28487
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
s"):
Unknown. Possibly from a Central Asian language; compare Mongolian айраг (ajrag, “fermented milk of mares”), Uzbek pishloq (“cheese”) and Turkish ayran (“yoghurt mixed with water”). The phonetic similarity between Chinese 酪 (OC *ɡ·raːɡ, “milk”), Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”) and Latin lac (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵlákts (“milk”) is worth noting (Schuessler, 2007).
(Wiktionary)
"Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19) — very long post directly related to the question of what lào, luò 酪 ("fermented milk; yoghurt; sour milk; kumiss") is
Li and Hope opine:
The diets of British and Chinese people are differentiated by foods such as cheese. Austen periodically mentions cheese, for example in Emma when Mr Elton describes a party with “the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root and all the dessert”. Such references are problematic for Chinese translators because of cultural differences.
…
Although several translators attempted to evoke Stilton’s characteristics (such as its “dry” texture) and used transliteration to convey something of original place names (“North Wiltshire” becoming “North Wēněrtè”, for example), most Chinese readers would have been none the wiser compared with a British reader’s understanding of the original text.
Translation is hard, and probably no aspect of it is harder than conveying the taste, texture, flavor, etc. of food, no matter which language you're translating from and which language you're translating into.
What is mouthfeel in contemporary English? Al dente in Italian? QQ in Taiwanese? If you know the nuances of such terms, you are a gourmand gourmet. Selected readings
* "FOOD & BGVERAGGS, with a focus on naan / nang" (2/12/16) — displaying much food erudition
* "Lactase and language: the spread of the Yamnaya" (7/16/20)
[Thanks to Mark and Greg Metcalf]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
keep off (2)
to avoid something like a certain food or a certain topic in conversation
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
disfavor
Definition: (verb) Put at a disadvantage; hinder, harm.
Synonyms: disadvantage.
Usage: These laws clearly disfavor the underprivileged and poor because they do not address the problem of child labor.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
s sexual misconduct was involved. But Xi and the CCP didn't make a peep about that. Let's just say that they both disappeared from public and political life — like former president Hu Jintao being whisked out of the Great Hall of the People by two of Xi's goons on October 22, 2022.
Wei's alleged "zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" is not an imputation of sexual misbehavior, even indirectly or metaphorically. It is about being disloyal. Addendum
This report, which I read just this morning, adds an ironic twist to the whole story: Analysis: Military purges put Xi Jinping's singer-wife in the spotlight. Speculation is rife over whether Peng Liyuan is helping Xi control China's military, by KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei (July 11, 2024)
She has, after all, achieved at least the rank of major-general in the PLA. Selected readings
* "Inspirational PLA Video" (5/4/16)
* "No more corruption" (10/7/11)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
OpenAI blocks API traffic from China
Screenshot of emails circulating on social media:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_405,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F636501e1-4000-4d41-87cf-9a208247ec30_585x857.png
Naturally, Chinese AI developers are seriously concerned about this exclusion. See this balanced report and many others with differing viewpoints available on the internet:
"Why has OpenAI blocked API traffic from China? What impact would this have on Chinese AI companies? Where does China stand on AI development?" Written by Rishika Singh, The Indian Express (July 11, 2024
They're missing the point why OpenAI puts China in the same category as Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Moreover, Chinese AI developers desperately need the cutting-edge technology of OpenAI and other American AI giants. So they ought to engage in some serious introspection to understand why OpenAI took this drastic move to pull out of China, as Google did in early 2010. In fact, in terms of access and security, I would say that things have gotten much worse during the intervening 14 years.
Selected readings
* "OpenAI's Chinese problem" (5/26/24)
* "The perils of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the PRC" (4/17/23)
* "Vignettes of quality data impoverishment in the world of PRC AI" (2/23/23)
[Thanks to John Rohsenow]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Phrase Day 30: Super Sub
Euro 24 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Super Sub Day 30 saw the second semi final betweeen England and The Netherlands. The phrase we chose for this game is super sub. Don’t forget we have hundreds more explanations of football language in our football glossary and we also have a page full of football cliches. […]
The post Euro 2024 Football Phrase Day 30: Super Sub appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pull on
to put an item of clothing on, usually in a hurry
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
bridgehead
Definition: (noun) A forward position seized by advancing troops in enemy territory as a foothold for further advance.
Synonyms: foothold.
Usage: The soldiers made a brave attempt to secure a bridgehead behind enemy lines.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: compatible
This word has appeared in 131 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Singing Presidents (a triumph of Chinese AI)
Wasn’t on my 2024 Bingo Card:
US Lawmakers: We need to ban $NVDA GPUs sales into China, or else they will lead in AI and boost their military.
Chinese social meme accounts burns through valuable Huawei Ascend compute, to make Biden and Trump sing Chinese folk songs about… pic.twitter.com/T03DwIZKp4
— Marcel Münch (@_mm85) July 9, 2024
They mouth such maudlin sentiments as "I love you, China", "I shed tears for you", "dear mother", etc.,etc.
Overall, their pronunciation sounds like that of native speakers, except for when they say "Zhōngguó 中国" ("China"). The vowel of the first syllable is "off", and the initial of the second syllable, which seems garbled / swallowed. They need to go back to first year for that.
Selected readings
* "ChatGPT writes VHM" (2/28/23)
* "Welcome to China" (3/10/14)
[Thanks to Don Keyser]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
the term.
“Sales leaders would say, ‘Hey, you need to make sure you double-click on that’ with your prospects,” Sunshine says, meaning delve more deeply into any issues customers might raise, as in “Tell me more.”
As Mark Metcalf, who called this article to my attention, says: "The comments are worth the price of admission". Selected reading
* "On-the-job jargon" (9/7/23)
* "A century of complaints about business jargon" (9/15/13)
* "May I ask you a question?" (6/12/17)
* "Much ado: more about corporate jargon" (2/18/24)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Phrase Day 29: Wonder Goal
In this football language post we look at the phrase 'wonder goal' after Spain's teenage-sensation Lamine Yamal's goal against France in the semi-final of the 2024 Euros
The post Euro 2024 Football Phrase Day 29: Wonder Goal appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
receive (one's) just deserts
To receive that which one deserves, especially a punishment or unfavorable outcome. (Note: The phrase is often misspelled as "just desserts," due to the pronunciation of "deserts" and "desserts" being the same in this context.) Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
jumpy
anxious, uneasy, on edge
➖ @EngSkills ➖
⚠️ Best of English Learning Channels
👉 @EnglishLearn
---------
Language Log
Food in the works of Jane Austen as seen by early 20th-century Chinese
"How Jane Austen’s Early Chinese Translators Were Stumped by the Oddities of 19th-Century British Cuisine: How do you get a reader in 1930s China to understand what a mince pie is?" By Saihong Li and William Hope, The Conversation (9/15/22) / Get Pocket.
Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) works are globally renowned, but they were unknown in China until 1935 when two different translations of Pride and Prejudice were published. Today, her novels are increasingly popular and have been translated into Chinese many times – notably there have been 60 different retranslations of Pride and Prejudice.
Translators face the creative balancing act of remaining faithful to the source text while also ensuring that the translation is a smooth, informative read. One intriguing task for translators of Austen has been how to describe the 19th-century British food featured in the many convivial sequences that shed light on characters through their social interaction.
How do you get an early Chinese reader of Austen’s work in the 1930s to understand what rout-cakes are and why Mrs Elton in Austen’s Emma considers poor versions of these a sign of a bad host? The world was not as globalised as it is now and information not so accessible.
Nothing could be simpler and more routine in English cooking / baking than pies. We have mince pie, shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pie, meat pie, and so on and on and on, not to mention humble pie, and what would Chinese of any age make of "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pye"? And Little Jack Horner sitting in a corner eating a Christmas pie, into which he sticks his thumb and pulls out a plum? Mostly when Chinese talk about "pie" they use the word "bǐng 餅", which could be flat cake, pancake, cookie, pastry, biscuit,
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennett contrasts her girls’ upbringing with that of their neighbour, Charlotte Lucas, who assists in cooking “the mince pies”. The notion of a pastry dish containing fruit, meat or vegetables is difficult to convey in Chinese as there are only limited similarities with Chinese “bĭng” which are wheat flour-based items resembling flatbreads, biscuits, or pancakes.
Although early mince pies contained meat, they became sweeter and more fruit-based in the 18th century as sugar imports increased. However, Chinese translators conveyed “mince pies” in different ways, including “steak”, “steamed bun”, and “meat pie”, revealing translation errors or strategies such as the use of Chinese equivalents.
The two wartime translations, made during Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 of “mince pie” were “steak” and “steamed bun” but in mitigated circumstance the translators probably had limited access to dictionaries during this period.
The article touches on many other types of food in Jane Austen's time and describes the challenges they posed to 20th-century translators who strove to render them into Chinese. For example, "brawn", which is "a cold cut terrine or meat jelly made from a pig’s head and bones, spiced, boiled, then cooled."
Translation strategies have grown ever more sophisticated in recent decades, for example:
“Happiness pancakes” are small, round, and made of flour, sesame seed and white sugar. They display a motif signifying happiness and are decorated with red silk. They have been a wedding delicacy for 2,000 years, whereas western-style wedding cakes are relatively new to China. Nevertheless, the newly coined, cosmopolitan concept of “jiéhūn dàngāo” (“wedding cake”) has materialised in recent translations.
Ah, but then comes cheese, for which the Chinese are hard pressed to find even one term to match the hundreds of English terms. They have tried this and that kind of lào 酪 ("junket; curd[...]
Idiom of the Day
keep a cool head
To maintain a calm demeanor and think clearly in a difficult, stressful, or troubling situation. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
ripped (1)
to have well-defined muscles
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Top Chinese general loses his chastity
The internet has been in an uproar over the sacking by Xi Jinping of two of China's topmost military men.
Exclusive | "Was fallen Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe compromised by hostile force? A rare form of words that the Communist Party normally only applies to those accused of betrayal was used in the indictment against him", by William Zheng, SCMP (7/10/24)
China’s fallen former defence minister Wei Fenghe may have been compromised by a hostile force as the peculiar wording of the official indictment hinted.
In an unprecedented move, Wei, along with his successor Li Shangfu, was officially impeached by the Politburo headed by President Xi Jinping on June 27. The duo were expelled from the party and could face further legal action.
[Since Wei and Li were in charge of the PLA Rocket Force, which gets into nuclear missiles and what not, the situation could not be more dire. Maybe they did not accede to Xi's wishes regarding a launch. Who knows? No matter what, Xi was royally peeved.]
While Beijing has not revealed details of their offences, one particular phrase from the official impeachment against Wei caught the attention of seasoned Chinese experts.
Of the all top generals who fell in Xi’s war against corruption, Wei was the only one described as “zhongcheng shi jie” 忠诚失节 or “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity”.
There's no doubt that something is rotten in the state of the PRC, but I doubt that it has anything to do with General Wei losing his chastity.
The article continues:
The hard-to-translate phrase “shi jie” has its origins in Chinese history, where it was used to describe the moral degradation of the scholar-gentry who formed the ruling class.
In the fourth century BC the word “jie” was a bamboo or bronze sceptre representing royal authority – while “shi” means to lose – so a betrayal or defection would imply the loss of this jie.
Later in the Song dynasty (which ruled from the 10th to 13th centuries), it referred to women perceived as unchaste, such as widows who remarried.
China watchers familiar with the Communist Party’s history note that it has used the phrase as a euphemism for betraying the party and being compromised by a hostile force.
A search of statements published by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the top civilian anti-corruption body, and its military counterpart shows that Wei is the only person to whom the phrase has been attached in the last decade.
A political scientist from Beijing’s Renmin university said the characters“shi jie” are most prominently associated with former Communist Party leaders such Xiang Zhongfa or Gu Shunzhang, who defected to the Kuomintang, or Nationalists, the Communists’ bitter rivals during the civil war.
This is all commendable, workaday Sinology and China-watching, but it is not justification for translating zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" as “ being disloyal and losing one’s chastity” in the 21st century. "Zhōngchéng shījié 忠诚失节" is indeed a very serious charge, but what is it really saying? "Zhōngchéng 忠誠 signifies “loyal; faithful; loyalty; fidelity; faithfulness” and "shījié 失节" implies "forfeit integrity". In other words, with regard to loyalty, forfeit one's integrity, i.e., be disloyal. This skips over, by many centuries, that bit about a woman losing her chastity, which is medieval. The perfidy of Wei Fenghe goes back to classical and feudal times and applies to male officials.
Xi is not alluding to any sexual improprieties on the part of General Wei. Even if there were (which I doubt is in play here), Xi and the CCP would not make a public issue over it. Within the last three years, there have been two major scandals involving very high-ranking CCP officials, Qin Gang and Zhang Gaoli, and the whole world was aware that gros[...]
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: locus
This word has appeared in 43 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Environmental effects on language change
Frazz for 7/8/2024 and 7/9/2024:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Frazz07082024.png
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Frazz07092024.png
There's a long history of research (and a longer history of speculation) about the linguistic effects of temperature, altitude, genes, and other language-external factors. I dimly recall a lecturer (I think seriously?) suggesting that Grimm's Law was caused by the discovery of beer, although I haven't been able to find any traces of this in the literature, even as a joke.
A good review of the (non-alcoholic) topic can be found in Ladd, Roberts, and Dediu, "Correlational studies in typological and historical linguistics", Annual Review of Linguistics 2015.
In response to an earlier paper about geographical correlations between genes and tones, I wrote:
Just to underline one aspect of this discussion, I did a trivial little simulation, in which individual mutations were placed at random on a 20×20 grid, and then died, reproduced and migrated at random for 35 generations. (The grid was configured as a manifold, so that if you migrate off of one side, you come back in on the opposite one.) I ran 100 traits independently, and then looked at the geographical correlations among their population frequencies:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TraitCorrelation1.png
The point was just that many of the correlations in that simulation are "statistically significant", but (by construction) the causal factors are not influences of the (imaginary) geography or the intrinsic biology of the (imaginary) people, but just the effects of assuming that languages change locally and the groups of people who speak them migrate and interact.
Which doesn't mean that geographical and biological differences don't have linguistic effects, just that (even strong) correlations are not enough to establish them.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
on a lark
On a whim or fancy; for fun or as a joke. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
top
a man who takes the active role in gay or homosexual sex
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Milk tea
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/nonhomo.jpg
(To appreciate the joke at the top of the image, it helps to be familiar with the "Nobody" meme. Here the meme is used to critique companies that engage in "pinkwashing" during Pride Month and then revert to their heteronormative ways as soon as June ends.)
Japanese writing on the labels:
Nonhomo ノンホモ
Hida 飛騨 city in Gifu Prefecture
gyūnyū 牛乳 ("milk"), also miruku ミルク
sutorētotī ストレートティー ("straight tea")
Notes by Nathan Hopson:
The brand is Hida (飛騨), produced by a dairy coop in Takayama, Gifu, part of the eponymous Hida region.
Non-homo = non-homogenized, of course.
It's a rather unfortunate consequence of the Japanese tendency to abbreviate with two moras (or two pairs, i.e., four).
I guess the good news (?) is that they sell plenty of homogenized milk, too, though it doesn't seem that homomiruku ホモミルク ("homogenized milk") is a back-formation anyone found useful enough to coin. It's just the default milk, full stop.
"nonhomogenized milk" 4,350 ghits
"non homogenized milk" 18,100 ghits
"unhomogenized milk" 15,000 ghits
"homogenized milk" 359,000 ghits
Selected readings
* "Homophonia" (7/31/14)
* "Homophonophobia" (2/7/15)
* "35 Kinds of Hot, Sexy Homophone Action", Mental Floss 7/31/2014
* "What's the Difference Between Homophonia, Homophobia, and Homophonophobia?" (8/1/14) in Lexicon Valley
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Our journey journey
In "Peevable words and phrases: journey", 5/18/2024, Victor quoted Lisa Miller, "When Did Everything Become a ‘Journey’?", NYT 5/16/2024:
According to the linguistics professor Jesse Egbert at Northern Arizona University, the use of “journey” (the noun) has nearly doubled in American English since 1990, with the most frequent instances occurring online.
In PubMed, where we've been tracking other changes in word frequency lately, the change from 1990 to 2024 in the frequency of "journey" was 10.2 to 227.9 (per 100k articles), or a factor of 22.3 — which is a lot more than doubling:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PubMed_journey.png
And the rise has been going on long enough that we can't blame it on LLMs…
In the Corpus of Historical American English, the frequency of "journey" has been increasing since the 1940s (though the change between 1990 and the 2010s is more like 1.5 than 2, much less 22…) But before that, the frequency of "journey" fell pretty steadily from the 1840s onwards — and especially sharply after 1910. Perhaps this is because railroads and then the automobile turned lots of what used to be "journeys" into mere local trips?
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/COHAjourney1.png
Note that the first gloss for "journey" in Webster's 1828 dictionary is "The travel of a day", which makes sense since the etymology is from Latin diurnus. And a reasonable day's travel would have been maybe 10-15 miles on foot, and maybe 20-30 miles on horseback — whereas an automobile on decent roads could do 20-30 miles in less than an hour.
Google ngrams shows a similar pattern — with a factor of 3 from 1990 to 2019 :
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ngrams_journey.png
(I've asked the site to multiply by 10000 since that turns percentages into more useful frequency-per-million-word values.)
If you look at a sample of PubMed's recent contexts for "journey", you may get a clue about why the increase in frequency is so much greater there than in COHA and Google ngrams.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Click click
"Let’s ‘Double-Click’ on the Latest Cringeworthy Corporate Buzzword: You may want to examine or delve into the phrase, which has become pervasive in conference calls and grates on many; ‘It’s almost like a joke’", by Te-ping Chen and Nicholas G. Miller, WSJ (7/9/24)
One of the fastest-spreading corporate buzzwords in recent years, “double-click” is both polarizing and pervasive. Particularly on Wall Street, the figure of speech is now being used as a shorthand for examining something more fully, akin to double-clicking to see a computer folder’s contents. Some, like [Ruben] Roy, find the idiom obnoxious or twee. Double-click defenders say the phrase encourages deeper thinking.
Either way, it’s become a verbal tic du jour. Executives and analysts dropped double-click 644 times in corporate conference calls and events during the first half of the year, according to VIQ Solutions, up from 139 times in the same period of 2020.
“It’s almost like a joke. People are like, oh here we go with double-click,” says Roy, who’d been trying to avoid using the term when he accidentally let it slip. Colleagues, he says, haven’t let him forget it.
The new jargon makes Annie Mosbacher, an LA marketer, roll her eyes.
“Can’t we just say ‘this is an area we need to focus on?’” she says. “We regurgitate this sort of lingo as though it means something, and usually it’s about trying to be impressive more than anything else.”
Not so, dissents Ruben Linder, who runs a San Antonio audio and video production business:
“The term is simple, but it’s really profound,” he says. He tries to carve out time to go to a cafe twice monthly with a notebook and engage in reflection.
“I’ll double-click on my business, double-click on my life,” he says. “I double-click on everything now.”
I have to agree. Metaphorically speaking, "double-clicking" is not the same as "double-checking", which I do hundreds of times a day. I'm compulsive-obsessive about that, because I hate to lose things like my keys, my comb, my watch…. Tech-inflected buzzwords are especially apt to gain traction—think “network,” “bandwidth” or “take offline”—because they can sound smart or cutting-edge, says Doug Guilbeault, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who has studied corporate jargon.
The inventor of the literal double-click, former Apple designer Bill Atkinson, isn’t convinced. Reached while boating on a recent weekday, Atkinson, now retired, says he’s never heard anyone use double-click as a metaphor and would steer clear of such usage himself, preferring more straightforward language.
He adds that since inventing the function in 1979, he’s come to regret it. He now thinks an extra “Shift” button on the mouse would have been more user-friendly.
“The double-click was a mistake,” says Atkinson, who left tech in 1995 to pursue nature photography. Personally, he double-clicks less frequently these days, given the rise of mouseless devices like tablets and smartphones.
“I double-tap, or I tap,” he says. “I long-press.”
As technology evolves — and it changes rapidly nowadays — so do the buzzwords: they often quickly lose their buzz:
Buzzwords tend to come and go, says HR consultant Nancy Settle-Murphy, noting that other tech-inspired jargon, such as “RTFM”—or read the f—ing manual—are less commonly used today than they once were.
“There are fewer manuals now,” says Settle-Murphy, who recently installed a video doorbell at her home and notes it didn’t come with any pictures or diagrams.
But double-click is not so ephemeral as many other buzzwords, whose lack of longevity is remarkable:
Double-click has a long pedigree in the sales world. Matt Sunshine, head of the Center for Sales Strategy, which trains salespeople, says when he sold ad spots for a local radio station in Dallas in the 1990s, peers commonly used [...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hold on (1)
to hold something like a railing or an overhead strap so you don't fall over
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
haply
Definition: (adverb) By accident.
Synonyms: by chance, by luck.
Usage: Her true feelings were betrayed by a word haply spoken and immediately regretted.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Bilingual Chinese lesbian slang dictionary
"Siting Yao’s bilingual dictionary translates Chinese lesbian slang: The London-based graphic designer illustrates unique language expressions and humorous anecdotes in her colourful, graphic guide to queer code." By Ellis Tree, It's Nice That (4 July 2024)
Made for: “Chinese speakers who are interested in but unfamiliar with queer culture, English speakers who are interested in Chinese queer culture, and Chinese lesbians who want to celebrate their own culture”, Siting Yao’s publication Lesbian Slang in Chinese collates 40 amusing anecdotes and phonetic translations into a pocketable A7 dictionary. Presented in a bilingual format, with visualisations of each slang term or expression to “enhance connections between diverse audiences”, the publication aims to bridge cultural and linguistic divides through creative publishing methods.
The idea for the creation of the tiny but mighty Chinese dictionary “comes from my own experience as a Chinese lesbian”, Siting tells us. Realising that there was no systematic record of the Chinese slang terms she used every day, the designer wanted to create a way to share colloquial phrases to new audiences and document some of the language surrounding Chinese lesbian culture. “Our community has developed a unique culture and a lot of slang”, she says “Some of this slang has evolved as a way to avoid censorship, while others have origins in famous anecdotes and stories within the community”.
Not simply a translation of terms, the bilingual publication contains a colour-coded editorial system, tailoring the illustrated stories to both English and Chinese audiences: “When writing the Chinese sections, I focused on explaining the meanings and origins of the slang terms. For the English sections, I made sure to clarify the puns and phonetic nuances in the slang and included references to similar expressions in English to aid understanding,” Siting explains.
The dictionary’s distinct orange and green colour combo is inspired by the colours of “the lesbian pride flag” and one of the dictionary’s slang phrases: (júlǐjúqì 橘里橘气) which translates to “the smell of citrus aroma” – Siting explains that the phrase connotes the scent of oranges and is often used to “describe a flirtatious vibe between two women”. So by going all out on orange, the designer intended to “create a visual cultural symbol exclusively for Chinese lesbians”.
Her visuals on the other hand took from screen printed protest posters by the See Red Women’s workshop. “The feminist print collective’s use of visual media in activism greatly influenced my approach to visualising and communicating queer-feminist ideas,” Siting shares, leading her into the use of Risograph printing for the production of her book and accompanying one-page zine. As a print ephemera enthusiast, she tells us that the project may have also taken from the various “tickets and leaflets, to hardcover books and independent magazines”, that the designer always seems to find herself collecting.
Amply illustrated — in orange (with green), of course. The Chinese text is printed in orange and the English text in green. Very attractive and artistic.
Selected readings
* "The language of sexual minorities" (2/2/16)
* "Female voyeuristic literature on male homoerotic themes" (3/14/23)
* "λhttps://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2665.png [love]" (5/14/11)
[Thanks to Mark Swofford]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
The evolving PubMed landscape
Following up on "Are LLMs writing PubMed articles?", 7/7/2024, Cervantes suggested a factor, besides LLM availability, that has been influencing the distribution of word frequencies in PubMed's index:
As an investigator whose own papers are indexed in PubMed, and who has been watching the trends in scientific fashion for some decades, I can come up with other explanations. For one thing, it's easier to get exploratory and qualitative research published nowadays than it once was. Reviewers and editors are less inclined to insist that only hypothesis driven research is worthy of their journal — and, with open access, there are a lot more journals, including some with low standards and others that do insist on decent quality but will accept a wide range of papers. It's even possible now to publish protocols for work that hasn't been done yet. So it doesn't surprise me at all that words like "explore" and "delve" (which is a near synonym, BTW) are more likely to show up in abstracts, because that's more likely to be what the paper is doing.
I agree, although it remains unclear whether those changes have been strong enough to explain the effects documented in Dmitry Kobak et al., "Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary", arXiv.org 7/3/2024.
I'll add another factor related to Cervantes' comment, namely the changing distribution of PubMed's cited sources.
Looking over the list of sources for [delve] in PubMed, I saw quite a few whose representation in PubMed has been increasing rapidly. The table below lists the per-100k citation numbers by year for the first four that I looked into, along with their proportions of increase between 2022 and 2024:
StatPearls Heliyon medRxiv arXiv 2019 0 44.3 0 0 2020 0 139.1 45.8 2.9 2021 0 169.3 35.6 3.0 2022 54.0 227.9 18.8 1.3 2023 421.2 671.3 115.1 28.1 2024 1004.2 1005.3 133.3 39.3 2024/2022 18.6 4.4 7.1 30.2
At least in the case of arXiv, this is because PubMed is paying more attention — but in any case, those proportional changes are as large or larger than the ones that Kobak et al. used to argue for the role of LLMs. This doesn't mean that Kobak et al. are wrong, just that there are other things going on that should be taken into account.
Update — additional support for Cervantes' observation can be found in a comparison of counts for [exploratory] vs. [hypothesis] over the decades since John Tukey introduced "Exploratory Data Analysis" as an alternative to "hypothesis testing":
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PubMedExploratoryHypothesis.png
Plotting the ratio:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ExploratoryHypothesis1.png
➖ @EngSkills ➖
