Language Log

Many people who don't have the slightest clue about how Chinese characters work have been snookered by the (in)famous Chinese "poem" that has 92 or 94 characters all pronounced "shi" (though in different tones).  It's supposed to be a test of one's accuracy in mastering tones and is said to be intelligible when spoken aloud with the correct tones.  Some people think it proves how profound Chinese characters are.  In actuality, it proves absolutely nothing of value.  Nobody talks like this.

Here it is, with explication and annotation:   "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den".

Unless you have endless amounts of time to waste, I would advise you to do no more than glance at it.

Before last week, I had never heard this expression, but among people who work remotely over the internet, it is fairly common.  For example, if you haven't seen or heard from a colleague for a long time, you might say to him, "Yo, bro, I was wondering whether you quiet quit."

What does it mean?

(ambitransitive, idiomatic) To cease overachieving at one's workplace to focus on one's personal life; to do only what is reasonably or contractually required. [since 2022] 

(Wiktionary)

A little over a year ago, as I was running through the little town of Wamsutter (pop. 203) in southwest Wyoming, I was stunned when the attendants and clerks at the three gas stations there uniformly greeted me with a hearty "Welcome in!"  

Last week, as I walked into a small store in the rural Dallas area, the shop assistant hailed me naturally with "welcome in!"  I couldn't help but catch my breath and momentarily halt my pace, because I hadn't heard that interjection a single time in the Philadelphia area.

I asked my son, who lives outside of Dallas, how prevalent this expression is.  He replied:

I would say it's fairly common.

Maybe 1 in 3 times one enters a restaurant or smaller store you hear that or a similar greeting

From AntC:  "Following the thread on South Korea’s English exam, here’s New Taipei promoting topolect diversity. “the goal is to encourage more people to learn Hakka and use the language in daily life.”

New Taipei to reward Hakka test passes with cash
City residents can earn up to NT$4,000 for certified exam passes
Reagan Lai, Taiwan News (Dec. 25, 2025)

The Penghu (/ˈpʌŋˈhuː/ PUNG-HOO,       Hokkien POJ: Phîⁿ-ô͘  or Phêⁿ-ô͘ ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, about 50 kilometres (25 nautical miles) west of the main island of Taiwan across the Penghu Channel, covering an area of 141 km² (54 sq mi). The archipelago collectively forms Penghu County. The largest city is Magong, on the largest island, which is also named Magong.   …Population 101,758 (2014)    (Wikipedia)

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventy-fourth issue:

“Buddhism among the Sogdians: A Re-Evaluation,” by Todd Gibson.

Random storefront in Taiwan:

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventy-third issue:

“Correspondences between Old Chinese and Proto-Celtic Words,” by Julie Lee Wei

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventy-second issue:

“The Japanese and Their Language: How the Japanese Made Their Language and It Made Them,” by Samuel Robert Ramsey.

PROLOGUE

Travel the length and breadth of Japan, across the more than 6,800 islands in the archipelago, and anywhere you go, from the Tokyo megalopolis to the most remote and isolated village, every person you meet will immediately understand and speak Nihongo—Japanese. The accents you hear might vary from place to place. There will be odd and unexplained words and pronunciations peculiar to each of these places. But not one person among the more than 126 million citizens of Japan will have any trouble at all understanding the standard language as it’s normally spoken.

No, this is not about Mister Ed. The OED glosses to talk horse as "to talk the language of ‘the turf’; to talk big or boastfully", with quote from T.C. Halliburton's 1855 collection Nature & Human Nature:

Doctor, I am a borin’ of you, but the fact is, when I get a goin’ ‘talkin’ hoss,’ I never know where to stop.

But Sam Slick, the speaker of that fictional quote, is actually talking about a horse-riding incident, which would fit perfectly well in the current equestrian podcast Talk Horse. And I asked the OED about the "talk horse" phrase because of a quote in a collection of 1852-53 articles about Emma Snodgrass: Cross dresser, for which the "talk big or boastfully" sense might be more appropriate.

Photograph from Neil Kubler of a sign in front of a gift shop in Penghu, Taiwan selling Pénghú wénshí 澎湖文石 ("Pescadores aragonite"); its name in Chinese, wénshí 文石 literally means "patterned stone", an apt characterization for this carbonate mineral which is favored by sculptors.

Wiktionary's etymology:

nyce, nice, nys, from Old French nice, niche, nisce (“simple, foolish, ignorant”), from Latin nescius (“ignorant, not knowing”); compare nesciō (“to know not, be ignorant of”), from ne (“not”) + sciō (“to know”).

Wiktionary's etymology:

From Middle English mery, merie, mirie, myrie, murie, murȝe, from Old English meriġe, miriġe, myriġe, myreġe, myrġe (“pleasing, agreeable; pleasant, sweet, delightful; melodious”), from Proto-West Germanic *murgī (“short, slow, leisurely”), from Proto-Germanic *murguz (“short, slow”), from Proto-Indo-European *mréǵʰus (“short”). Cognate with Scots mery, mirry (“merry”), Middle Dutch mergelijc (“pleasant, agreeable, joyful”), Norwegian dialectal myrjel (“small object, figurine”), Latin brevis (“short, small, narrow, shallow”), Ancient Greek βραχύς (brakhús, “short”). Doublet of brief.