Language Log

For a country that already has Chinese characters (kanji) and two syllabaries of its own (hiragana and katakana; see also furigana), judging from the ubiquity of romaji across the country, it would appear that they are well into the process of turning Latin letters into an integral component of their quadripartite writing system.  Some may argue that they already have done so.

What's going on?

Why hasn't something similar yet happened in China (Vietnam's writing system is already clearly based on the Latin alphabet)?

"Akasi or Akashi? Hepburn Most Established of Japan’s Different 'Rōmaji' Systems", Nippon.com newsletter (11/2/22)

Signs on highways and at railway stations in Japan show place names in both Japanese and Roman letters, although the rōmaji system employed can vary. The Hepburn system dominates, but the Kunrei and Nihon systems are also seen around the country.

The following note and video were sent to me by Bill Benzon.  The video is too long (19:15) to make as the main content of this post, but it is captivating, and I warmly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topics it covers, especially English language learning by Japanese.

The video features Moe, the former geisha who successfully transitioned to Kimono Mom.  Among her interlocutors is a woman from Brazil who has a lot of interesting things to say about Portuguese (especially how different the grammar is from English).  Aside from discoursing on language teaching and learning, Moe is very good at talking about food and cooking for her little family, so if you like that sort of thing, hop on her channel (see below) and you will have many popular videos to choose from.

I was trying to find an old post I wrote about a dictionary of Japanese pronunciations of Chinese characters and put this in the Google search engine:  victor mair language log dictionary japanese pronunciation (no quotation marks).  I was thunderstruck by the first result (out of 188,000):

victor mair language log       –>       ヴィクトル・メアの言語ログ 

Vu~ikutoru mea no gengo rogu

"Another Trump appointee provides a lesson in ethical misconduct", WaPo 11/5/2022:

The Office of the Inspector General issued a report last month identifying a series of “administrative, ethical and policy violations” by J. Brett Blanton, appointed by President Donald Trump and sworn in in early 2020.

[This is a guest post by Conal Boyce]

Here I’ll deal briefly with Halpern’s Kodansha Kanji Dictionary, then devote most of my attention to the Four‑Corner Method — not that I’m an advocate of the latter but its formal design and quirky byways (such as its Fifth‑Digit Kludge) require a good deal of time simply to be described, never mind assessed. An antiquarian pursuit? Given that translation apps now have a phone‑camera option for handling hànzì, and given that a Chinese Chip in the cranium seems imminent, a study of two dictionary look‑up methods might strike one as quaint. But there are lessons to be learned by studying such material as if from a System Analyst’s viewpoint. I hope this piece might have some appeal from that angle at least, if not from a nuts‑and‑bolts Chinese studies standpoint.

As promised, here are the additional paragraphs from Vandermeersch on the roots of rationality in the earliest levels of Sinitic script.  They come from John Lagerwey who will be awarded the 3rd “Prix Vandermeersch” on November 18.  John explains:

I don’t have the time right now to give the full answer JPL deserves, but I am attaching the quotes from VDM’s Wangdao that I commented on recently during the day in his honor. This gives a number of key quotes from his work on “teleological” vs “morphological” and therefore constitutes the best answer to JPL at this time.

For the convenience of readers, I [VHM] am alternating Google translations with the original French text, section by section.  I have made a few small modifications that are marked with my initials, and a few tiny ones for idiomaticity that are not marked.

For the latest study and lexicographical material touching on the subject of this post, see below at the very bottom.

——————-

Léon Vandermeersch, Wangdao ou La voie royale II Recherches sur l’esprit des institutions de la Chine archaïque, structures politiques, les rites

Léon Vandermeersch, Wangdao or The Royal Way II Research on the spirit of institutions in archaic China, political structures, rites

A few days ago, G.W. sent a question about this tweet:

Remember—Biden tried to fire essentially every worker who didn't take the COVID vaccine. That's the real Joe Biden.

VOTE!

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 1, 2022

G.W.'s question:

I noticed was that he writes "take the vaccine," rather than "get the vaccine." To me, "take" sounds just wrong — I feel like the verb we use for injections is "get." And I wondered if "take" would make it sound more like the vaccine is an evil Big Government imposition, which the recipients passively accept (as in "take it lying down"), as compared to something you might "get" which would be more of an actively sought-after benefit. From googling, it looks like both "take" and "get" are fairly common, actually; but is there a way to find out if vaccine-skeptics and/or Republicans are more likely to use "take"?

Amid the chaos at Twitter, there's this:

Ok, I’ve joined #Mastodon but also this pic.twitter.com/2Uue7E4BR8

— Sinéad Crowley (@SineadCrowley) November 4, 2022

A PRC graduate student in Chinese literature at Indiana University sent along this clever arrangement of "Happy Birthday":

"Hirokazu, meet Hirokazu: 178 Hirokazu Tanakas set record for gathering of people with same name", Kyodo (10/29/22):

jin defang asked: 

New expression, or at least new to me: soup sandwich.  All that meant to me was an option at Panera, which didn’t fit the context. So I asked the last person who used it, Fred, and this is his reply.  (I also didn’t know what FUBAR meant but that was on google).

Fred's reply to jin defang:

I think it’s a Navy saying, at least that’s where I first heard and used it.

It’s used kind of like FUBAR only it’s an intentional mixed metaphor or non sequitur…like the saying “it ain’t rocket-surgery”.  

Saying it’s a ‘soup-sandwich’ is essentially saying it’s FUBARed.

Received today the newsletter of INSTITUT RICCI – Centre Sèvres, Paris.

Actualités de novembre 2022
 
Le 19 octobre dernier, l'Institut Ricci a rendu hommage le temps d'une journée au grand sinologue disparu il y a un an, Léon Vandermeersch. A partir de son étude de la divination et de la naissance de l’écriture en Chine ancienne, il a mené une réflexion de fond sur les différences entre rationalités occidentale et chinoise, qualifiées respectivement de « téléologique » et « morphologique ». La journée a permis d’évoquer son apport à la compréhension de la Chine et, surtout, de convaincre les participants qu’il faudrait un colloque plus substantiel qui permettrait une évaluation approfondie de cet apport.

At the top left and bottom left of this restaurant's home page, written in very small Roman capital letters, it says, "ORISSIC HOT POT", and that is paired with the Chinese name, "zhè yī xiǎoguō 這一小鍋" ("this small pot").

If we do a Google search on "orissic hot pot 這一小鍋" (without the quote marks), we will get 4 pages and 80,000 ghits, the first of which is bafflingly "jīngdiǎn shítou guō" 經典石頭鍋 ("Classic Stone [hot] pot").  If we do a Google search on "經典石頭鍋 classic stone [hot] pot" (without the quote marks), we will get 4 pages and 15,100 ghits.