Linguistics is a relatively young discipline, formally dating from roughly the mid-19th century. In the study of language, it was preceded by philology, which has hoary roots going all the way back to Pāṇini (520-460 BC) and beyond. In my own lifetime, until recently I preferred to identify myself as a philologist, but that met […]
Which do you think is harder — reading and writing Taiwanese with characters (sinographs) or with romanization? I maintain — and I have tried to show over the years — that it's much easier to read Taiwanese written with roman letters than with Chinese characters. The same is true of all vernacular Sinitic languages. It […]
[This is a guest post by Hiroshi Kumamoto] The Last Words of Helmut Humbach (1921-2017) 1 When an eminent classicist, the late Martin L. West published The Hymns of Zoroaster: A New Translation of the Most Ancient Sacred Texts of Iran, London: Tauris, 2010, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst wrote (Review in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2011, p. 379),"This […]
Some assembly required. From Olaf Zimmermann: (source [2002 no. 5])
Is Taishanese Cantonese? Legally, in Canada, no. [Preface: This is one of the eeriest posts I've ever written, where thoughts I had about a student two decades ago while I was teaching her in my classes at Penn have become reality today, in a conspicuous, public way. The realization of mental projection into the future.] […]
Something for everyone "Cultural Nuances in Subtitling the Religious Discourse Marker Wallah in Jordanian Drama into English." Al Salem, Mohd Nour et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (March 6, 2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04515-6. "Humpback Whale Song Shown to Be Structurally Similar to Human Language." PhysOrg, February 6, 2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-humpback-whale-song-shown-similar.html. Discussing "Whale Song Shows […]
First, how to say the name. I think that the "correct" pronunciation of IKEA is "ee-kay-uh", with emphasis on the "ee" sound, similar to the way a native Swedish speaker would say it, not "eye-kee-ah" or "ai-kee-uh" with stress on the second syllable, the way most Americans say it (all the Americans I know). What […]
From Kai Ryssdal: I always find it helpful to remember tariffs end with FFS [image or embed] — Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Want a Million Dollars? Get Busy Deciphering This Ancient Script. A prize offered by an Indian state leader is intended to shed light on a Bronze Age civilization — and settle a cultural battle.By Pragati K.B., NYT (2/1/25) The Indus Valley civilization, also called the Harappan civilization, is seen by experts as on a par […]
Danny L. Bate has a new article declaring that "PIE was not SOV" (2/20/25), in which he attempts to demonstrate under three objections why "SOV" is not a useful term for describing and summarizing the word order of Proto-Indo-European clauses: 1. "clausal bias", 2. "changing the subject", 3. "discourse dominates".
Over the years, we've documented various applications of voice morphing technology besides the malicious creation of "deep fake" audio clips. Here's a new one: Amrit Dillon, "AI erases call centre staff’s Indian accents", The Times 3/2/2025: A French company which operates the largest number of call centres in the world is using artificial intelligence to […]