Anyone who has studied the history of writing in China is aware that the earliest manifestation of the Sinitic script dates to around the 13th century BC, under the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600- BC). It is referred to as jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文 ("oracle bone writing") and was used primarily (almost exclusively) for the purpose of divination. […]
[This is a guest post by Markus Mikjalson.] I have a couple of questions about Sino-Japanese historical linguistics, which I have not been able to find an answer to elsewhere. If you have the time, I would greatly appreciate a response. Modern Mandarin forms with the rhyme -ing regularly correspond to Sino-Japanese -you (formerly […]
I've always been intrigued by the Chinese expression "eat vinegar" (chīcù 吃醋) meaning "be jealous". To convey the idea of "jealous", one can also say dùjì 妒忌 or just dù 妒 (note the female semantophore). I learned the disyllabic form with the syllables reversed, hence jìdù 忌妒. The monosyllabic form (dù 妒) is ancient, going […]
From Charles Belov: A story on COVID-19 in Mississippi, "After Big Thanksgiving Dinners, Plan Small Christmas Funerals, Health Experts Warn", includes the following sentence: “If I were in DeSoto, I wouldn’t go out,” Dr. Dobbs said during the MSDH roundtable late last week. “I would stay in my house as much as possible. Because DeSoto […]
"We're working on mass distribution of the virus." — Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, who we hope is working on mass distribution of the ~vaccine~ and not the virus. pic.twitter.com/DqaTC1ZTmD — The Recount (@therecount) November 20, 2020
[This is a guest post by Scott de Brestian] I am an avid Language Log reader, and so am familiar with two ongoing series that your blog has – first, the posts debunking the “Eskimos (or people X) have unusually many words for snow” myth (which I believe drew me to your blog in the […]
Recently, two vaccine companies have presented evidence that their vaccines are respectively “90% effective” and “94½% effective”. True or False: Assuming these results hold up, the chances are respectively 9 in 10 (945 in 1,000) that if you get vaccinated you won’t get Covid? If you said True you are both woefully mistaken and doubtless […]
I was just thinking how important cows (and their milk) are for Indian people and was surprised that's reflected in such a fundamental word for a family relationship as "daughter" — at least in the popular imagination. Even in a scholarly work such as that of D.N. Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow (New […]
Lacey Wade, a postdoc in the Penn Linguistics Department, is featured in the most recent episode of Big Ideas for Strange Times:
I was puzzled by apparently mixed messages in the protest sign featured here: Fox anchor Eric Shawn, somewhat shaken, responds to his show's live B-roll of today's MAGA rally in DC: "We just saw a very disturbing sign, it said 'Coming for Blacks and Indians, welcome to the New World Order.'" pic.twitter.com/Ayfh2QjtwL — Matthew Gertz […]
A headline in today's Guardian tells us that "Supreme court plans an attack on independent judiciary, says Labour" — but you'll probably guess without even following the link that plans is a plural noun rather than a 3rd-person singular tensed verb, and that the phrase "Supreme court plans" probably refers to someone's plans for the court, […]
I’ve been working on a description of Kamala Harris’ distinctive prosody for a while now, so when I saw Maya Rudolph’s parody of Harris’ victory speech on SNL last Saturday (which happened less than 3 hours after the original!), I wondered if it might shed more light on what’s happening with Harris herself.
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In Friday's New York Times: "A Record of Horseback Riding, Written in Bone and Teeth: Close examination of horse remains has clarified the timeline of when equestrianism helped transform ancient Chinese civilization", by Katherine Kornei (11/13/20) More archeological evidence that the horse, horse riding, and related equestrian technologies and culture came to East Asia from […]