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Word of the Day
entreaty
Definition: (noun) An earnest request or petition; a plea.
Synonyms: appeal, prayer.
Usage: Nothing is wanting but to have you here, and it is our particular wish and entreaty that you would come to us as soon as you can.
Discuss
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: adieu
This word has appeared in 39 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Idiom of the Day
keep mum
To remain silent; to not say anything (e.g., about a secret). Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
bugger off
to go away
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Language Log
The true identity of the first Chinese translator of Lady Chatterley's Lover
There has long been a suspicion that the first Chinese translator of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928/1932), Ráo Shùyī 饒述一, about whom next to nothing is known, was actually the scholar and theoretician of aesthetics, Zhū Guāngqián 朱光潛 (1897-1986).
To give a little bit of background about the nature of the two translations of the novel, here is the abstract of a recent scholarly article comparing them:
This article discusses how sex-related content is rendered in two Chinese translations of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover: Rao Shuyi (1936) and Zhao Susu (2004). It is found that Rao's translation features explicitness, flexibility and Europeanization, while Zhao's translation features conservativeness and domestication. And the observed features in the two translations regarding sex-related content are explained from perspectives of social and historical background, translation purpose and intended readership, and patronage. Index Terms–Lady Chatterley's Lover, translation, sexuality
Zhu, Kun. "The Translation of Sex-related Content in Lady Chatterley's Lover in China." Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 10, no. 8, Aug. 2020, pp. 933+. Gale Literature Resource Center.
For those who are interested, the title of D. H. Lawrence's novel in Chinese is 《Chátàilái fūrén de qíngrén 查泰萊夫人的情人》.
Decades ago, I was aware of this controversial mystery over who the first Chinese translator was, and I poked around a bit to try to solve it, but got nowhere fast. Furthermore, my mentor, Patrick Hanan, who was extremely learned about Chinese esthetics and esoteric fiction, though he solved many other problems surrounding the authorship of Chinese literary works, to the best of my knowledge never attempted to figure this one out. So I have decided, rather than flailing around undertaking deep research on Zhu Guangqian, to put it to the collective readership of Language Log, where surely there are others who are far more qualified to work on it than I, including my close friend and colleague, also surnamed Zhū 朱, namely, Zhū Qìngzhī 朱慶之.
Selected readings
* "Linguistic divergence and convergence" (4/17/18) — Lady Chatterley's Lover, which despite its reputation has more in it about linguistic ideology than about sex
* "'We are all the other now'" (11/8/12) — [(bgz) OED has the sexual euphemism from 1922, in two quotes from Joyce's Ulysses: "They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other" and "Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other." It's also in Lady Chatterley's Lover: "She loved me to talk to her and kiss her… But the other, she just didn't want."]
* Roger Shuy, "Code-Switching in Lady Chatterly's Lover", York Papers in Linguistics 1980.
[h.t. shaing tai]
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Idiom of the Day
keep in step with the times
To be, strive to be, or appear to be contemporary, fashionable, and/or relevant in modern times. Watch the video
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mably now required by the journal's editors: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/FishermanCrocAI.png I'll leave it to the commenters to explore the appropriate English pronunciations of Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis — but you get a free subscription to LLOG if you can remember all 30-odd characters of the name, after a short period doing something else…
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2024 Euro Final Preview
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
apply to
If something applies to you, it is relevant to you or you are affected by it.
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Word of the Day
navel
Definition: (noun) The mark on the surface of the abdomen of mammals where the umbilical cord was attached during gestation.
Synonyms: bellybutton, omphalos, umbilicus.
Usage: The first-graders were awed by Tom's navel, which protruded outward in classic "outie" fashion.
Discuss
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Language Log
Japanese expressions for some paranormal phenomena
Japan Subculture Research Center. A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun. Telepathy (以心伝心) and Other Coincidences (奇遇)
By jakeadelstein (Jul 10, 2024)
A generous helping of creepiness from Japan. Here goes:
I was writing to a former intern at Japan Subculture Research Center, Fresca, and asked her to send me her thesis to read—just as she mailed me. I think I was two seconds ahead of her. It was a remarkable coincidence or maybe telepathy. Which got me interested in the many words for the complementary subjects in Japanese. So for your entertainment—here you are.
Telepathy
以心伝心 (いしんでんしん) – Ishin Denshin
Imagine you’re sitting in a crowded Tokyo café, and you suddenly get this eerie feeling that your friend, who’s halfway across the city, really needs to tell you something. No texts, no calls—just a weird vibe. That’s Ishin Denshin, where hearts speak directly to each other, bypassing those pesky cell towers. It’s like when you’re on a date and you just know your partner is thinking about leaving without paying the bill. 食い逃げはダメだ！
心霊交流 (しんれいこうりゅう) – Shinrei Kouryuu
Picture yourself at a séance, the kind with flickering candles and a medium who’s a bit too enthusiastic. Suddenly, you feel an icy breeze, and it’s not because the AC is cranked up. It’s your grandfather, reaching out to you from the great beyond. He’s got something to say, and of course, it’s, “Why’d you get that godawful tattoo!? What were you thinking? Would you want to wear the same t-shirt every day? But noooo, you get a tattoo! Oy vey!” Shinrei Kouryuu is like that ghostly chat you have without words, where spirits exchange pleasantries—or maybe just complain about the afterlife’s lack of Wi-Fi.
精神感応 (せいしんかんのう) – Seishin Kannou
This one’s for those moments when you feel a twinge of anxiety and then, bam! You find out your boss is going to assign you to write a condom review article. Seishin Kannou is all about that psychic sensitivity, where your mind picks up on vibes faster than a caffeine addict at a coffee convention.
テレパシー – Terepashī
Ah, the good old loanword from English. Terepashī is like wearing a tinfoil hat but actually getting reception. It’s the mind-to-mind communication that you wish you had during those awkward silences at family dinners. Just think of it as the mental equivalent of sliding into someone’s DMs.
Words related to Amazing Coincidence
奇遇 (きぐう) – Kigu
Ever bumped into your high school nemesis at a sumo wrestling match in Osaka? That’s Kigu for you—a strange coincidence that makes you question if the universe is playing a cosmic joke. It’s like finding out your blind date is your dentist’s cousin’s yoga instructor.
偶然の一致 (ぐうぜんのいっち) – Gūzen no Icchi
This phrase is like finding your soulmate who also happens to be allergic to nori and is obsessed with collecting vintage Ghost In the Shell figurines. Gūzen no Icchi is when coincidences line up so perfectly, you start wondering if you’re actually living in a rom-com.
思いがけない偶然 (おもいがけないぐうぜん) – Omoigakenai Gūzen
Imagine you’re walking down the street and a winning lottery tickets lands on your head at the exact moment you decide to quit your job. Omoigakenai Gūzen is that unexpected coincidence that makes you look up and say, “Really, universe? Really?”
巡り合わせ (めぐりあわせ) – Meguriawase
Think of Meguriawase as the universe’s way of setting up a blind date with destiny. It’s those fortunate encounters that make you believe in fate, like running into an old friend at a ramen shop and discovering you both have a newfound love for Ska Paradise Orchestra
So, next time you experience a telepathic moment or a mind-blowing coincidence, remember these Japanese words and enjoy the delightful weirdness of it[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
part with
to give something to someone else, especially when you'd prefer to keep it
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Word of the Day
rebarbative
Definition: (adjective) Tending to irritate.
Synonyms: repellant, repellent.
Usage: As the night wore on, the petulant man became increasingly rebarbative and prickly and spiteful.
Discuss
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Language Log
Graphic Contexts Determine Characters' Functions
[This is a guest post by J. Marshall Unger.]
I do not believe it is useful, let alone necessary, to classify every character of a writing system as a phonogram, logogram, syllabogram, logosyllabogram, or any other kind of “gram.” Characters function logographically or phonographically depending on the degree to which they reflect the phonological, as opposed to the lexical, structure of the part of an utterance they are used to represent. One and the same character can function phonographically in one context, logographically in another, and in both ways in yet another. This is a consequence of what Martinet called the double articulation of language, i.e. Hockett’s duality of patterning or Hjemslev’s plereme/ceneme distinction. One may say for convenience that a character that functions logographically in a particular context is a logogram, but to the extent that doing so invites the unwary to think that logograms enjoy some sort of context-free existence in a Platonic universe of symbols, it is a bad idea.
In writing systems with fewer than about eight dozen characters, most function phonographically most of the time, though some are occasionally deployed logographically in abbreviations, anachronistic spellings, and so on. This is because keeping texts short and retaining customary spellings often has practical value. Likewise, predominantly phonographic writing systems, unless specially designed to do so, seldom encode small phonetic differences in the realization of phonemes; indeed, some do not require notating certain predictable phonemic information (e.g. vowels in Arabic script).
Only in writing systems with many hundreds of characters is a substantial degree of logographic representation even possible. In such systems—Chinese is the prime example—the difficulty of learning a large number of characters well enough for reading and writing with ease is compensated for by introducing phonographic mnemonics into the graphic structure of many characters. If these design features were absent, the set of characters would be no better than the multidigit numbers in a large codebook, which assures that messages they are used to encode are meaningless to anyone without knowledge of the codebook but hardly embodies a learnable writing system for practical purposes.
Selected readings
* "Script origin and typology, part 1" (7/1/24)
* "Script origin and typology, part 2" (7/5/24)
* "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22)
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: surmise
This word has appeared in 30 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Language Log
Government dampers on AI in the PRC
"China Puts Power of State Behind AI—and Risks Strangling It: Government support helps China’s generative AI companies gain ground on U.S. competitors, but political controls threaten to weigh them down", by Lia Lin, WSJ (7/16/24)
Most generative AI models in China need to obtain the approval of the Cyberspace Administration of China before being released to the public. The internet regulator requires companies to prepare between 20,000 and 70,000 questions designed to test whether the models produce safe answers, according to people familiar with the matter. Companies must also submit a data set of 5,000 to 10,000 questions that the model will decline to answer, roughly half of which relate to political ideology and criticism of the Communist Party.
Generative AI operators have to halt services to users who ask improper questions three consecutive times or five times total in a single day.
Comment by Mark Metcalf: "Nothing like encouraging creativity. And that's certainly nothing like encouraging creativity."
Selected readings
* "The perils of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the PRC" (4/17/23)
* "Welcome to China" (3/10/14)
* "Vignettes of quality data impoverishment in the world of PRC AI" (2/23/23)
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
take in (2)
to fully understand something you hear or read
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Word of the Day
doleful
Definition: (adjective) Filled with or expressing grief.
Synonyms: mournful.
Usage: The poor child's doleful eyes compelled me to buy him expensive toys and bags of candy in the hopes of cheering him up.
Discuss
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: staggering
This word has appeared in 611 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
put on (3)
to present an event such as a concert, a seminar, a sporting tournament, etc.
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Word of the Day
buoyancy
Definition: (noun) Irrepressible liveliness and good spirit.
Synonyms: irrepressibility.
Usage: With his natural buoyancy of spirits, he began to hope again.
Discuss
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Language Log
"Fisherman Croc's desert song"?
Shannon McDonagh, "'What the Hell Is This?': Crocodile-Like Fossil Rewrites Triassic History", Newsweek 7/11/2024:
The groundbreaking discovery of the Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis reveals the presence of waterside crocodile-like creatures around the globe during the Middle Triassic.
Broadly known as pseudosuchian archosaurs—four-legged, carnivorous beings with an armadillo-like coating—these creatures are now known to have existed coastally between 247.2 million and 237 million years ago.
This proposed revision to Triassic history didn't startle me, due to my lack of relevant background assumptions about the distribution of crocodile-like creatures during that period. But the species name Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis did catch my attention.
The paper announcing the discovery helps a bit — Nathan Smith et al., "A new pseudosuchian from the Favret Formation of Nevada reveals that archosauriforms occupied coastal regions globally during the Middle Triassic", Biology Letters 7/10/2024:
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that both stem- and crown-group Archosauria encompassed high ecological diversity during their initial Triassic radiation. We describe a new pseudosuchian archosaur, Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis gen. et sp. nov., from the Anisian (Middle Triassic) Fossil Hill Member of the Favret Formation (Nevada, USA), a pelagic setting in the eastern Panthalassan Ocean characterized by the presence of abundant ammonoids and large-bodied ichthyosaurs.
[…]
Etymology: The generic name combines ‘Benggwi Gwishinga’ from the Shoshone term for ‘catching fish’, with ‘suchus’, the Greek term for Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile-headed god. The specific epithet combines the Latin ‘erema’ and ‘carminis’, meaning ‘desert song’, and honours Elaine Kramer and Monica Shaffer, and their love of the palaeontology, museums, and opera of the southwestern USA. The binomen is intended to translate roughly as ‘Fisherman Croc's desert song’.
That reveals some of the morphological analysis, though not the Shoshone morphosyntactic details, nor the appropriate pronunciation for the phrasal borrowing into English,
The Shoshoni dictionary at the Shoshoni Language Project lists both benggwi and gwishinga as meaning "fish", in the Duckwater Shoshone language: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shoshone1.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shoshone2.png I'm guessing that the first of those words means "fish" as a noun, and the other means "catch (fish)" verb.
The source "Harbin 1988" is cited in the references as "Harbin, Theresa, Annette George, and Ricky Mike. 1988. The Duckwater Shoshone language and Culture Curriculum. The Duckwater Shoshone Bilingual Curriculum Development Team". I haven't been able to find a copy of that material, but an Eastern Shoshone Working Dictionary confirms that guess (even though the Duckwater Shoshone tribe is identified as a Western Shoshone group), giving bêngkwi glossed as "fish" and gwêshi glossed as "entangle", with a derived form gwêshigkeN glossed as "trap, catch, ensnare, net, entangle": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Bengkwi.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/gweshi.png There's a final non-linguistic mystery in the etymology of Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis, namely the identity of the two people given credit for the "desert song" part of the name:
The specific epithet combines the Latin ‘erema’ and ‘carminis’, meaning ‘desert song’, and honours Elaine Kramer and Monica Shaffer, and their love of the palaeontology, museums, and opera of the southwestern USA.
They're not among the paper's authors ("Nathan D. Smith, Nicole Klein, P. Martin Sander and Lars Schmitz"). Nor are they mentioned in the paper's acknowledgements.
An interesting note: the paper contains a brief section denying AI assistance, presu[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pal
a friend
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Idiom of the Day
keep an eye peeled (for something or someone)
To remain vigilant or carefully watchful (for something or someone). Watch the video
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all—and if you’re a writer be glad you have such a wonderful editor. You should really buy him or her or them a cup of coffee.
I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of this simultaneity. My weirdness circuits would overload, but Jake Adelstein's seem to thrive on such bizarrerie. Selected readings
* "Language Log literally changes your brain" (8/25/16)
* "Language that exercises the brain; poetry and gradations of understanding" (1/7/24)
* "Parrot telepathy at the BBC" (1/28/04)
* "Invisible telepathic parrots" (6/30/07)
[Thanks to Don Keyser]
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Language Log
IRL reverse dictionary
… or maybe I should say "associative memory"? Or whatever we should call the emerging modes of interaction with Meta Ray-Bans? Anyhow, here's a recently re-published Girls With Slingshots comic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/GWS_ReverseDictionary.jpg
The comments include a number of old reference-librarian anecdotes. Of course, web search algorithms have been evolving towards the capabilities illustrated in the comic, as well as the feats attributed to reference librarians.
This also reminds me of Michael Ramscar's ideas about the asymmetry between human word-to-concept and concept-to-word memory, which I featured in the discussion of an earlier comic ("Too much information", 1/14/2014), summarizing it like this:
[I]f you probe word knowledge by asking people to go from words to meanings (as in typical vocabulary tests), average performance increases up to age 80, in the absence of dementia; but if you ask people to go from meanings to words (as in picture naming or category listing), average performance declines from the mid-30s on, with the decline accelerating through the 50s, 60s and 70s.
For a properly scientific version of Michael's ideas, see his Oxford Research Encyclopedia article "Psycholinguistics and aging".
[In looking up the term "reverse dictionary", I just just learned that it's standard meaning is apparently "a dictionary alphabetized by the reversal of each entry", and what I've always meant by the term should be called a "conceptual dictionary".]
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Idiom of the Day
keep a sharp lookout (for something or someone)
To remain vigilant or carefully watchful (for something or someone). Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
yakuza
a Japanese criminal organisation, or a member of such an organisation
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Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final
In this football language post we look at the phrase 'build up to the final' as we look forward to Sunday's final at the 2024 Euros
The post Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Language Log
Irish eggcorns
A guest post, via email from Maitiú Ó Coimín:
I just watched the interview Rob's Words on YouTube did with you last year. You mentioned that you'd like to hear about eggcorns in other languages. I think I have two for you from my first language: Irish.
The first relates to the animal the squid. One of the Irish names for a squid is a "máthair shúigh". The two component words are "máthair" generally meaning "mother" and "shúigh" which is a genitive form of the word "súiche", meaning "soot". The "mother" in this sense means "source of" rather than a female parent. The name basically means "thing that creates/is the source of soot", referring to the blue-black ink released by squids. "Súigh", without the h, is the verb "to suck" and people think the squid's name refers to the suction pads on its tentacles, something like a "sucking mother".
The second one is the phrase "a chairde gaoil" which people use at the start of speeches to address a crowd of friends or family etc. The components are the vocative particle "a", "cairde" meaning friends, and "gaol" meaning here "kindred", "related" or "dear". The phrase sort of means "dearly beloved" or something like that. People think it is "a chairde Gael", which means something like "Gaelic friends" or "Irish friends".
Above is a guest post by Maitiú Ó Coimín.
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