Article by Eiichi Miyashiro in The Asahi Shimbun (9/27/20): "Oldest writing about teachings of Confucius found in Japan" The manuscript of a compilation of commentaries on Confucian teachings produced by Chinese scholar Huan Kan (488-545) bears a mark suggesting ownership by the Fujiwara clan. (Provided by Keio University)
I don't know who was responsible for first labeling the Trump-Biden debate a "shitshow", but the word has been much talked about during the last couple of days. Nathan Hopson wrote in: Well, obviously I want to know how the world is translating "shit show." You surely don't have to ask why. French, the other […]
From David Axe, "How Trump Could Bypass a Key Vaccine Safety Valve", Daily Beast 10/1/2020 [emphasis added]: If the Trump administration tries to push out a novel coronavirus vaccine before it’s fully tested, there are three committees of independent experts who could stand in its way. […] These committees—two in government and one in the […]
You've probably heard about this — Teo Armas, "‘Inshallah’: The Arabic ‘fuggedaboudit’ Biden dropped to blast Trump on tax returns", WaPo 9/30/2020: Midway through Tuesday night’s chaotic presidential debate, as President Trump vowed to release his still-private tax returns, Joe Biden shot back at his opponent with a particularly sarcastic jab. “Millions of dollars, and […]
Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun. Today's column is titled "Different use of ‘zenzen’ fails to annoy Japanese language police" (9/29/29). I still remember the shock of hearing the phrase "zenzen daijobu" for the first time about 20 years ago. "Zenzen" is an adverb […]
The hapless condition of headlessness may be a physical phenomenon, but it may also be a grammatical or orthographic category in linguistics, and we have dealt with both kinds on Language Log, e.g.: "More vitriolic rhetoric from KCNA" (10/8/17) "Headlessness in North Korean propaganda" (10/30/17) "Decapitated Democracy, Headless Liberty" (9/7/10) Now, what shall we make […]
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 […]
As I was looking into the history of term biomarker, Google Scholar reminded me that automatic information extraction from text remains imperfect: Google Scholar's translation into APA format: Crea, F., Watahiki, A., & Quagliata, L. (1769). Identification of a long non-coding RNA as a novel biomarker and potential therapeutic target for metastatic prostate cancer. Oncotarget […]
There are three ways to say "Monday" in Mandarin: zhōu yī 週一lǐbài yī 禮拜一 (you can also say this in the shortened form bài yī 拜一)xīngqí yī / xīngqīyī 星期一 As usual with my classes at Penn, most of my students are from mainland China. I asked one of them to pronounce those three ways […]
From BobW: "Saw this and immediately thought of Language Log. Whatever are they doing with all those spree trails?": "With Deutsche Bank’s help, an oligarch’s buying spree trails ruin across the US heartland Secret transactions, lost jobs, worker injuries, gutted buildings, unpaid bills: Ihor Kolomoisky’s untold American legacy" By Michael Sallah and Tanya Kozyreva, International […]