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Language Log
English usage in Taiwan
From a Facebook page with Army background in Taiwan: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/voiceofhan.jpg Facebook page for Voice of Han Broadcasting Network
(漢聲廣播電台 hànshēng guǎngbō diàntái)
from Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense
The large lettering on the poster reads:
zǎo ān
bù wèi fēngyǔ
dōu shì weather nǐ
早安
不畏風雨，
都是weather你
Good morning
Not afraid of wind or rain
It's all for you
The "weather" is a crosslingual pun for wèile 為了 ("for; on behalf of").
You can see that the soldiers are all decked out for inclement weather, which comes a lot in Taiwan.
The poster is part of the publicity for the Han Kuang Exercise, which is going on right now (Monday, Jul 22, 2024 – Friday, Jul 26, 2024).
The Han Kuang Exercise (Chinese: 漢光演習; pinyin: Hànguāng Yǎnxí) is the annual military exercise of the Republic of China Armed Forces in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu for combat readiness in the event of an attack from the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China.
(source)
For those who are curious, "Han Kuang" superficially means "light / glory of Han", but in the context of the Han Kuang Exercise, its authoritative intent originally was Dàhàn guāngfù 大漢光復 ("gloriously restore the Great Han"). That harkened back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-25-220 AD), but, in the context of the ROC-PRC confrontation, it had the implication of "retake the mainland". That was clearly the sentiment of the KMT (Nationalist) government and the couple of million people from the mainland who accompanied Chiang Kai-shek when he retreated with his armies to Taiwan when the communists conquered China. After the KMT lost its dominance over the island nation to the Taiwanese majority DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) at the beginning of the new millennium, the Han Kuang Exercise — regardless of the original intent of the name — was reinterpreted to emphasize the strongest possible defensive posture against the threat of an attack by the PRC / CCP. (source, especially note 1)
This year the Han Kuang Exercise has particular poignancy and urgency because of the heightened tensions in the region and the ever increasing hostility of the mainland military forces.
Aside from the crosslingual pun involving "weather" that I explained above, there's another very important linguistic aspect to the Han Kuang Exercise that I almost neglected to mention. Namely, the Han Kuang Exercise is carried out bilingually, in "Chinese" and English. I would hope that "Chinese" means that the written components of the war games are in Mandarin, but that the spoken components include Taiwanese and other languages of Taiwan.
I have on several occasions mentioned that the government of Taiwan during the 21st century has made it clear that it wishes to make English an official language of the country. The fact that the Han Kuang Exercise is conducted in "Chinese" and English is solid evidence of working toward the realization of this goal. Selected readings * "English as an official language in Taiwan" (12/8/18)
* Ralph Jennings, "Isolation-wary, Chinese-speaking Taiwan moves to make English an official language", Los Angeles Times (10/15/18)
* "Taiwan to make English an official language next year, says official", Jennifer Creery, Hong Kong Free Press (8/31/18)
[Thanks to shaing tai]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: defector
This word has appeared in 38 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
speak up (2)
If you speak up, you publicly state your position on an issue, or publicly oppose or defend someone or something.
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Word of the Day
ineffable
Definition: (adjective) Incapable of being expressed.
Synonyms: indescribable, unspeakable, untellable, unutterable, indefinable.
Usage: There was an expression of ineffable sadness on her face as she spoke, and I could not but feel that she knew that I knew her secret.
Discuss
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: exacting
This word has appeared in 265 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
dish out (2)
If you dish out something like criticism or advice, you give it often and without much thought.
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Word of the Day
inaugural
Definition: (adjective) Serving to set in motion.
Synonyms: initiative, initiatory, maiden, first.
Usage: The magazine's inaugural issue sold out in a matter of days, prompting the owners to publish the second issue in larger numbers.
Discuss
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Language Log
Capitalization in the constitution?
A few years ago (in "…'such matters as Opinion, not real worth, gives a value to'", 11/20/2016), based on reading Mary Astell's 1694 work A serious proposal to the ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest, I asked:
Why did authors from Astell's time distribute initial capital letters in the apparently erratic way that they did?
And I quoted Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Introduction to Late Modern English, 2009:
The use of extra initial capitals, according to Osselton, steadily increased during the first half of the eighteenth century to about 100 per cent around the 1750s after which this practice was drastically reduced and, fifty years later, abandoned completely. The reason for giving up the practice to capitalise all nouns was pressure from writers, who felt that they could not longer make use of capitals to emphasize individual words, as they had been accustomed to do before such idiosyncratic use of capitals was standardised by the printers.
This doesn't really answer the question asked today in an email from Joseph Huang, who links to my 2016 post, and asks: "I saw your blog post about capitalization. I am wondering whether you have studied capitalization in the Constitution."
Joseph continues:
It appears to me most of the nouns, if not all, are capitalized. For example, in the preamble, I only find "defence" is not capitalized, all the other nouns are capitalized.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
All the nouns in Art. 1 Sec. 1 are capitalized.
"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
"Vacancies" in Art. 1 Sec. 2 Clause 4 is not capitalized.
"When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies."
The 11th Amendment was passed by Congress on March 4, 1794, and ratified by the states on February 7, 1795. In this amendment, there is a significantly smaller percentage of nouns capitalized. But Judicial (adj), Citizens, Subjects, Foreign (adj) State are still capitalized. So such capitalization means Citizens and State are proper nouns? But what about Judicial and Foreign? Note that law and equity are not capitalized, but they are capitalized in the Constitution (Art. III Sec. 2).
"The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."
This is confusing to me: how the drafters of the Constitution and the amendments decide what to capitalize? Are you aware of any linguistic studies of capitalization in the Constitution and the amendments?
Short answer: No. Maybe some commenters will contribute references to relevant linguistic studies?
But I am aware of some work by legal scholars that makes a relevant point, e.g. Akhil Reed Amar, "Our Forgotten Constitution: A Bicentennial Comment", The Yale Law Journal 1987:
This is a story about the Constitution that begins with some rather shocking facts: The parchment that all of us — practitioners, judges, scholars — have been using for the last century as the definitive copy of the supreme law of the land, is not. The handwritten, handsigned document enshrined in the National Archives and reprinted everywhere was never ratified by "We the People of the United States." Even the Senate is on rec[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pooped
very tired, exhausted
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Idiom of the Day
knock (someone) over with a feather
To shock, confuse, or astonish someone to a point of complete bewilderment; throw someone for a loop. More often phrased as "you could have knocked me over with a feather," expressing great bewilderment or surprise. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: futile
This word has appeared in 184 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
get along
If two people get along, they like each other and are friendly.
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Word of the Day
emanation
Definition: (noun) Something that issues from a source.
Synonyms: emission.
Usage: The sulphuretted hydrogen emanations, which Captain Burton mentions, could be distinctly smelt.
Discuss
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Language Log
Deutsche Zungenbrecher
"Some German tongue-twisters", posted on 21/07/2024 by StephenJones.blog
Whereas the mind-boggling “tapeworm words” in my post on Some German mouthfuls are of a practical nature, the realm of fantasy opens up whole new linguistic vistas. In a stimulating article, Deborah Cole introduces the work of the Berlin-based cabaret performer, playwright, and pianist Bodo Wartke.
She begins with some drôle political context:
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a former defence minister with a dastardly difficult name to say, was long seen as a likely successor to the relatively pronounceable ex-chancellor, Angela Merkel. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s resignation as the conservatives’ party chief came as a relief to news presenters the world over, clearing the way for the tight three-syllabic Olaf Scholz. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, once a federal justice minister and the ultimate double-barrelled tongue-tripper, was not invited to join his cabinet.
Now Bodo Wartke and his musical partner Marti Fischer have gone viral with their rap-tinged Zungenbrecher (“tongue-breakers”)—notably “Barbaras Rhabarberbar” (recorded in 144 takes!), the story of a bar owner named Barbara who enchants all who try her rhubarb cake, including a group of bushy-bearded, beer-swilling barbarians who bring their barber back to try a bite….
The post includes the two part video of “Barbaras Rhabarberbar”. En passant, I heard "barber shop" and "abracadabra".
The related readings at the bottom include a link to an entertaining post on German compound nouns (Bandwurmwörter “tapeworm words”).
Selected readings
* "Long words" (6/25/18)
* "German lexicographic richness" (10/11/21)
* "The Germans have a word for it" (9/9/09)
* "Verschlimmbessert" (3/13/15)
* "Translating the untranslatable" (10/28/10)
* "TFW" (12/28/16)
* "Googlefreude, Googleschaden, Schadengoogle…" (1/2/07)
* "German wordcraziness rules" (12/18/22)
* "Googlefreude, Googleschaden, Schadengoogle…" (1/2/07)
* "Schadenfreudeful" (4/20/19)
* "Herrgottsbescheisserle" (9/4/20)
* "Five words" (6/30/20) — this comment and several of the following comments, including this one where I introduce a word my Austrian father taught me when I was a little boy: Constantinopolitanischerdudellsackpfeiffenmachergesellschaft (Constantinople Bagpipe Manufacturing Company)
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Language Log
The transformative power of translation
"Not Lost In Translation: How Barbarian Books Laid the Foundation for Japan’s Industrial Revolution", by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution (July 22, 2024)
I am grateful to Alex Tabarrok and his colleague Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution University of George Mason University's Mercatus Center for introducing me to what is one of the most mind-boggling/blowing papers I have read in the last decade.
First, here is Tabarrok's introduction, and that will be followed by selections from the revolutionary paper to which I am referring.
Japan’s growth miracle after World War II is well known but that was Japan’s second miracle. The first was perhaps even more miraculous. At the end of the 19th century, under the Meiji Restoration, Japan transformed itself almost overnight from a peasant economy to an industrial powerhouse.
After centuries of resisting economic and social change, Japan transformed from a relatively poor, predominantly agricultural economy specialized in the exports of unprocessed, primary products to an economy specialized in the export of manufactures in under fifteen years.
In a remarkable new paper, Juhász, Sakabe, and Weinstein show how the key to this transformation was a massive effort to translate and codify technical information in the Japanese language. This state-led initiative made cutting-edge industrial knowledge accessible to Japanese entrepreneurs and workers in a way that was unparalleled among non-Western countries at the time.
Here’s an amazing graph which tells much of the story. In both 1870 and 1910 most of the technical knowledge of the world is in French, English, Italian and German but look at what happens in Japan–basically no technical books in 1870 to on par with English in 1910. Moreover, no other country did this. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/juhasz1.jpg [Click to embiggen for easy reading]
Translating a technical document today is much easier than in the past because the words already exist. Translating technical documents in the late 19th century, however, required the creation and standardization of entirely new words.
…the Institute of Barbarian Books (Bansho Torishirabesho)…was tasked with developing English-Japanese dictionaries to facilitate technical translations. This project was the first step in what would become a massive government effort to codify and absorb Western science. Linguists and lexicographers have written extensively on the difficulty of scientific translation, which explains why little codification of knowledge happened in languages other than English and its close cognates: French and German (c.f. Kokawa et al. 1994; Lippert 2001; Clark 2009). The linguistic problem was two-fold. First, no words existed in Japanese for canonical Industrial Revolution products such as the railroad, steam engine, or telegraph, and using phonetic representations of all untranslatable jargon in a technical book resulted in transliteration of the text, not translation. Second, translations needed to be standardized so that all translators would translate a given foreign word into the same Japanese one.
Solving these two problems became one of the Institute’s main objectives.
Here’s a graph showing the creation of new words in Japan by year. You can see the explosion in new words in the late 19th century. Note that this happened well after the Perry Mission. The words didn’t simply evolve, the authors argue new words were created as a form of industrial policy. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/juhasz2.jpg [Click to embiggen for easy reading]
By the way, AstralCodexTen points us to an interesting biography of a translator at the time who works on economics books:
[Fukuzawa Yukichi {1835-1901}] makes great progress on a number of translations. Among them is the first Western[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hood (2)
a criminal, a member of a criminal gang
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Idiom of the Day
knock (one's) head against a/the wall
To attempt continuously and fruitlessly to accomplish some task or achieve some goal that is or seems ultimately hopeless. Watch the video
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: Euro 2024 Review – The Best and Worst
Читать полностью…
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indie
rock music not released by major music labels
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be knocking on heaven's door
To be dying; to be approaching or very close to death (i.e., about to be admitted into the afterlife). Watch the video
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ord as acknowledging that this revered document has virtually no legal significance. No kidding.
Fortunately, the document that was ratified by Americans in the late 1780's — an edition printed in New York several days after the signing of the parchment in Philadelphia — bears a close resemblance to the text we have all grown up with. Although the official printed archetype of the Constitution (whose existence has for many years been a well kept if unintended secret) is marked by different punctuation and capitalization, the words are the same as those in the familiar parchment. Thus, the National Archives version is probably good enough for government work.
In other words, constitutional capitalization was a stochastic sociolinguistic process. It might be revealing to construct a statistical model of capitalization practices in the relevant regions of time and space, but I don't think anyone has done it.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: revue
This word has appeared in 52 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
dig up
If you dig up something, you get it from under the ground by digging.
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Word of the Day
eloquence
Definition: (noun) Powerful and effective language.
Synonyms: fluency, smoothness.
Usage: The preacher's eloquence attracted a large congregation.
Discuss
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Language Log
Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese
This has become a hot button issue in recent weeks.
Do we need such a term? What does it signify?
Is there any other kind of Taiwanese?
We have Australian English, British English, and American English; we have Canadian / Quebec French and Belgian French and Louisiana French (I love to hear it), and Swiss French…; Caribbean Spanish, Castilian Spanish, Andean Spanish, Rioplatense Spanish, Canarian Spanish, Central American Spanish, Andalusian Spanish, Mexican Spanish…; Taiwan Mandarin, PRC Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), Sichuan Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin….
What's the contrasting / distinguishing term for "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese"?
Here's an article in Chinese in a Taiwan newspaper that argues for the name of Minnan language on Formosa to be "rectified (zhèngmíng 正名)" as "Táiwān Táiyǔ 台灣台語" ("Taiwan[ese] Taiwanese"). Here's Chau Wu's reaction to the article:
Oy vey! The news network you cited from belongs to the pro-China, pro-"Re-unification" United Daily News organization (Note: PRC has never controlled Taiwan, and the latter has never been part of the former, so why call it "re-unification"?). Of course, their reporters will seek out opinions from the so-called scholars who would spit out such non-sense.
Please take a look at the following YouTube video on Ayo's YouTube channel, Tâi-lâm muē-á kà lí kóng Tâi-gí (A Tainan Girl Teaches You Taiwanese). She provides some cogent information regarding this controversial issue. She speaks in Taiwanese, but you can read the Mandarin subtitles. EP0【台語的迷思】台語為什麼不叫閩南語？學台語的重要性是啥？｜台南妹仔教你講台語
There is a recent article in BBC, "Tainan: The 400-year-old cradle of Taiwanese culture." In it the writer mentions his interview with this YouTuber. Tainan: The 400-year-old cradle of Taiwanese culture (7/10/24)
[VHM: This is a worthy article, covering many facets about the history and culture of Tainan. What the author, Will Buckingham, has to say about Ayo makes clear that she is a treasure for the preservation of Taiwanese language.]
Ayo summarizes it very nicely: Tai-gi is a proper noun, which was developed during the Japanese era and this term has been in customary use since then. Even the dictator Chiang Ka-shek used this term. The situation is no different than the American usage of "English" in this country. This term is a historic term, and is a proper noun. Americans never give a thought to its nominal incongruity (a wrong language in a wrong country – Italian spoken in Italy, Icelandic in Iceland, Japanese in Japan, etc. But English in America?).
I think Chau put it very nicely, especially as he added in a subsequent note:
On another aspect – When I first saw the term 臺灣台語 (Taiwanese of Taiwan), I knew it was another example of artificial bureaucratese. My reaction: another "oy vey"! Is it so difficult to simply call it "Taiwanese" without the redundant appendage of "of Taiwan"? In UK, is English called "English of England"? Similarly, Japanese of Japan? Icelandic of Iceland?
Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese — enough already! Selected readings
* "Mixed script writing in Taiwan" (5/24/24)
* "A crack in the hegemonic edifice of hanzi" (5/23/24)
* Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Taiwan's language situation
* Dozens of Language Log posts touching upon American English, British English, Australian English
[h.t. shaing tai]
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
mosh pit
an area in front of the stage at a rock concert where people dance energetically, or "mosh"
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Idiom of the Day
knock Anthony
obsolete To knock one's knees together while walking or running (i.e., be "knock-kneed"). Watch the video
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Language Log
Reading Old Turkic runiform inscriptions with the aid of 3D simulation
"Augmenting parametric data synthesis with 3D simulation for OCR on Old Turkic runiform inscriptions: A case study of the Kül Tegin inscription", Mehmet Oğuz Derin and Erdem Uçar, Journal of Old Turkic Studies (7/21/24)
Abstract
Optical character recognition for historical scripts like Old Turkic runiform script poses significant challenges due to the need for abundant annotated data and varying writing styles, materials, and degradations. The paper proposes a novel data synthesis pipeline that augments parametric generation with 3D rendering to build realistic and diverse training data for Old Turkic runiform script grapheme classification. Our approach synthesizes distance field variations of graphemes, applies parametric randomization, and renders them in simulated 3D scenes with varying textures, lighting, and environments. We train a Vision Transformer model on the synthesized data and evaluate its performance on the Kül Tegin inscription photographs. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, with the model achieving high accuracy without seeing any real-world data during training. We finally discuss avenues for future research. Our work provides a promising direction to overcome data scarcity in Old Turkic runiform script.
Aside from the Abstract, the lead author also shared with me the following summary paragraph:
For Old Turkic, there is a problem with the text of inscriptions that they are deformed, etc., due to aging and environmental conditions, and there is not a good enough amount of data that correlates various angles of a glyph to its value, as you know, data is the oil for AI. To tackle this problem, we developed a system where we create completely random strings and put them on virtual inscriptions with photorealistic rendering techniques, and it turns out that works wonders: we have been able to go beyond 80% accuracy for actual photographs without making the AI ever see one. Although we had success for this one, and generating images for training was in an application for paper materials, etc., I am also pondering if it might be helpful for other ancient inscriptions whose systematic nature might be more or less known, but a layer of complexity on the surface makes it more challenging to annotate data, hence making it harder to train with actual photographs or estampages.
I am hoping that the techniques developed here for reading Old Turkic runiform script may also be adapted for use on other historical scripts.
Selected readings
* "Pugu, boga, beg" (8/11/20)
* "Tocharian, Turkic, and Old Sinitic 'ten thousand'" (4/23/19)
* "Northernmost runic finds in the world" (2/10/20)
* "Turkish written with Latin letters half a millennium ago" (8/29/16)
* "Unknown language #18" (6/3/24)
* "Unknown language #17" (5/2/24)
* "On the etymology of the title Tham of Burusho kings" (5/17/20)
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