Search Results
September 26, 2020 @ 10:17 am
· Filed under Language and literature, Translation
Review: "Poems Without an ‘I’", by Madeleine ThienNYRB October 8, 2020 Issue The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)by Ha JinPantheon, 301 pp. The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translatedby David HintonNew Directions, 267 pp. Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Classical Chinese Poetryby David HintonShambhala, 138 pp. I have […]
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August 4, 2020 @ 12:25 pm
· Filed under Etymology, Toponymy, Translation
There's a Reddit page with this title: "Fully anglicised Japan, based off actual etymologies, rendered into plausible English". Feast your eyes: (source)
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July 11, 2020 @ 4:07 pm
· Filed under Classification, Etymology, Language and biology, Language and food
From the time I started learning Chinese more than half a century ago, I had a hard time lining up the many Chinese terms for different types of citrus with the corresponding words in English. For example, I always wanted to call oranges "júzi 橘子", but it is technically (botanically) more correct to call […]
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November 10, 2019 @ 3:51 pm
· Filed under Etymology
Compiling references to the Ocracoke "brogue", I wondered about the origins of the word. The Wikipedia entry confirms the possibilities that I recall: Multiple etymologies have been proposed: it may derive from the Irish bróg ("shoe"), the type of shoe traditionally worn by the people of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, and hence possibly originally […]
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October 30, 2019 @ 7:15 am
· Filed under Evolution of language, Historical linguistics, Language change, Phonetics and phonology
A Korean student was just in my office and saw this book on my table: mal-ui segyesa 말의 세계사. She said, "Oh, a world history of words!" But I knew that couldn't be right because the book is a world history of horses. It's actually a Korean translation of this book by Pita Kelekna: The […]
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September 13, 2019 @ 8:11 am
· Filed under Etymology, Evolution of language, Language and politics, Politics of language
[This is a guest post by Jichang Lulu and Filip Jirouš] A recent post by Mark Liberman nominated the Association for the Promotion of Research on the Origin of World Civilizations (Shìjiè Wénmíng Qǐyuán Yánjiū Cùjìn Huì 世界文明起源研究促进会) for the prestigious Becky prize, bestowed on those who make “outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation”. The award, […]
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September 6, 2019 @ 7:37 am
· Filed under Etymology, Language and culture, Language and history
So we learn from this article: "Leprechaun 'is not a native Irish word' new dictionary reveals", by Nuala McCann BBC News (9/5/19) Leprechauns may be considered quintessentially Irish, but research suggests this perception is blarney. The word "leprechaun" is not a native Irish one, scholars have said. They have uncovered hundreds of lost words from […]
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January 28, 2019 @ 12:10 pm
· Filed under Borrowing, Etymology, Language and culture
There's a Thai word for "soul", khwan, that sounds like Sinitic hún 魂 ("soul"). Old Sinitic (Baxter–Sagart): /*[m.]qʷˤə[n]/ (Zhengzhang): /*ɢuːn/ I've always assumed that Thai khwan and Sinitic hún 魂 are related, but was never sure in which direction the influence / borrowing spread. One reason I'm so interested in this question is because, already […]
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January 17, 2019 @ 7:06 pm
· Filed under Etymology, Language and history
I am in the Czech Republic for lectures and meetings with colleagues. This morning I climbed up to the gigantic oppidum at the top of a steep hill outside Prague near the little town of Zbraslav. Oppidum is a Latin word meaning the main settlement in any administrative area of ancient Rome, and applied more […]
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January 8, 2019 @ 10:16 am
· Filed under Borrowing, Language and food, Reconstructions
Often have I pondered on the origin and precise meaning of the Sinitic word lào, luò (reading pronunciation) 酪 ("fermented milk; yoghurt; sour milk; kumiss"); Old Sinitic (OS) /*ɡ·raːɡ/ (Zhengzhang). My initial impression was that it may have been related to IE "galactic" words. Possibly from a Central Asian language; compare Mongolian айраг (ajrag, “fermented […]
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December 21, 2018 @ 8:18 am
· Filed under Language and food, Neologisms, Translation
From time to time during the past half century or so, I've heard of a food product called seitan. Because the name sounds Japanese and it was associated with a natural food store in Cambridge, Massachusetts that I frequented called Erewhon (see here for the 1872 satirical Utopian novel by Samuel Butler whence it got […]
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October 19, 2018 @ 8:54 pm
· Filed under Dictionaries, Lexicon and lexicography, Research tools, Writing systems
We have often noted how much easier it is to learn Chinese now than it was just ten or twenty years ago. That's because of all the new digital resources that have become available in recent years: "The future of Chinese language learning is now" (4/5/14) "Learning languages is so much easier now" (8/18/17) Of […]
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May 9, 2018 @ 3:12 pm
· Filed under Etymology, Language and religion, Semantics
An anonymous correspondent asked: Are these actually related words, or just homonyms? p. 127 of Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom: Male shamans were treated with cautious respect, but they evoked suspicion and even disgust. As one saying put it, “the worst of men become […]
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