Language Log has been fortunate to have had several guest posts and numerous comments by Douglas Adams, doyen of Tocharian studies in America (see "Selected readings" for a sampling). Now, stimulated by the recent post on Chinese chariotry, he has written the following ruminations in response. I read with interest the material on early Chinese […]
We have been intrigued by Iskander Ding since encountering him on X/Twitter a while back, several posts from his account having made it onto Language Log (see "Selected readings"). With a handle like his, where Iskandar is the Persian form of the name of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (256–323 BC) and Ding has […]
"They are known as one of archaeology’s great enigmas – hollow 12-sided objects from the Roman era with no known purpose or use." So begins this article by Jessica Murray in The Guardian (4/29/24): Mysterious Roman dodecahedron to go on display in Lincoln There are no known descriptions or drawings of object in Roman literature, […]
By chance, I came across the surname "Gnaizda". Its phonological configuration puzzled me for a while, but then I began to formulate hypotheses about its origin. I briefly thought that it might have been Semitic and considered the possibility that it was cognate with "genesis". It was easy to rule out "genesis", though, because that […]
From Charles Belov: While riding the 22 Fillmore bus through the Mission District in San Francisco today, I overheard a conversation in Cantonese. It was nearly 100% in Cantonese, not the Cantlish* that I rarely also hear. What surprised me, though, was when one of the elderly speakers said "Hong Kong" they used the English […]
Lord knows we've encountered many bizarre translations and explanations of the much maligned Mandarin term, weiji (see "Selected readings") below, but this is one of the weirdest crosslingual definitions that has ever come to my attention: Suicide is usually an attempt to deal with a crisis. The Chinese character for "crisis" translates into "dangerous opportunity." […]
Preface Because surnames of immigrants in a melting pot like America often end up getting distorted, bowdlerized, prettified, and otherwise transformed from what they were in their original homelands, we cannot take their current form as gospel linguistic truth. Nonetheless, people who encounter them cannot avoid taking them at their face value, which may cause […]
Vacillating Chinese terminology for think tanks Mark Metcalf wrote to tell me: Global Times*just ran an article that might be of interest regarding PRC think tanks and a new book related to this topic: “Researchers, scholars explore methods to boost China’s influence of thoughts”. *an appendage of People's Daily I was caught up short by […]
Continuing our series on dragons, this note and illustration come from Juha Janhunen, the Finnish linguist: Happy Blue Dragon Year to everybody! Below is the official flag (1889-1912) of the Manchu Empire (in the west misleadingly known as "China"), which happens to have a blue dragon on it. Manchu muduri 'dragon' still seems to lack an external etymology. […]
Today is the Lunar New Year's Day, and it's the Year of the Dragon / /lʊŋ³⁵/ . As such, a kerfuffle is stirring in China and the English-speaking world regarding the English translation of lóng ⿓ / 龙 / 竜 (J), which is usually "dragon". I will begin with the pronunciation of the word. In […]
Photograph of a sign on a curry shop in Banqiao District, New Taipei City:
A little over a month ago, People's Daily published an article featuring drone photography of the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian Province: Aerial view of legacies along ancient Maritime Silk Road in China's Fujian Xinhua (12/16/23) Upon reading the article, I commented: Journey to the West Sun Wukong and Hanuman This article is especially […]