Long Ling has an essay about an exam given to prospective civil servants in Chinese: “What Really Happened in Yancheng?” by Long Ling, the London Review of Books, 42.2 (1/23/20). Translation by Jonathan Flint. This essay, written by a government official in Beijing — presumably writing under a pseudonym — describes the civil service examinations […]
Apparently, further and farther come from the same source, namely the verb that we retain as further meaning "to promote". The different spellings were originally due to the general diversity of English orthography in earlier times. And the spelling was apparently not regularized because the word(s) took over as the comparative form of far, which […]
For at least four decades, I have suspected that IE gwou- ("cow") and Sinitic /*[ŋ]ʷə/ (< uvular? [Baxter-Sagart]) ("cow") are related. Some new scientific research makes this surmise all the more believable. More than three decades ago, Tsung-tung Chang already published on this idea in his "Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese", Sino-Platonic Papers, 7 (January, […]
As we have seen over and over again, banning, blocking, and censorship of the internet make it almost impossible for Chinese citizens to openly discuss anything that is slightly sensitive on the political scale (see "Selected readings" below). But netizens are highly resourceful, and they have continuously been able to think of creative ways to […]
Here's the official video of their viral hit, "Wolf Totem":
Julie Satow, "She Was a Star of New York Real Estate, but Her Life Story Was a Lie", NYT 1/10/2019: Wrapped in furs, dripping with diamonds and with her blond hair perfectly coifed, Faith Hope Consolo cut a glamorous figure in the flashy, late 20th-century world of New York City real estate. Ms. Consolo was […]
As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal (1965-67), I have a particular interest in all things Nepalese, especially language. Now comes report of a spectacular linguistic phenomenon related to Nepal, and it is situated less than a hundred miles from where I'm sitting in Philadelphia. "Just 700 Speak This Language (50 in the Same […]
Jialing Xie surveys the field in "Top 10 Buzzwords in Chinese Online Media: An overview of China’s media top buzzwords over the past year", What's on Weibo (1/5/20). As in the previous year, the expressions were chosen by the chief editor of the magazine Yǎowén Jiáozì 咬文嚼字, which Xie says "literally means 'to pay excessive […]
So asks the Chinese colleague who sent me this photograph:
Language Log readers will be aware that "Chinese", i.e., "Mandarin" (Guóyǔ 國語), is not the only language on the island. Indeed, it is a Johnny-come-lately, having become the official language of the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1945, and was strongly enforced as such after 1949 when the retreating mainland KMT armies of Chiang […]
There's a Chinese character 罽 (Mandarin jì, Old Sinitic *kràts), which means "rug, carpet; woolen textile; fish net"). On the basis of its sound, meaning, place, and date of occurrence, it would seem to be related to Toch. A kratsu "rug". This raises two questions: 1. Does this Tocharian word have cognates in other IE […]
Val Ross writes: I am less scandalized by the fact Obama and Trump tied than I am by the hyphenation of most-admired. Have you ever written on this vexed issue of hyphens?