Language Log

Following up on "Turandot and the deep Indo-European roots of 'daughter'" (3/16/20), John Mullan (student of Arabic, master calligrapher, and expert chorister) writes:

As someone who’s studied a bit of Persian and a few other Indo European languages, I’ve always found it odd that most all of the kinship terms in Persian—mādar, pedar, barādar, dokhtar, pesar (cf. ‘puer’ in Latin and ‘pais’ in Greek, I assume)—have easy equivalents to my ear, /except/ ‘khāhar,’ sister. Wiktionary suggests it’s still related.

One quite recent finding of mine in PIE. As you probably know, 'Baghdad' is not an Arabic name, but a Persian one. It's composed of 'Bagh,' God (not the word used today), and 'Dād,' Given/Gift. Now I'm familiar with Bagh, ultimately, from listening to way too much Russian choral music and hearing Church Slavonic 'Bozhe.' Similarly, in the deep corners of my Greek student mind I remember names like 'Mithradates'—gift of Mithra or something along those lines—popping up as rulers/governors of city states in Classical Anatolia. What I /didn't/ pick out was the exact same construct as 'Baghdad' hiding in front of my eyes all along. There are two active NBA players named 'Bogdan(ović).' It's the same name as the city, only it's popped up in Serbo-Croatian. Funny stuff.

One of the recent events cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic was the ceremony awarding the Talcott Parsons Prize to Bill Labov:

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is awarding linguist William Labov the Talcott Parsons Prize for distinguished and original contributions to the social sciences. […]

Labov is regarded as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics, which is a discipline dedicated to understanding and researching language in relation to social factors that include region, race, class, and gender. The impact of Labov’s work is far-reaching and extends through the practice of language science around the world, hundreds of significant publications, and the countless students and scholars he mentored. His influence has been felt in education, sociology, computational and cognitive science, and law.

From Molly Des Jardin:

In the midst of our stressful times, I'm writing to share a distraction that is somehow still relevant. Given the kind of things you have noted on Language Log historically, I wondered if you observed this hashtag:

 #COVIDー19

From Reddit:

[Click to embiggen]

🤣

TODAY'S SPECIAL DRINK – THE QUARANTINI#COVID19Aus #COVIDー19 #covid19australia #COVID2019 #coronavirus #CoronaOutbreak #coronavirusaustralia #CoronavirusOutbreak #selfisolating #selfisolate #virus pic.twitter.com/4jjTfKT1gY

— Evey Hammond (@EveyHammond19) March 14, 2020

In recent days, the famous aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot, "Nessun dorma" (Italian: [nesˌsun ˈdɔrma]; English: "Let no one sleep"), has surfaced as part of a worldwide movement to encourage the Italian people in their struggle against the novel coronavirus (see here, here, and here).  This article by Claudia Rosett gives the backstory:

"An Uplifting Moment, in the Time of Coronavirus", PJ Media (3/14/20)

This led me to ponder the origins of Turandot's name, especially since the operatic version of the story is set in China and she is alleged to be a Chinese princess.  Right away, I was in for a jolt, since "The name of the opera is based on Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan), which is a common name used in Persian poetry for Central Asian princesses." (source)

Viral on Chinese social media:

Everybody is talking about the latest pandemic.  How do you say it in Japanese?

"‘Koronavairusu’ or ‘Koronauirusu?’ Japan Learns English:  Excessive focus on 'proper' pronunciation skews English learning", Asia Sentinel, by Xiaochen Su (March 15, 2020)

—–

With much of Japan gripped with the fear of contracting the Covid-19 virus, which has stricken at least 639 and killed 16, the crisis has triggered an odd only-in-Japan controversy, pertaining to the word “virus.”

To a non-Japanese unfamiliar with the language, the difference between two transliterations of a foreign loanword may seem trivial. But the concern for how “virus” is pronounced is the latest example in a long list of foreign loan-words that are being deliberately Anglicized. Beer has gone from biru to bia, pizza from piza to pittsa, violin from baiorin to vaiorin…within the limits of Japanese syllabary, foreign words have become ever closer to the original English pronunciation.

While for decades the standard pronunciation of the term virus has been uirusu, owing to the loan-word originally coming from German, those in the Englishteachingcommunity have seized upon the chance to remind people that it ought to be pronounced vairusu instead.

https://twitter.com/thevirologist/status/1238227100521369600

The Annual Reviews journals have released a list of relevant articles:

• Human Coronavirus: Host-Pathogen Interaction
• Coronavirus Host Range Expansion and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Emergence: Biochemical Mechanisms and Evolutionary Perspectives
• Structure, Function, and Evolution of Coronavirus Spike Proteins
• Middle East Respiratory Syndrome: Emergence of a Pathogenic Human Coronavirus
• Glycan Engagement by Viruses: Receptor Switches and Specificity
• Thinking Outside the Triangle: Replication Fidelity of the Largest RNA Viruses
• Biochemical Aspects of Coronavirus Replication and Virus-Host Interaction
• Birth and Pathogenesis of Rogue Respiratory Viruses
• Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS): A Year in Review
• The Immunobiology of SARS
• CORONAVIRUS: ORGANIZATION, REPLICATION AND EXPRESSION OF GENOME

The domesticated horse, the chariot, and the wheel came to East Asia from the west, and so did horse riding:

Mair, Victor H.  "The Horse in Late Prehistoric China:  Wresting Culture and Control from the 'Barbarians.'"  In Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew, and Katie Boyle, ed.  Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse,  McDonald Institute Monographs.  Cambridge:  McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003, pp. 163-187.

We now have newly unearthed archeological evidence for the introduction of wheeled vehicles to East Asia.  Here is a link to the recent discovery of the oldest wheel-tracks at the Pingliang Tai site in Huaiyang, Henan Province 河南淮阳平粮台.

The Pingliang Tai tracks are 4,200 years old and were produced by a two-wheeled cart.  In comparison, the oldest wheels in the West are much earlier.

Yesterday afternoon at Indiana University I gave a wide-ranging lecture on Iranian and Chinese interconnections from the Bronze Age through the late imperial period.  After the lecture, Chen Su, a doctoral candidate in Central Eurasian Studies, approached me and said that some of the points I made helped her to realize something about her own speech that had confused her for years.

Chen Su, who hails from Xi'an, where Guanzhong topolect is spoken, had noticed an interesting coincidence in the similarity of the pronunciation between Persian and Guanzhong topolect for the word “head”.

In the PRC, you'd best not say anything about COVID-19.  It's more or less forbidden for citizens to talk about it, much less question the government's handling of the CRISIS (not a "dangerous opportunity").  Even the name and the very existence of the disease are highly problematic.  Still, despite all the draconian censorship, people figure out various ways to circumvent the prohibitions and express their feelings and opinions.

"The coronavirus is inspiring memes, parodies and art in Asia as a way to cope", by David Pierson, Los Angeles Times (3/6/20)

"‘Noodles’ and ‘Pandas’: Chinese People Are Using Secret Code to Talk About Coronavirus Online".  "'Vietnamese pho noodles,' anyone?", by David Gilbert, VICE (3/6/20)