Language Log

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-sixty-second issue — “Divine Support and World Conquest in the Stele Inscriptions of Qin Shi Huangdi and the Res Gestae of Augustus,” by Dan Zhao.

ABSTRACT: This paper comparatively examines the propaganda of the first emperors of China and Rome, Qin Shi Huangdi and Augustus. Focusing on the interplay between divine support and claims of world conquest and utilising the Qin stelae and the Res Gestae Divi Augusti as case studies, this paper will argue that both early imperial Chinese and Roman propaganda shared extremely similar rationales and methods. Divine support and military victories were intimately linked and mutually dependent. As such, the emperors' claims to unprecedented levels of divine support also impelled them to claim successful world conquest, lest the very ideological foundations of their regimes be called into question.

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "You may notice the first half of these instructions are similar to the instructions for a working nuclear fusion device. After the first few dozen steps, be sure to press down firmly and fold quickly to overcome fusion pressure."

John Cotter, "David Lodge, British Novelist Who Satirized Academic Life, Dies at 89", NYT 1/3/2025:

David Lodge, the erudite author of academic comedy and a wide-ranging literary critic, died on Wednesday in Birmingham, England. He was 89. […]

The author of 15 novels and more than a dozen nonfiction books as well as plays and screenplays, Mr. Lodge was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and his work has been translated into dozens of languages.

The Booker Prize non-winning was featured in headlines from the AP ("British author David Lodge, twice nominated for Booker Prize, dies at 89") and the Independent ("Booker Prize-shortlisted author David Lodge dies at the age of 89"), and mentioned prominently in several other obits — so I want to give  Lodge the last word on this topic, via his 2018 interview in The Times, which ran under the headline "David Lodge: ‘The Booker prize is good for the novel but bad for novelists’":

“The Booker prize has created a huge long line of losers, as Mr Trump would probably call them, and there are enough chances to fail in the literary world without going through that.”

David Lodge is one of the prize’s most notable unwinners. At the age of 82 this former professor of English literature, with 15 novels to his name, is probably the most distinguished novelist of his generation not to win it. Not that failure ought to bother him. It has been a nice little earner. He has mined the great seams of frustrated ambition, bungled relationships and sexual disappointment to create superb social comedy in novels such as Changing Places (1975), Small World (1984) and Nice Work (1988).

And I should mention that The Booker Prizes's web page for David Lodge, along with listing his three failures to win, features the fact that he chaired the prize committee in 1989.

This is a truly impressive form of calligraphy, the likes of which I've never seen before:

What won't they think of next as means for writing sinographs?

[Guest post by Frank Chance in response to my latest post.  Gives me hebi-jebies.]

Reading  your recent Language Log post on turtles (mostly about Kucha) on New Year’s Day made me wonder whether there should be a Language Log post on snakes.  There are two very different characters used for snake in Japanese – 巳 mi, used almost exclusively for the zodiac sign and in counting (it is a homonym for three ), and　蛇  hebi., also read as ja, particularly in such compounds as 大蛇 daja, also read as Orochi.  That name is known to giant monster fans from 八岐大蛇  Yamata no Orochi, the eight-forked (and hence eight-headed) great snake mentioned in Nihonshoki, the oldest Japanese history text.  Tea aficionados and dance fans know it from a type of umbrella with a red dot where the spines meet, called a 蛇の目傘 janome-gasa or snake-eyed parasol. Janome was in turn a corporate name for a maker of sewing machines.

From Haun Saussy:

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-sixtieth issue:

“Kanji and the Computer: A Brief History of Japanese Character Set Standards,” by James Breen.

https://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp360_kanji_computers_japanese_character_set.pdf

ABSTRACT
This paper describes the development of the character coding systems and standards that enable Japanese text to be recorded and used in computer systems. The Japanese coding systems, which were first developed in the late 1970s, pioneered the approaches to handling the large numbers of kanji characters and established a pathway that was adopted in other standards for Asian languages. The paper covers the development of the major Japanese standards and their evolution into the Unicode character standard, which is now the basis for all language coding.

This was inevitable:

Kaohsiung university faces backlash over simplified Chinese exam:
Education ministry says faculty member's business card listing ‘Taiwan Province, China’ is ‘inappropriate’ by Charlotte Lee, Taiwan News (1/3/25)

(article in Mandarin)

The language is the same; it's only the script that is different — but that really matters:  Think Hindi-Urdu, Serbo-Croatian, Hangul-Hanja, Maltese-Arabic.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology is facing controversy after a final exam in its Department of Aquaculture was in simplified Chinese, while a faculty member's business card listed “Taiwan Province, China.”

From Philip Taylor:

Just received this in an e-mail message — sender: American male, born (maybe) early to mid sixties, attended Dartmouth 1984 (or thereabouts) onwards.

Thanks Hilmar. I'll review/install soonly. -k

Seeking clarification, I asked Philip:

The man's name is Hilmar?

What's he going to review/install?

Philip replied:

Hilmar is the name of the addressee (Hilmar Preuße)— the sender was "k", a.k.a. Karl Berry.  "k" is going to review "another set of patches for manual pages".

The implications of this case are enormous, so I will quote extensively from the following account, while noting there are many paragraphs with important content that I have merely mentioned or summarized.  Those who are seriously interested in whether this decision constitutes compelling precedent for future jurisprudence should read the whole account.  Those who are themselves responsible for making such decisions in the courts may wish to take a look at the original Case Citation: Achter Land & Cattle Ltd. v South West Terminal Ltd., 2024 SKCA 115.

"Thumbs-Up Emoji Formed Binding Sales Contract in Canada–Achter v. South West Terminal", by Eric Goldman, Technology & Marketing Law Blog (December 20, 2024)

Recent events have underlined general unhappiness with aspects of the current American health care system, expressed in this recent song by Jesse Welles:

And everyone is aware of current controversies, in America and elsewhere, about immigration.