Language Log

Three years ago, we visited a proposal for "Classical Chinese computing" (12/19/19).  The post began thus:

Several colleagues called this article to my attention:

"Programming Language for the ancient Chinese"

Here's the introduction:

文言, or wenyan, is an esoteric programming language that closely follows the grammar and tone of classical Chinese literature. Moreover, the alphabet of wenyan contains only traditional Chinese characters and 「」 quotes, so it is guaranteed to be readable by ancient Chinese people. You too can try it out on the online editor, download a compiler, or view the source code.

The home page then goes through "Syntax", "Compilation", and "Get (Source Code; Online Editor; Reference".

From Xiaowan Cai:

In "Trends in book titles" (8/5/2022) I discussed the title-page complexity's of P. Sproson's 1740 work "THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity", and observed that "There's also more to say about Mr. Sproson's reader".

One thing to start with: Sproson provides a series of  reading lessons featuring sequences of words of increasing length and complexity. And some of them achieve a sort of accidental Seuss-ish poetry, e.g. this section of  a lesson "consisting of words not exceeding two letters in each":

is my ox to go
my ox is to go
of us or to us
of me or to me
to us or of us
to me or of me
is it to be so
it is to be so
to be so it is
is it so to be
it is so to be
is it so to me
is it so to us

Meta is inviting everyone to try out its BlenderBot3:

By releasing the chatbot to the general public, Meta wants to collect feedback on the various problems facing large language models. Users who chat with BlenderBot will be able to flag any suspect responses from the system, and Meta says it’s worked hard to “minimize the bots’ use of vulgar language, slurs, and culturally insensitive comments.” Users will have to opt in to have their data collected, and if so, their conversations and feedback will be stored and later published by Meta to be used by the general AI research community.

So following up on my earlier-reported "Conversations with GPT-3" (6/25/2022), here's BlenderBot3 chatting with a young person interested in philosophy:

From Claudia Rosett:

I have a question about a phrase that China’s foreign ministry attributed to Xi in his call with Biden last week:

In English:  “Those who play with fire will perish by it.”

That phrase, in English translation, is exactly the same as threats Chinese officials issued against Hong Kong during the protests in 2019.

I am wondering if this is a standard threat in Chinese — much as it is a proverb in the West — or something that for effect in English they have swiped from us.

I’m not sure it’s of any great importance which way that goes, but in the cataloguing of PRC threats made in English, it stands out as memorable, a phrase the press latches onto. Perhaps because it is so familiar to us.

If you have any insights on this, I’d be grateful.

I've been interested for some time in the way that (written) English sentence lengths have evolved over time — see "Trends", 3/27/2022, or the slides from my 5/20/2022 talk at SHEL12, "Historical trends in English sentence length and syntactic complexity". It's well known that the titles of published books have undergone an analogous process, but I don't think I've written about it. (Nor do I know of any scholarship on the topic — perhaps some commenters will be able to suggest some.)

A couple of days ago, while looking for the origins of an idiom, I stumbled across a contender for the title-length championship in in an interesting work from 1740 (image here):

THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity. CONTAINING, I. All the common words, ranged into distinct tables and classes; as well in regard to the number of letters in each word, as to the easiness of pronunciation, and the bearing of the accent. With useful notes and remarks upon the various sounds of the letters occasionally inserted in the margin. II. A large number of lessons, regularly suited to each table. III. An explanation of several words; particularly such as are of the same, or nearly alike in sound: designed to correct and prevent some orthographical errors and mistakes. IV. Some observations, rules, and directions, relating to the reading and writing English properly and correctly. The whole done after a new and easy Method. Approved of, and recommended, as the best book for the use of children, and all others, who would speedily attain to the knowledge of the English tongue. By P. SPROSON, S. M.

In learning Mandarin, after words for "hello", "how are you?", "goodbye", "yes", "no", "thank you", "where", and a couple dozen other basic expressions, one graduates to the next level of linguistic subtlety by learning "polite talk" (kèqì huà 客氣話) such as "bù hǎoyìsi 不好意思" and "bù gǎndāng 不敢當".

Both are well-nigh untranslatable, at least not with a single English term, since their meanings are so context sensitive.

Trilingual tablet at the altar of Genghis Khan (ca. 1162-1227) in Kandehuo Enclosure in the town of Xinjie, in the Ejin Horo Banner in the Ordos Prefecture of Inner Mongolia:

(source)

Intriguing t-shirt that is making the rounds these days:

(source)

Someone referred to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan as "foolhardy".  That prompted the following response from a sensitive and perceptive Chinese observer:

Someone asked me recently about (sources for exploring) the history of idioms like "low-hanging fruit" in business jargon. Unable to suggest any truly suitable data sources, I did a few of the obvious things.

Today's Dumbing of Age:

Mouseover title: "the pronouns are coming from INSIDE the sentence!!!"

Many of us first learned about the Balkan red pepper sauce / relish / spread called "ajvar" in this post:  "Bosnian menu" (7/28/22).  Simplicissimus contributed a nice comment in which it was averred that the BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) "word ‘ajvar’ and the English word ‘caviar’ both derive from the same etymon, the Ottoman Turkish word ‘havyar’ (which, in turn, derives from the Persian ‘xâvyâr’) — now that I think about it, it’s not unimaginable to me that ‘ajvar’ got its name on account of a vague resemblance to red caviar."

Since I was one of those who had not previously heard of ajvar but was quite familiar with caviar, Simplicissimus' remark really piqued my fancy because neither did the two food items in question resemble each other very much (fish roe vs. red pepper sauce), nor was the phonological resemblance that great (thinking especially of the "c" at the beginning of "caviar" and its absence from "ajvar").  So I decided to dig more deeply into the relationship between ajvar and caviar.  Turns out to a fascinating linguistic, cultural, and culinary story.