesy, but this one is the most explosive ever:

"This might be the most hated film in Korea" (11:55)

Draft Minutes of UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Meeting 185
Cupertino, California, United States — October 27-29, 2025
Hosted by Apple in Cupertino and virtually
UTC #185 Agenda
Revision date: November 26, 2025

https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25226.htm#185-C3

"Arnold the Grove Snail"  (1:11)

Well, now, for all those doubting Thomases who insist that there was no contact between western Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia in antiquity:

"The Amber Trade along the Southwestern Silk Road from 600 BCE-220 CE." Lü, Jing et al. Palaeoentomology 8, no. 6 (December 29, 2025): 679-682. https://www.mapress.com/pe/article/view/palaeoentomology.8.6.10.

P.O. wrote to ask for help in analyzing this phrase from season 2, episode 5 of The Crown:

They're stopping the palace evolve
in keeping with the rest of the world.

Since it indicates the official language and main ethnicity of China, this character is of utmost linguistic and political importance for readers of Language Log.

Prompted by Philip Taylor (commenting on this post [first item in the list of "Selected readings" below]), this ample response from ChatGPT would seem to cover all the bases for what 漢 means.

One important meaning of 漢 omitted in the above generous overview is pejorative, "a bad guy", as shown by this entry in Wiktionary.  Although, in this term, èhàn 惡漢 ("villain; scoundrel; bad guy"), 漢 is explicitly modified by the negative adjective 惡, 漢 by itself can have derogatory implications, somewhat like "hombre" ("man") in "mock Spanish" when used disrespectfully.