Language Log

[This is a guest post by Mok Ling about the Sinitic word for "million" in Southeast Asian Mandarin in general, and Indonesian Mandarin in particular.]

I recently had a conversation with a Mandarin-speaking Chinese-Indonesian friend who used the word 條 tiáo to mean "million" (as in 1 000 000) in the place of the more universal 百萬 bǎiwàn. After asking our other Southeast Asian Mandarin-speaking (mostly Singaporean and Malaysian) friends, we found that none of them have ever said 條 tiáo for "million" — all of them say 百萬 bǎiwàn.

Now I know for a fact that Indonesian Hokkien has a similar-sounding word for "million" — 兆 tiāu/tiǎu (Wiktionary says the first reading is more common in Xiamen/Amoy and Zhangzhou/Changchiu while the second is more common in Quanzhou/Chinchiu). This use of 兆 for "million" is also recorded in 華夷通語 Huâ–Î Thong-gú, an 1883 (Kangxi 9) dictionary by a Chinese-Malay translator named 林衡南 Lim Heng-nam (image available upon request), glossed as 寔撈突轆沙 sit-la-tut lak-sa (Malay: seratus laksa — "laksa" is obviously from Sanskrit; modern Malay no longer uses myriads, but millions "juta". Note also that the circle under 轆 on the image signifies a vernacular reading, that is lak, rather than the literary reading lok).

Like some others, I have an (empirically unsupported) impression that features of Donald Trump's speaking style have changed recently. I first noticed this in listening to his 8/8/2024 press conference in Mar-a-lago — which seems rather different from e.g. his 7/21/2015 rally speech in Sun City., or the many other samples in "Past posts on Donald Trump's rhetoric", 1/5/2024.

At some point before long, I'll provide some numbers to support or undermine this impression. Meanwhile, the comments section is open for your reactions.

Today's SMBC:

A Language Log reader asked:

I’m curious, do griffin motifs (creatures with four legs but beak) appear in China at a known date? do you think the imagery dispersed from the East, i.e., from Scythia and Asia westward to the Mediterranean or vice versa, from the West to the East?

Since we have often discussed language spreads of the Scythians and other nomadic groups of Central, Inner, and Southwest Asia, I believe it is a worthy topic to pursue the transmission of art motifs associated with these groups across the Eurasian expanse. Consequently, I asked Petya Andreeva, who is a specialist on this type of nomadic art, what her response to this question would be.  She replied (note especially the last two sentences):

Marilyn Singer is reponsible for the local (re-)invention of "Reverso Poetry: Writing Verse in Reverse":

A reverso is a poem with two halves. In a reverso, the second half reverses the lines from the first half, with changes only in punctuation and capitalization — and it has to say something completely different from the first half (otherwise it becomes what one blogger’s kid called a “same-o.”)

Wikipedia uses the term "Reversible poem", and tells us that

A reversible poem, also called a palindrome poem or a reverso poem, is a poem that can be read both forwards and backwards, with a different meaning in each direction, like this:

Reversible poems, called hui-wen shih poems, were a Classical Chinese artform. The most famous poet using this style was the 4th-century poet Su Hui, who wrote an untitled poem now called "Star Gauge" (Chinese: 璇璣圖; pinyin: xuán jī tú).This poem contains 841 characters in a square grid that can be read backwards, forwards, and diagonally, with new and sometimes contradictory meanings in each direction.[2] Reversible poems in Chinese may depend not only on the words themselves, but also on the tone to produce a sense of poetry. Beginning in the 1920s, punctuation (which is uncommon in Chinese) was sometimes added to clarify Chinese palindromic poems.

The focus of this post is Brian Bilston's Reverso Poem "Refugees".

Xinyi Ye came upon this post on Zhīhū 知乎 ("Did you know?"), a Chinese social media site that is comparable to Quora:

Rúhé kàndài huíguó rénshì shuōhuà jiádài Yīngwén?

如何看待回国人士说话夹带英文？

"How should we view / treat people returning to China [from abroad] who mix English in their speech?"

The author is Ren Zeyu, who seems to be an anime artist, based on the bio of his account.

Jeffrey L. Schwartz (cf. "Durian pizza" [10/18/19]) posted this photo on Facebook, showing a midtown Manhattan Asian fusion restaurant called Phoshime:

First, a few words about the text, after which I will introduce the Sinologist who undertook this monumental philological task, Manfred W. Frühauf.

English:

The Mu Tianzi Zhuan, or Records of [King] Mu, the Son of Heaven, is con­sider­ed to be the ear­liest and longest ex­tant trav­e­logue in Chinese literature. It describes the jour­neys of King Mu (r. 976-922 BC or 956-918 BC) of the Zhou Dynasty (c.1046-256 BC) to the farthest corners of his realm and beyond in the 10th century BC. Harnessing his famous eight noble steeds he visits dis­tant clans and nations such as the Quanrong, Chiwu, and Jusou, exchanging gifts with all of them; he scales the awe-inspiring Kunlun mountains and meets with legendary Xiwangmu ("Queen Mother of the West"); he watches exotic animals, and he orders his men to mine huge quantities of precious jade for transport back to his cap­i­tal. The travelogue ends with a de­tailed account of the mourning ceremonies during the burial of a favorite lady of the king.

Recent stock-market volatility reminds us of this KAL cartoon:

A poem by Dan Perkins:

…vs. having a video conversation with her…

Attachment ambiguity of the week: "RFK Jr. says he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it in bizarre video with Roseanne Barr", NY Post 8/4/2024.

Deepa Seetharaman & Matt Barnum, "There’s a Tool to Catch Students Cheating With ChatGPT. OpenAI Hasn’t Released It.", WSJ 8/4/2024:

OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper. The company hasn’t released it despite widespread concerns about students using artificial intelligence to cheat.

The project has been mired in internal debate at OpenAI for roughly two years and has been ready to be released for about a year, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a matter of pressing a button,” one of the people said.

[This is a guest post by Craig Benjamin, the leading authority on Yuezhi history.  It is a follow-up to "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)]

"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back:  The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).

A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal concerning attempts by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists to unearth material evidence of the Yuezhi and early Kushans makes interesting reading. The author prefaces their account by placing the work of the archaeologists in the context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand the scope and influence of Chinese civilization, arguing that the efforts of Chinese researchers in various global locations ‘has the potential to change the field of archaeology itself, along with China’s place in the sweep of human history’. However, rather than promoting the influence of Chinese civilization in Central Asia, the archaeologists appear to be intent upon advancing nationalist claims in support of China’s Belt and Road partner Uzbekistan by arguing, on the basis of very slender evidence, that the Kushans ‘were descendants of the local population’.