Language Log

After stumbling on Benjamin Lee Whorf's affiliation with the Theosophical Society, I read two articles that he contributed to the MIT Technology Review in 1940: "Science and Linguistics" in the April issue, and "Linguistics as an Exact Science" in the December issue. Something in the second article surprised me.

Whorf gives a formal account of English syllable structure in terms of what he calls "pattern symbolics", presenting the term and a sketch of the associated formalism as if they were standard linguistic theory, like "Maxwell's equations" in physics. But I've never heard the phrase "pattern symbolics" before, and web search turns up no examples other than this article. And the formalism seems similarly idiosyncratic.

Today's SMBC:

Those first four panels resonated with my recent experience skimming Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. Vol II — Anthropogensis (1888). I learned of Blavatsky's existence due to the restaurant located in her former residence, and my sense of her influence in Philadelphia was reinforced by years of walking past the United Lodge of Theosophists.

I expected The Secret Doctrine to be nuttier than squirrel poop, as indeed it is. But I wasn't prepared for its extreme mythic racism, endorsement of (fantastical versions of) eugenics, and so on. In retrospect, I should have realized that late 19th-century fantasy would be like that. I'll spare you the details of Blavatsky's theories of lost continents and their associated "root races" — you can read Wikipedia's summary, or dive into the 1888 tome yourself if care. But I'll reproduce a few illustrative quotes from the book.

All right, I know it sounds funny, but it's a thing in Taiwan, as at this Taichung restaurant:

"Eddie Bauer changed its logo because Gen Z doesn’t read cursive" (Fast Company, Oct. 6, 2023)

Storefront in Taichung, Taiwan:

From Charles Belov:

Sending along a photo from a videodisc cover I encountered in a little free library.

The Chinese title 幸福来敲门 is translated into English as "Come The Felicity The Door".

Klaus Nuber, who four years ago sent us this amusing post, "Restaurant logo with a dingus" (5/29/19), has contributed another droll Anekdote.

The following article is in today's Süddeutsche Zeitung, "Kannste knicken?"* (11/23/23) — herewith the second anecdote of three from all over the world:

*VHM:  The meaning of the article title escapes me — can you fold / bend [it]?

Mitten in … Zhejiang

Weiter weg geht es kaum von der Großstadt Peking: Neun Stunden mit dem Zug, dann eine lange Autofahrt die Täler entlang, jetzt ist der Hunger groß. Im Restaurant? Keine Karte, bestellt werden kann, was im Kühlschrank liegt. Ein paar Karotten, zwei Kartoffeln, ein platt gedrückter Tintenfisch. Kommt sofort! Dafür um die Ecke, kaum zu glauben, ein Café! Draußen das ländliche China mit seinen Reisfeldern und Kohlelastern, drinnen brummt die Espresso-Maschine. Der lang ersehnte Schluck, aber was ist das? Der Kaffee – eiskalt! Vorsichtige Frage an den Barista, ob es den auch in heiß gäbe? Sein Blick zunächst: totale Entgeisterung, dann folgt schallendes Gelächter. "Diese Ausländer!", ruft er und alle gucken. "Hört mal her. Jetzt trinken die ihren Kaffee auch noch wie Tee!" So was Amüsantes haben die Menschen hier schon lange nicht mehr gehört. Lea Sahay

One of my favorite diversions is looking at old photographs of James Murray (1837-1915), chief editor of the OED, and his cohort working away in their scriptorium, "a shed in Murray’s back garden in Oxford".

What a bunch of committed eccentrics!  That includes Sarah Ogilvie, who worked at the OED for awhile and wrote this article:

When American Words Invaded the Greatest English Dictionary

Slips of paper with peculiar regional terms like ‘huckleberry’ and ‘cottondom’ crossed the Atlantic to Oxford and into the pages of a 70-year lexicographical project

WSJ (11/10/23)

I am so much in awe and admiration of these quaint, quirky, quixotic lexicographers buried amongst their millions of 4" X 6" quotation slips stuffed in more than a thousand pigeon hole grids that line the walls of their corrugated metal outbuilding that I wish I could quote this entire, wonderful piece, but that would not be acceptable according to the normal rules and practices of Language Log, so I will simply pick and choose several of the more colorful passages.

In the first comment to this post on a Northeastern topolectal word for kohlrabi, "piě-le 丿了" (cf. MSM piělán 苤蓝), Jenny Chu astutely asked whether the second syllable is related to the Chinese word for the color blue, lán 藍 (also "indigo", for which see below).

That sent me scurrying, since — although I was vaguely aware of a secondary meaning besides "indigo, blue" of "cabbage" for lán 藍 — I could not recall ever hearing any convincing / satisfying explanation for what the relation between these two meanings is.

Some early Chinese authors and commentators do assert that the leaves of cruciferous vegetables (Brassicaceae, colloquially called cole crops in North America) are referred to as lán 藍 due to their color.  However, because of my background knowledge of words for cabbage, kale, etc. in many other languages, I did not find that a satisfying explanation.  So I decided to dig deeper into the mystery of the dual identity of lán 藍:  indigo and cabbage.

I believe that what I came up with will illuminate the conundrum.

As is so often true, xkcd points to an important topic so far ignored by linguists:

This is a followup to "Japanese words that are dying out: focus on diabetes" (11/21/23).  Because it's history of science / medicine for specialists and too technical for the majority of readers, I will not provide transcriptions for all but a few of the most common terms.

[The following is a guest post from Nathan Hopson]

From Philip Taylor:

The British media were flooded yesterday with reports that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been “bamboozled” by scientific evidence presented during the Covid-19 pandemic.  My understanding of "bamboozle" has always been that deception must be involved, and this is borne out by the OED, but there was clearly no deception in this case (other than, perhaps, self-deception, in that BoJo may well have convinced himself that he did understand the scientific evidence, when he clearly did not), so why did Sir Patrick Valance, then Chief Scientific Advisor to HMG, record in his diary that “the Prime Minister was at times ‘bamboozled’” ?

From The Japan Times:

A foray into the realm of Japanese ‘dead words’

Trendy buzzwords tend to be most at risk of dying out as they often reflect ideas and trends that are fleeting.

By Tadasu Takahashi
Staff writer
 
Oct 31, 2023

Sometimes whole languages go extinct, more often certain words within languages cease to exist as part of the living lexicon.  There are political, demographic, and other socioeconomic reasons why languages disappear.  The reasons why individual words die out are related more to fashion — in culture, science, and similar emotional and intellectual reasons.

Tadasu Takahashi's interesting article provides some specific examples from contemporary Japanese language.