Hybrid language (Japanese)
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If you search through the Language Log archives, you will find a tremendous number of posts listed under creoles, pidgins, "mixed" and hybrid languages and scripts, to an extent that the categories themselves begin to blur. This leads me to ponder what these fuzzy linguistic boundaries tell us about the nature of language, its history and development.
One type of hybrid language that was particularly important in my research is Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, which reflects a historical shift where Buddhism moved away from local vernaculars and began to use Sanskrit as a liturgical and scholarly "church language". (AIO) After teaching graduate seminars on medieval Chinese Buddhist texts for decades, in which Indic grammar, syntax, lexicon, etc. played a huge role, in emulation of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, I began to think and speak of Buddhist Hybrid Sinitic — two BHSs.
Selected readings
- "Japanese, Chinese, and English mixed language and script" (2/2/25)
- "Are you OK?" (11/2/25) — with lengthy bibliography
- "Buddhism and languages" (2/28/17)
- Mair, Victor H. "The Linguistic and Textual Antecedents of The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish", Sino-Platonic Papers, 38 (April, 1993), 1-95.
- Edgerton, Franklin. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary. 2 vols. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1953
Bei Dawei said,
November 3, 2025 @ 9:31 pm
Hello, this is unrelated to the above (maybe move it to a separate post?), but I have a question that hopefully one of you can answer. More than a century ago, on p. 10 of his book "The Philosophy of Fire," Rosicrucian writer R. Swinburne Clymer names one "Fag-Four" as the first Chinese emperor (and a Rosicrucian). Could Dr. Clymer mean Fuxi? Is this Cantonese or something? What happened here? Thank you all, and I intend no disrespect to the latest MCU movie.
Victor Mair said,
November 4, 2025 @ 5:48 am
I have no idea where to move your question. Perhaps someone will kindly take a stab at it here.
Kaiser said,
November 4, 2025 @ 6:31 am
It's not the name of any specific emperor but a more general term, see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%81%D8%BA%D9%81%D9%88%D8%B1#Persian (fagfour is likely an older French-based romanization).
Philip Taylor said,
November 4, 2025 @ 7:22 am
He goes on to say "The Son of Heaven" — perhaps someone familiar with Sinitic languages might be able to find a Sinitic equivalent to "The Son of Heaven" which sounds not too dissimilar to "Fag Four".
Jerry Packard said,
November 4, 2025 @ 8:46 am
I have no idea what the F you folks are talking about.
Gokul Madhavan said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:20 am
In addition to BHS1 and BHS2 (thank you, Prof. Mair, for this memorable term!), I would point to a provocative article by Paul J. Griffiths called “Buddhist Hybrid English: Some Notes on Philology and Hermeneutics for Buddhologists” (1981, Journal of the International Association for Buddhist Studies).
katarina said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:24 am
From Google:
Baga can mean a god in Old Iranian and pūr
in Persian means son. So Sogdian bagpur may mean God's son
..
katarina said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:27 am
Sogdian βaγpūr.
katarina said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:31 am
Classical Persian faɣˈfuːr
katarina said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:41 am
Google:
The word for God in Sogdian is βaγ.
katarina said,
November 4, 2025 @ 11:50 am
Google:
pūr is son in Sogdian and βaγpūr
means son of God.
I didn't think of asking Google this before.
Victor Mair said,
November 4, 2025 @ 12:08 pm
@Bei Dawei
At first, I was not going to approve your comment because I didn't know where to post it, but now, having read the comments of Kaiser, Philip Taylor, and katarina (1-4), I'm so glad that I did, because it has turned out to be a most stimulating discussion on a learned, consequential subject, so thanks to all four of you. Just wow!
Thanks also to Gokul Madhavan for your affirmation of my BHS1 and BHS2 and for the information about Paul Griffiths' great article about BHSE.
Rodger C said,
November 5, 2025 @ 10:29 am
This discussion leads to the question, from someone with a smattering of Farsi, why the Persians couldn't analyze Baghpur.
katarina said,
November 5, 2025 @ 3:25 pm
At first I thought Fag Four was
nonsense.
I wonder if Russian bog "God"
and Sogdian βaγ "God" are related
and if related who borrowed from whom
katarina said,
November 5, 2025 @ 3:28 pm
who preceded whom
Philip Taylor said,
November 5, 2025 @ 3:50 pm
Katarina's comment reminded me that the Polish word for God was similar to the Russian, but for the life of me I could not remember how it was spelled. I asked Google Translate and it responded "Bóg", which accorded with my memory, but it also offered a pronunciation for English "God" : "ɡäd". Can anyone suggest why the a-diaresis ?
katarina said,
November 5, 2025 @ 4:20 pm
@Jerry Packard
Jerry , "Son of Heaven" in Chinese means emperor
The Sogdian "Son of God" is a close translation.
M. W. said,
November 5, 2025 @ 11:23 pm
@ Philip Taylor
In US dictionaries, IPA /ɑ/ is commonly represented by the symbol ä. That is the way I learned it from dictionaries as a child.
The US based Merriam-Webster pronunciation guide states
"\ä\ as in bother, cot (IPA [ɑ]). The symbol \ä\ represents the vowel of cot, cod, and the stressed vowel of collar in the speech of those who pronounce this vowel differently from the vowel in caught, cawed, and caller, represented by \ȯ\. "
If you browse to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/god , it also gives \gäd\ as the pronunciation.
Philip Taylor said,
November 6, 2025 @ 7:47 am
Ah, thank you M.W. — I was (until now) unaware of that convention.
Gokul Madhavan said,
November 6, 2025 @ 9:45 am
Given the semantic history and the cultural importance of the word bhaga (not to mention the derived form bhagava(n)t) in Indo-Aryan, I am inclined to think that the direction of borrowing would have to be from Proto-(Indo-?)Iranian to Proto-Slavic. (That is, assuming there was a borrowing at all, and not an inherited term from PIE which underwent a parallel semantic drift in both languages.)
The older meanings of the word in Indo-Aryan are not associated with divinity per se, but rather with dividing and apportioning, which then leads to the Indo-Aryan deity Bhaga whose job it is to apportion the results of the sacrifice fairly. (Though in later Indo-Aryan culture, it’s the derived form bhagava(n)t that means “lord” and sometimes “god”, though it’s also translated as “blessed one” in Buddhist Hybrid English.) I don’t know Old Iranian and so cannot be sure if a similar process happened there as well.
Gokul Madhavan said,
November 6, 2025 @ 9:51 am
I am also perplexed by the same question as Rodger C, especially when we even have the city name “Baghdad”. I wonder if “faġfūr” wasn’t a reborrowing into New Persian from Arabic, which would have had a harder time with the p in Iranian languages. (For instance, Persian pīl > Arabic fīl for “elephant”.)
katarina said,
November 6, 2025 @ 10:54 am
Thank you Gokul Madhavan for the information on bhaga and other words. Wiktionary say they come from Proto-Indo-European (quote below) and that the Proto-Slavic word for god was borrowed from IE:
"From Proto-Indo-Iranian *bʰagás, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂g-ó-s, from *bʰeh₂g- (“to divide, distribute”). Cognate with Avestan (baγa, “god”) Old Persian (baga, “god”). Compare also Proto-Slavic *bogъ, an Iranian borrowing. The Sanskrit root is भज् (bhaj)."
Wiktionary says that PIE *bʰeh₂g- "to divide, distribute" produced words in various Indo-European languages that mean share, portion, fate, destiny, wealth, lord, god, etc.
Michael Watts said,
November 8, 2025 @ 9:22 am
Since this is a Chinese title, there can be no Sinitic equivalent other than the title itself, 天子. In modern Mandarin this is tian zi; I find it unlikely that it could be rendered "fag-four" by any convention.