From Chau Wu: I have always wondered about the deep gulf of variations in the sounds of "néng 能 -bearing" characters, that is, the variations in the onsets and rimes (shēng 聲 and yùn 韻): néng 能 n- / -eng (Tw l- / -eng) [Note: 能 orig. meaning 'bear'; nai, an aquatic animal; thai, name […]
One of the first Pekingese colloquialisms I learned (by now I know scores) was taught to me half a century ago by Iris Rulan Chao Pian (1922-2013), daughter of the distinguished linguist, Yuen Ren Chao (1892-1982). It sounded like "der", sometimes with a trill at the end, and meant "scram; skedaddle". Like many authentic Pekingese […]
The tiger is the coming year's representative in the sexagenary cycle, the 60-term cycle of twelve zodiacal animals combined with five elements / phases in the traditional Chinese calendar; currently used in Japan for years, historically also for days; widely applied in Chinese astrology. (source, see also here, here, here, and here) In Sinitic languages, […]
Two days ago, I met a person who had a thick white coating on their tongue. Wondering what it was called and its implications for health, I asked members of the e-Mair list about it. Here are some of the answers I received: Denis (Sinologist): Thick tongue coating, often due to lengthening of the keratinous […]
According to Christina Gleason, "What Does It Mean to Be Fae as a Gender?": While some people who are fae use fae/faer as their pronouns, I prefer to keep the she/her pronouns I’ve gone by my whole life. It gives me the joke that my pronouns are sidhe/her, where sidhe (pronounced she) is the Irish […]
Today, on #LinguisticsWithSlava The Russian word for a sports fan is "bolel'shchik." I'll explain in a minute. But first, did you know that for a long time Americans had no word for it? Sports fans appeared in the US in the 1850s, but the word didn't come about until early XX c.. — Slava Malamud […]
Making coffee this morning made me think about brewing — not the process, but the English verb brew and its semantic evolution. In particular, it made me wonder again about nativist versions of semantic atomism, which hold that word meanings are (perhaps structured) collections of innate atomic features. Versions of these ideas go back thousands […]
Following on the hoofs of "Sumomomomomomomomo" (11/17/21), here's another good one, from rit majors: (source)
In the fifth comment to "Artistic Sinograph: Buddha" (11/11/21), stephen reeves says he'd like to hear about the origins of Zen. This has always been one of my favorite topics, so I'm more than happy to tell it. "Zen" entered the English lexicon already by 1727. Here's a succinct, serviceable, popular explanation of its derivation: […]
I take great pleasure in finding morphemes in early Sinitic that are disyllabic, i.e., neither syllable of which means anything by itself, but acquires meaning only in combination with another morpheme to which it is customarily linked. I have found hundreds of ancient terms composed of such morphemes and have written about many of them […]
We often encounter fake "Oriental wisdom" that purports to come from the ancient sages. So much of it clogs the internet that it is very hard to keep track of what is genuine and what is false. And then there's the (in)famous pseudo-linguistics of the "Crisis = danger + opportunity" trope which has captured the […]
From Zihan Guo: A Japanese expression I came upon in a reading from Takami sensei's class reminded me of the "om" you mentioned weeks ago in our class. 阿吽の呼吸（aun'nokokyū あうんのこきゅう） It refers to the synchronization of breathing of sumo opponents before a match. I read about this in an article about an interview with a […]