28487
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
old school | old-school
from a previous period, and usually highly-regarded
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Idiom of the Day
come into question
To become doubted, scrutinized, or a matter of serious discussion. Watch the video
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Language Log
Frociaggine
Angela Giuffrida, "Pope Francis allegedly used offensive slur during discussion about gay men", The Guardian 5/27/2024:
Pope Francis allegedly used an offensive slur during a discussion with bishops over admitting homosexual men into seminaries, several Italian newspapers have reported.
The pontiff, 87, is alleged to have made the remark during a closed-door meeting with bishops in Rome last week, where they were reportedly discussing whether out gay men should be admitted to Catholic seminaries, where priests are trained, a topic that the Italian bishops conference (CEI) is said to have been pondering for some time.
During the discussion, when one of the bishops asked Francis what he should do, the pope reportedly reiterated his objection to admitting gay men, saying that while it was important to embrace everyone, it was likely that a gay person could risk leading a double life. He is then alleged to have added that there was already too much “frociaggine”, a vulgar Italian word that roughly translates at “faggotness”, in some seminaries.
Needless to say, this got plenty of coverage in U.S. media as well as in Italy and also elsewhere, and has been on my to-blog list ever since the articles first came out.
And also needless to say, my first reaction was to wonder about the morphology and the etymology of the "slur". Wiktionary glosses frociaggine as "(vulgar, derogatory) faggotry", and explains the etymology as
From frocio + -aggine.
…where -aggine is "added to adjectives to form nouns denoting a quality, typically negative", and frocio is given two senses. The first is flagged as (derogatory, Rome, dated), glossed as "German", and given the suggested etymology "Probably from frocia ('nostril')". The second (and relevant) one can be an adjective, glossed as "(vulgar, mostly derogatory) gay, homosexual", or a noun, which is given two glosses:
1. (vulgar, derogatory, outgroup) gay man, poof, faggot
2. (friendly, ingroup) homosexual person, especially a gay man
Both the adjective and noun forms are flagged as "originally Rome", with this "Uncertain" etymology:
* Likely from Latin flūxus (passed through a minor Italian cognate stratum). Cognate with floscio (and the regional froscio), Galician frouxo, Portuguese chocho, Sicilian frocia, Spanish flojo.
* Others believe to be same as above, with a semantical shift. Alternatively from Venetian fenocio (“(slang) gay”) with rhoticisation of the /-n-/ by influence of the above term.
In "Concerning 'Faggotry' – an Italian View", 1P5 6/4/2024, Aurelio Porfiri lists four hypotheses about the root word frocio, which he credits to an article in Focus Magazine. Three of the four are quite different from Wiktionary's hypotheses:
[T]he first hypothesis is that this term could be a dialectal corruption of the term français, “French,” made in the Napoleonic era. So the Romans called the French invaders “froscè” using a distortion of the term français. At this time, if this etymology is true, the word did not have a meaning referring to unnatural sexual desires.
The second hypothesis is that this term derives from the Spanish flojo which means “flabby” and in this case it is obviously a little more “offensive to pious ears” because it refers to the male organ of the homosexual.
The third hypothesis is that in Italian dialects there is a phrase frociare”which means “to make faces.” So in this case we would be referring to the attitudes of those particularly effeminate homosexuals. So here we also come to what Pope Francis probably meant, that is, he meant to refer to this type of homosexual culture, that of the ostentation of homosexuality.
The fourth hypothesis, which is also the kindest towards homosexuals, is that the term derives from the Latin flos which means “flower,” indicating that homosexual people have a particular sensitivity like that o[...]
Language Log
Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 5
Spotted on the counter for tea/coffee service at the Residence Inn in Omaha, Nebraska:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/dodecomaha.jpg
They're everywhere.
The top pentagonal face of this one is open, so that the dodecahedonal pot can serve as a receptacle for used tea bags, etc. I inverted it so that you could see from the label on the bottom that it was produced by a design studio that has global aspirations.
Pure white dodecahedron, no holes in the sides — a perfect, Platonic, polyhedron.
Kind of a cross between a simple, regular polygon and a sphere.
The dodecahedron encompasses the universe and all the heavenly bodies within it.
The zodiacal constellations represented by the 12 faces of the dodecahedron symbolize all the stars and planets and galaxies in the cosmos.
Eminently satisfying — at least to me.
Selected readings
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 4" (6/5/24) — especially this extended, detailed comment by Brian Pellar
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 3" (5/24/24)
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 2" (5/12/24)
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England" (4/30/24)
* "Wheat and word: astronomy and the origins of the alphabet" (3/15/24) — with references to seven substantial papers on this subject by Brian Pellar
* "The Alphabet and the Zodiac" (12/6/22)
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hang over
If you feel that you are facing a threat or a danger, we can say the threat or the danger hangs over you.
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Language Log
Of chariots, chess, and Chinese borrowings
Having gotten a good earful of Latin last month, Chau Wu was prompted to write this note in response to our previous post on "From Chariot to Carriage" (5/5/24):
“chē 車 ("car; cart; vehicle") / yín 銀 ("silver")”
In my view, these two words are among those most representative of cultural and linguistic transfers from West to East. This comment will focus on 車 chē only. 車 is pronounced in Taiwanese [tʃja] (POJ chhia), quite similar to the first syllable char- of English chariot. I believe, like E. chariot and car which are derived from Latin carrus (see Etymonline on car and chariot), Tw chhia is ultimately also a derivative of L. carrus.
More interestingly, 車 has a second pronunciation, which is the traditional one. In reading Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic, 車 is pronounced in MSM jū, which I learned in my high-school Chinese class. In the Taiwanese literary reading, 車 is read ku. For example, there is a famous phrase 出無車 from a classic story about Feng Xuan 馮諼, a retainer of Lord Mengchang of Qi during the Warring States period, as recorded in 史記 Shĭjì ‘Records of the Grand Historian’ (孟嘗君列傳 ‘Biography of Lord Mengchang of Qi’) and 戰國策 Zhànguócè ‘Stratagems of the Warring States’; this phrase should be pronounced in Tw chhut bû ku / MSM chū wú jū.
Furthermore, in Chinese chess xiàngqí 象棋, which, like Western chess, comes from India, there is a piece named 車 ‘chariot’ whose movements are identical to those of the rook/castle in Western chess. This piece is called in Tw ku and MSM jū, preserving its Classical Chinese pronunciation.
A xiangqi board in the starting position. (The black pieces would normally be facing the player, but here they are rotated to be readable.) From Wikipedia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Xiangqi_Board.svg/280px-Xiangqi_Board.svg.png Chris Button had written this comment to the "From Chariot to Carriage" post:
It's nice when archeologically focused articles like this back up the linguistic evidence that the word represented by 車 is a loanword.
I've recently been looking at 銀, which for about 150 years has been treated as a loan into Tocharian. The problem is that the Chinese evidence doesn't support that. An article by Witczak independently proposes an internal evolution of the word in Tocharian. If correct, the direction was almost certainly Tocharian into Chinese.
[CB note: Minor typo: I meant 50 years rather than 150 years. Although it could have been proposed before then. It seems Adams' Dictionary has a reference to Rahder from 1963, but I haven't seen that.]
Chariots or silver, the other issue is a reliable Old Chinese reconstruction, which cam then be reinforced by the proposed loanword origin rather than manipulated to fit it. But that's another matter
This is why Chau brought up chē 車 ("car; cart; vehicle") and yín 銀 ("silver") together here. I expect that some combination of Chau, Chris, Doug (see forthcoming article below), and others will further enlighten us on the antecedents of yín 銀 ("silver") in Sinitic in due course.
Selected readings
* "From Chariot to Carriage" (5/5/24) — with a lengthy bibliography of relevant posts
* "Bronze, iron, gold, silver" (1/29/21) — with a long bibliography of posts relating to metallurgy
* "Latin oration at Harvard" (5/9/24)
* Douglas Q. Adams, "Resurrecting an Etymology: Greek (w)ánax ‘king’ and Tocharian A nātäk ‘lord,’ and possible wider connections", forthcoming in Sino-Platonic Papers.
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Language Log
The evolution of metaphors?
Today's Frazz has a nice metaphor about life cycles: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DandelionMetaphor.png Which called to mind an odd (to me) new theory about the language of Neanderthals, presented in a 5/20/2024 review essay by Stephen Mithen, "How Neanderthal language differed from modern human – they probably didn’t use metaphors":
[T]he evidence points to key differences in the brains of our species and those of Neanderthals that allowed modern humans (H. sapiens) to come up with abstract and complex ideas through metaphor – the ability to compare two unrelated things. For this to happen, our species had to diverge from the Neanderthals in our brain architecture.
Some experts interpret the skeletal and archaeological evidence as indicating profound differences. Others believe there were none. And some take the middle ground. […]
While it may be possible to join the puzzle pieces in several different ways, my long wrestle with the multi-disciplinary evidence has found only one solution. This begins with iconic words being spoken by the ancient human species Homo erectus around 1.6 million years ago.
As these types of words were transmitted from generation to generation, arbitrary words and rules of syntax emerged, providing the early Neanderthals and H. sapiens with equivalent linguistic and cognitive capacities.
But these diverged as both species continued to evolve. The H. sapiens brain developed its spherical form with neural networks connecting what had been isolated semantic clusters of words. These remained isolated in the Neanderthal brain. So, while H. sapiens and Neanderthals had equivalent capacity for iconic words and syntax, they appear to have differed with respect to storing ideas in semantic clusters in the brain.
By linking up different clusters in the brain that are responsible for storing groups of concepts, our species gained the capacity to think and communicate using metaphor. This allowed modern humans to draw a line between widely different concepts and ideas.
This was arguably the most important of our cognitive tools, enabling us to come up with complex and abstract concepts. While iconic words and syntax were shared between H. sapiens and Neanderthals, metaphor transformed the language, thought and culture of our species, creating a deep divide with the Neanderthals. They went extinct, while we populated the world and continue to flourish.
This is far from my areas of specialization, but I've never been convinced that "Neanderthals" (and Denisovans) are actually a separate species from H. sapiens. See this paper for a recent consideration of the issues, which ends up supporting the traditional taxonomic ideas despite presenting lots of contrary evidence…
And I'm even more skeptical of the idea that the (relatively modest) differences in endocasts point to the development of metaphors as a determinative difference, especially given the large (and underdocumented) variation in endocast measures in H. sapiens across space and time. Other kinds of skull measurements were a big deal for 19th-century racist anthropologists, and as a result, the topic has largely been shunned by modern researchers.
In any case, here's Mithin's illustration of hominin language evolution: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MithinLanguageEvolutionFigure.avif This is a step forward over the position of Lieberman & Crelin, "On the speech of Neanderthal Man", Linguistic Inquiry 1971 — which concluded, also on the basis of skull measurements and endocast properties, that
We have previously determined by means of acoustic analysis that Newborn humans, like nonhuman primates, lack the anatomical mechanism that is necessary to produce articulate speech. That is, they cannot produce the range of sounds that characterizes human speech. We can now demonstrate that [...]
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: archaic
This word has appeared in 73 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
sit back
to do nothing instead of making an effort to get what you want
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: garner
This word has appeared in 314 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Word of the Day
froward
Definition: (adjective) Stubbornly contrary and disobedient; obstinate.
Synonyms: headstrong, self-willed, willful.
Usage: Her siblings were obedient and well-behaved, but she was froward and stubborn.
Discuss
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
date from
If something dates from a certain time, it was made at that time.
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Language Log
Spelling Manchu with Chinese characters
Oh wow this is an AMAZINGLY FASCINATING find! The 'Chinese characters' seem intractable, but are just phonetically written Mandarin syllables (initial, nucleus, coda):
c(e) 策+ e 額 + (e)ng 鞥 = ceng
Next to it a Manchu transcription: ᡮᡝ᠋᠊ᠩ
I wonder where it comes from? https://t.co/p2T42WANGD pic.twitter.com/z9V2DO5SaC
— Egas Moniz-Bandeira ᠡᡤᠠᠰ ᠮᠣᠨᠢᠰ ᠪᠠᠨᡩ᠋ᠠᠶᠢᠷᠠ (@egasmb) June 4, 2024
See also here.
Lots of graphemes for few phonemes and morphemes
Selected reading
* "Polyglot Manchu emperor" (4/6/23)
* "Manchu 'princess' speaking English" (8/23/20)
* "Mandarin and Manchu semen" (3/11/22)
* "Sino-Manchu seals of the Xicom Emperor" (2/12/20)
* "Manchu illiteracy" (4/14/16)
* “Ornamental Manchu: the lengths to which a forger will go” (4/24/21)
* "Faux Manchu: Ornamental Manchu II" (6/23/21)
* "Sibe: a living Manchu language" (9/30/17)
* "Sibe and the revival of Manchu" (10/4/21)
* "A rebirth for Manchu?" (1/16/16)
* "Manchu film" (12/31/16)
* "Manchu loans in northeast Mandarin" (10/17/13)
* "Ask Language Log: Manchu Blue Dragon" (2/13/24)
[h.t. Geoff Wade]
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se. It was the iconographic representation of the structure and laws of the cosmos. Put differently, perhaps one could say that the dodecahedron was the crystallization of the Platonic ideals and mathematical principles of the macrocosm.
What is meant by Platonic ideal? The Platonic ideal is the perfect, absolute, and eternal Forms. Everything in the natural world is derived from the Forms but only as an imitation or impression of those Forms. Everything is born from the Realm of the Forms and returns back there after death.(source, with an entertaining, instructive video about "Platonic Idealism in Philosophy")
I believe that Fra. Pacioli treasured his dodecahedron for the same reasons I keep these shells on my desk: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/dodeca4e.jpg http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/dodeca4f.jpg But I believe that Plato's (and Pacioli's) comprehension of the cosmos is more profound than and superior to mine, because I can only account for the expansion and beauty of the universe, whereas the Platonists can elucidate the structure and integrity of the cosmos. To follow in the path of Plato and Pacioli, one needs a large, capacious, powerful mind — plus clarity; to adhere to the way of the snail and the nautilus, one must possess abundant inspiration and aspiration — and persistence. Selected readings
* Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 3 (5/24/24)
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England, part 2" (5/12/24)
* "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England" (4/30/24)
* "Wheat and word: astronomy and the origins of the alphabet" (3/15/24) — with references to seven substantial papers on this subject by Brian Pellar
* "The Alphabet and the Zodiac" (12/6/22)
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
factor in
to include a certain item when calculating or planning something
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Language Log
Unknown language #10, part 2
[This is a guest post by Martin Schwartz.]
"Unknown language #10" (12/1/17) left all stumped, including a broad range of superb scholars of many languages. I have no Rosetta Stone for it, but have something that may be called a Russetta or Rusetta (as in ruse) Bone.
First, the mystery text, which was the focus of Language Log Unknown Language #10, I reproduce it here as was transmitted there:
Ukhant karapet qulkt kirlerek
Iqat ighun chapuq sireleq,
Poghtu Paghytei Piereleq
Azlayn qoghular eliut karapet.
Now, to the above I give a set of verse found in Aleksandr Kuprin's Russian novel Jama ('The Pit'), 1909-1915:
U Karapeta est' bufet
Na bufete est' konfet,
Na konfete est' portret
Ètot samyj Karapet.
'Karapet has a buffet
On the buffet is a bonbon (vel sim.)
On the bonbon is a portrait,
It's the very same Karapet.'
In both texts we have four rhyming lines, in which KARAPET (k/K) is the second word of the first line and next-to-last word of the last line.
I see three possibilities:
1) A purely random correspondence between the two texts; this I very much doubt.
2) The "mystery text" is some kind of imitation of the Russian in some real language (whose original form seems compromised by an inadequate transcription; cf. the commentary on the original post); possibly, then, -ek, -eq represent a past-tense morpheme;
3) An imitation of the Russian, but in a fake language. I'm inclined toward the last possibilty. In any event, the imitation, unlike the Russian, does not repeat words from one line to another, so that a translation or paraphrase from the Russian seems ruled out.
I remembered the Russian verses from an e-letter to me by the very learned ethnomusicological researcher Ilya Saitanov (Oct. 2021); it was sent during the course of an exchange about a melody apparently originating among Terek Cossacks in Nauri Chechen territory, whence the tune spread among various Caucasian groups, importantly Georgians and Armenians, becoming popular in Russia, the Ukraine, Yiddishland, and the Greek world. The name Karapet figured in Russia as a typical Armenian name, folklorically and literarily sometimes taking on traits of pathos and diminution. The name is from Classical Armentian karapet, an equivalent of Greek Pródromos, Russ. Predteča, 'Forerunner' = John the Baptist; the Armenian is now known to derive from an early West Middle Iranian (Parthian or Middle Persian) reflex of Old Persian *kāra-pati- 'head of a work-team (< OPers. kāra-'group of people', -pati- 'chief') attested in Persepolis Elamite transcription and later paralleled by Sogdian, perhaps as a word of Achaemenian origin.
While Karapet as John the Baptist had some pagan accretions in Arm. folklore, he is not found as a pre-Christian god, despite Wikipedia, "Karapet". The West Armenian form is Garabed.
In conclusion, Kuprin's verses seem very relevant to L.L.Unknowm Language #10, whose focal text remains mysterious. I'm curious to see what my comparison stirs up. Addendum on immigrant names
Immigrants to the US take equivalents of their original names, usually by partial phonic similarity. Thus German Hans (< Johannes) > Henry; Greek Dimitios via diminutive Dimis > Jimmy > James; Italian Salvatore > Sam alongside Sal (whence among Greeks Sotiris *'salvational' > Sam), Yiddish Itsik > Isidore, and now Persian Keyvān (*Saturn) > Kevin; West Armenian Dikran *Eastern Tigran ('Tigranes') > Dic > Richard, and Garabed/Karapet via Karl/Carl > Charles. For the West Arm.-American kid in my grade-school locker room, "Garabed meant Charlie". He was just a kid, not a linguist, and I found his remark charming, Selected reading
* "Unknown language #10" (12/1/17)
* "Unknown language #18" (6/3/24)
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f a flower.
The description of Roman forscè as a local pronunciation of français suggests that Wikipedia's entry for frocio == "German" was not from the word for "nostril", but rather was a corruption of (the local word for) "French". If so, it would be parallel to the generalization of French/Frankish as the source of words for "European" in the Middle East and South Asia — see "Were the French the Yankees of Medieval Europe?", 12/16/2003.
The content of the pope's complaint about the culture of seminaries reminded me of a memorable childhood experience. This happened in 1957 or 1958, when I was 10 years old. I was fishing for pickerel with a couple of friends in the Fenton River. We came to a bend in the river where there was a nice pool, next to a sort of semi-beach, where people (including us) often went to swim. There were three young men lounging there, two of them fully dressed with clerical collars and the third stripped down to bathing trunks. One of them described meeting Cardinal Francis Spellman in New York City, and another joked (something like) "So I supposed you knelt, kissed his ring, looking up into his eyes, and said 'Francis, you bitch…'".
At the time, I had no idea what that meant, but it formed a vivid memory.
Whatever the personal predilections of those priests, Cardinal Spellman's sexual orientation and practices were apparently notorious.
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Word of the Day
penury
Definition: (noun) Extreme want or poverty; destitution.
Synonyms: indigence, pauperism, beggary, need.
Usage: Fyne did not know what it might mean to be suddenly reduced from riches to absolute penury.
Discuss
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
dag
an unfashionable or socially awkward person
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Idiom of the Day
user base
business jargon The number units of a particular product or service that are currently in use, especially software or an internet or computing platform. (Also referred to as "install(ed) user base" or simply "install(ed) base.") Watch the video
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the skeletal features of Neanderthal man show that his supralaryngeal vocal apparatus was similar to that of a Newborn human. […]
Neanderthal man did not have the anatomical prerequisites for producing the full range of human speech. He probably lacked some of the neural detectors that are involved in the perception of human speech. He was not as well equipped for language as modern man. His phonetic ability was, however, more advanced than those of present day nonhuman primates and his brain may have been sufficiently well developed for him to have established a language based on the speech signals at his command. The general level of Neanderthal culture is such that this limited phonetic ability was probably utilized and that some form of language existed.
And its a bigger advance over the original view of Neanderthals as subhuman scavengers. One step at a time…
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Word of the Day
dumbwaiter
Definition: (noun) A small elevator used to convey food (or other goods) from one floor of a building to another.
Synonyms: food elevator.
Usage: The cook put the food on the dumbwaiter and sent it upstairs, where the waiters served it.
Discuss
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
dope (1)
heroin, cannabis; any illegal drug
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Idiom of the Day
insofar as
To such an extent that; to the degree that. Watch the video
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Language Log
xkcd: Fluid Speech
Today's xkcd is (or should be) the illustration for a week or two in every introductory course on the sound side of language:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/fluid_speech_2x.png
Mouseover text: "Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay."
Randall Munroe probably already knows that "murmuring example phrases to yourself", though a useful exercise, is an imperfect approximation to the kinds of reductions that routinely happen in the fluent transformation from (phonological) symbols to (articulatory and acoustic) signals…
Unfortunately, a plurality of linguists (and the vast majority of psycholinguists) share (at least in their published work) the false belief that an accurate understanding of speech production and perception can be found by using recordings of subjects reading lists of de-contextualized sentences in a laboratory setting. (Though even there, speakers venture far from dictionary pronunciation fields…) Sociolinguists have of course championed the idea that you need to learn from patterns across a variety of speech styles and genres, including especially informal conversation — but the penetration of that idea across sub-disciplines has been surprisingly weak.
Here are a few posts where we've taken up adjacent topics:
"I'ma", 7/3/2005
"I'monna", 7/3/2005
"'On' time", 8/4/2005
"Finna and tryna", 8/5/2005
"I'ma stay with the youngsters", 5/14/2010
"The history of 'gonna'", 9/10/2010
"Ask Language Log: Writing 'gonna' or 'going to'", 6/25/2011
"Ima", 1/11/2012
"Gonna, gone, onna, a — on?", 8/10/2012
"Ask Language Log: 'Finna'", 11/4/2016
"From inflection to reduction", 1/10/2018
"On beyond the (International Phonetic) Alphabet", 4/19/2018
"Farther on beyond the IPA", 1/18/2020
"First novels", 3/13/2022
"Pronunciation evolution", 4/15/2022
"More post-IPA astronauts", 4/16/2022
For larger-scale discussions of (some of) the basic issues, see e.g. David Stampe's 1973 "A Dissertation on Natural Phonology"; Keith Johnson's 2004 paper "Massive reduction in conversational American English"; or my 2018 chapter "Towards Progress in Theories of Language Sound Structure".
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
make tracks
to leave somewhere, usually to go home
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Idiom of the Day
inner circle
A small, exclusive, and intimate group of like-minded people sharing a common goal, pursuit, or purpose. Watch the video
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Language Log
Bride of Tamil Nadu
Following up on "Crap Lolly Pop" (11/21/2022), Ambarish Sridharanarayanan sent in this xeet, featuring a poster that glorifies the present Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu as the “Bride of Tamil Nadu” instead of the “Pride of Tamil Nadu”, again because of the b/p equivalence in Tamil:
Oops!
Tamil Nadu's banner blunder turns Stalin into the 'Bride' of the state… instead of 'Pride? #BannerFail #TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/3ZJSGGjNw4
— Nabila Jamal (@nabilajamal_) March 5, 2024
As Ambarish explained in the earlier post, "Because Tamil traditionally doesn't distinguish voiced and voiceless plosives, there's lots of confusion with English loan words learnt through hearing" — which in that case was a restaurant menu rendering crab as "crap".
Th 'p' → 'b' error in pride → bride is the opposite of the 'b' → 'p' error in crab → crap — and thus goes against what I suggested at the end of that post:
[N]ative speakers can also make spelling mistakes that reflect their particular speech patterns — thus Treiman and Barry, "Dialect and authography: Some differences between American and British spellers" (2000), report that
Our results show that adults who speak British English make certain dialect-related errors when they spell. Speakers of this dialect appear to have learned that final schwa has two primary spellings: vowel + r (as in mother and tiger) and a (as in pizza and sofa). Given words such as leper (Type 1) and polka (Type 2), speakers of British English do not always know which spelling is appropriate. They sometimes select the wrong alternative, producing errors such as "lepa" and "polker."
I'm guessing that Tamil speakers are more like to make 'b' → 'p' errors than the opposite — though maybe hypercorrection would reverse that?
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.
Notice that, on Pacioli's desk, next to his right elbow, with not many other things, the great mathematician keeps a dodecahedron, and it is solid — no holes on its faces and no knobs at its vertices.
There are certain aspects of Pacioli's life that are very interesting and important: Fra. Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (sometimes Paccioli or Paciolo; c. 1447 – 19 June 1517) was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
Luca Pacioli was born between 1446 and 1448 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro where he received an abbaco* education. This was education in the vernacular (i.e., the local tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants.
(Wikipedia)
[*i.e., "abacus school", associated with Fibonacci's Book of the Abacus and his introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.]
I find that last sentence to be of extreme importance. The Phoenicians, who were also merchants and acted as middlemen throughout the Mediterranean, were responsible for the invention of the Phoenician alphabet, from which were spawned all the other alphabets of the world. This was a very vernacular thing for them to do. Similar contributions may be attributed to the Sogdians, likewise merchants across Central Asia, whom I refer to as Kulturvermittlers ("culture mediators / brokers") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombicuboctahedron
Here is another portrait of Fra. Pacioli: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/dodeca4c.jpg Portrait of Luca Pacioli (c. 1495)
(source)
The 1495 Portrait of Luca Pacioli, traditionally attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari, includes a glass rhombicuboctahedron half-filled with water, which may have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The first printed version of the rhombicuboctahedron was by Leonardo and appeared in Pacioli's Divina proportione (1509). http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/dodeca4d.jpg Leonardo da Vinci's illustration in Divina proportione (1509)
Why was the rhombicuboctahedron so important to men like Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci? Because it allowed for the approximation of a sphere while working from angles drawn on a flat surface.
A spherical 180° × 360° panorama can be projected onto any polyhedron; but the rhombicuboctahedron provides a good enough approximation of a sphere while being easy to build. This type of projection, called Philosphere, is possible from some panorama assembly software. It consists of two images that are printed separately and cut with scissors while leaving some flaps for assembly with glue.
("Rhombicuboctahedron" — I presume that now this cutting and gluing could be done electronically)
Although the spectacular half-filled glass rhombicuboctahedron is hanging — suspended from a thread — to Fra. Pacioli's right, there on a book next to his left hand is his beloved, trusty dodecahedron, again with no holes in its sides and no knobs at its vertices. The more I study the dodecahedra, the more I come to feel that the holes and the knobs were ultimately a function of their manufacture: to lighten their weight, decrease their cost, and to securely fix their sides together at the vertices. I believe that the original Greek dodecahedra were solid, as one would expect Platonic Solids to be. In my estimation, outstanding mathematicians and thinkers like Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci continued a tradition that went back to the Greeks.
What, then, was the purpose of keeping a solid, knobless dodecahedron, of the kind so lavishly praised by Plato? Because it constituted the geometric embodiment of the univer[...]
