Oil is one of the most important substances used by human beings. It can be an essential food for consumption, a medium for cooking and frying, a lubricant, a material for the transmission of pressure through closed channels, a soothing substance for the skin, a substance to burn for propulsion and illumination, a polishing agent, […]
Mehmet Oguz Derin writes: Recently, while reinspecting the numerals, I found that the case of forty in Turkic is a bit more challenging (kırk/qwrq). It made me wonder, could this possibly be a very early borrowing from Indo-European, from the same stem that produces the quaranta word with the same meaning? Maybe the base got […]
The ambiguity of how to pronounce 咀 (jǔ, zuǐ) in toponyms (see this recent post) is mirrored by the situation regarding 堡. Is it bǎo, bǔ, or pù? bǎo small camp; small mud fortification fort; fortress Short for 漢堡／汉堡 (hànbǎo, “hamburger”) bǔ (often in placenames) town or village with walls 吳堡 / 吴堡 ― Wúbǔ […]
What with the high heat (in the 90s) these days, at least here in Philadelphia, and all the talk of Semitic roots, especially those beginning with one or the other of the five Proto-Semitic sibilants, I feel an impulse to write about "sherbet". Already from the time I was a little boy, I sensed that […]
Quoting Wikipedia, Barbara Phillips Long writes: …[S]ince 1935, scholars have debated whether or not the term refers to a type of sacrifice on the basis of a similar term, also spelled mlk, which means "sacrifice" in the Punic language. This second position has grown increasingly popular, but it remains contested. Barbara was inspired to look this […]
My entire career as a Sinologist has been based on the study of archeologically recovered materials. I'm talking particularly about the medieval Dunhuang manuscripts, but also the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Tarim mummies and their associated artifacts. It's no wonder, therefore, that I have featured the importance of archeology for the study of […]
Below is a guest post by Corey Miller: In the third volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, la duchesse de Guermantes mentions she fortunately doesn’t know any Jews. It’s the middle of the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the nineteenth century. She goes on to mention some tedious ladies who put the […]
James Millward sent in a very interesting and important communication (copied in full below) touching upon the ethnic composition of what has now become the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) a thousand and more years ago, especially its Turkic and Proto-Turkic components, together with its proto-Mongolic and para-Mongolic congeners. Since it is of crucial significance […]
"A person, usually a woman, who is trained to assist women in childbirth." AHDEL But not always a woman: Men rarely practice midwifery for cultural and historical reasons. In ancient Greece, midwives were required by law to have given birth themselves, which prevented men from joining their ranks. In 17th century Europe, some barber surgeons, […]
If I were a cruciverbalist, I might use that as a clue for "hammock", though it didn't turn up here: https://www.wordplays.com/crossword-solver/sailor%27s-bed nor here: http://crosswordtracker.com/clue/sailors-bed/ but it was first here: https://crossword-solver.io/clue/sailor%27s-bed/ With somer a-comin' — though spryng has barely sprung, at least not in these parts — it's time to drag out our dusty, trusty hammocks […]
"Newly coined word 'rini' demeans children: rights watchdog", by Park Han-na, The Korea Herald (May 4, 2022) Popular internet slang words derived from the Korean word “eorini,” which means children, may promote negative stereotypes and discrimination against children, the country’s human rights watchdog said Tuesday. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea urged related government […]
[This is a guest post by Penglin Wang] The great difficulties we have with trying to study Xiongnu language persist from trying to glean Xiongnu words, especially the glossed ones, in early Chinese sources for comparison in order to know what linguistic affiliation it seems to have in the central Eurasian region. Since these […]
A comment to this post: "Accents you expect to hear" (4/6/22): From Rob: I was born and brought up in Zambia, a then-British colony. My (mainly) British parents made it clear that I was not to speak like a "jaapie", although that was the natural accent to use with my friends. It's a name, but […]