35152
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
guts
courage
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
muscle in
to use your power or influence to force your way into a situation even if you're not wanted
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: virtuoso
This word has appeared in 100 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
rap sheet
a criminal record
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
start off
to begin in a particular way or with a particular act
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Persophone Muslim population in China
https://t.co/6qX4TK1llD
In 1405, the 5th karmapa of Tibet visited Emperor Yongle of China, upon the latter's invitation. A scroll of painting was produced to depict he event. The commemorative texts on the scroll are in five languages: Chinese, Hui (Persian), Uyghur, Tibetan, and… pic.twitter.com/SuX1rlv5Yg
— Iskandar Ding (@iskdin) April 1, 2024
video
N.B.: Persophone ("Persian-speaking"), which is very different from, and pronounced quite differently than, Persephone
* (Greek mythology) A minor deity, the queen of the Underworld/Hades, and goddess of the seasons and vegetation. Originally named Kore/Core, she is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter; and the wife of Hades. Her Roman counterpart is Proserpina.
* (astronomy) 399 Persephone, a main belt asteroid.
* (rare) A female given name from Ancient Greek.
* (science fiction) The tenth planet, orbiting beyond Pluto.
(Wiktionary)
Selected readings
* "Ask Language Log: Syriac Christian tombstone inscription from Mongol period East Asia" (2/11/24) — also from Iskandar Ding
* "A Persian word in a Sinitic topolect" (3/10/20)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
"The genes they inherited from their pirates"
Laura Baisas, “We were very wrong about birds”, Popular Science 4/1/2024:
Birds combine genes from a father and a mother into the next generation, but they first mix the genes they inherited from their pirates when creating sperm and eggs. This process is called recombination and it is also something that occurs in humans. Recombination maximizes a species’ genetic diversity by ensuring that no two siblings are exactly the same.
It's too subtle to be an April Fool's joke.
So a slip of the fingers? Autocorrect? Interesting either way…
The obligatory screenshot:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PirateBirdGenes.png
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Dangerous opportunity
Lord knows we've encountered many bizarre translations and explanations of the much maligned Mandarin term, weiji (see "Selected readings") below, but this is one of the weirdest crosslingual definitions that has ever come to my attention:
Suicide is usually an attempt to deal with a crisis. The Chinese character for "crisis" translates into "dangerous opportunity." Suicide is a permanent solution, and eliminates other options. So if you're hurting so much that you are willing to pass the pain on to those who care, perhaps you could use this dangerous opportunity to try some other options first.
(Source: Hannah Zeavin, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), ch. 5, p. 178)
Language Log readers are well aware of the perils attendant upon the English misunderstandings of wéijī 危機 / 危机 ("crisis"). We've been writing about them almost as long as LL has existed. I realize that "Dr. Ezra", who wrote that paragraph for the Cornell community, was well-intentioned, but they committed at least two offenses against linguistics that vitiate their advice. Namely, wéijī 危機 / 危机 consists of two characters / syllables, not one, and it should be translated as "crisis", not "dangerous opportunity" (I wonder what genuine psychotherapists would make of that).
Selected readings
* "Crisis ≠ Danger + Opportunity" (4/29/05)
* "Etymology as argument" (6/18/05)
* "Hollywood glamour, activist passion, false rhetoric" (4/24/06)
* "Rice v. Mair" (1/27/07)
* "Stop him before he tropes again" (3/22/07)
* "Crisis = danger + opportunity: The plot thickens" (3/27/07)
* "Trope-watch, Oslo edition" (12/11/07)
* "The crisis-(danger)-opportunity trope, de-Sinicized" (3/7/09)
* "'Crisis = danger + opportunity' redux" (2/19/20)
* "'Crisis = danger + opportunity' in America and in PRC official media" (4/21/20)
* "Chinese word for 'crisis'" (Wikipedia)
* "danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray" (Pinyin.info [2009])
[Thanks to anon.]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: inexplicable
This word has appeared in 107 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
veejay | VJ
a presenter of music videos, usually on television
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
get around (2)
to find a way of avoiding something
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Don't keep apologizing for your poor L2
Ying Reinhardt wisely advises us in this delightful article:
"I stopped apologising for my poor German, and something wonderful happened:
After a decade in Germany, I was still anxious talking to native speakers – then I realised my language skills weren’t the problem"
The Guardian (4/1/24
What Ying Reinhardt says about German as a second language is true, ceteris paribus, of other foreign languages that one may be learning. Just plunge ahead. Of course, one doesn't want to speak utter gibberish, but don't be afraid of making minor mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, and, yes, even tone or accent. Just get your ideas across in the most efficient way possible within your capability. It's all about communicative competence.
I have prefaced every conversation with, “Entschuldigung, mein Deutsch ist noch nicht so gut” (“I’m sorry, my German is still not very good”) since I moved to Hermsdorf, a little village in east Germany in 2015. Its purpose was to act as a disclaimer upfront so that the German person I was talking to wouldn’t expect me to articulate complicated ideas or respond promptly and accurately to everything that was said. But mostly, my opening line was a plea for mercy, a signal that I was still learning the language and would greatly appreciate it if they spoke more slowly and clearly. They would always graciously reply: “Ja, Deutsch ist eine schwere Sprache.” German is a difficult language, they all agreed. And for the longest time, that was true.
Growing up in Kuala Lumpur as Malaysian Chinese, I speak English almost natively, given that Malaysia was once a British colony. I also speak Malay, Malaysia’s official language, and Mandarin and Cantonese because I needed to communicate with my grandparents. Before moving to Germany, I already spoke Italian after working on board cruise ships for years alongside Italian officers, and conversational French after dating a Frenchman. Then, I met the man who would later become my husband in a bar on the 63rd floor of a building in Singapore and a thought occurred to me: “Wouldn’t it be funny if I have to learn German this time?”
Learning and speaking German was anything but funny. It wasn’t funny when I started learning the language from scratch and it still wasn’t funny when I finished C1, a level that allows me to study at a German university if I want to. When I was learning Italian or French, the words would somehow roll off my tongue, but in German the convoluted grammar made me choke. Even if I could technically write academic essays in German, the thought of calling a clinic to make an appointment would still induce debilitating anxiety. I would stammer during small talk with a mother I had never met before, while dressing my one-year-old at kindergarten; hide if I saw my neighbour take out the trash; or get my husband to call the ophthalmologist for an appointment. “Why don’t you do it yourself?” my husband would grumble. “How about you try picking up Malay and Mandarin?” I would always retort.
Finally, with a little help from her husband, she achieved L2 acquisition enlightenment:
This went on for almost a decade until a month ago: I was home, telling my husband about a meeting I’d had at the Federal Employment Agency. As usual, I had started the meeting by apologising for my mediocre German skills. The lady behind the desk had looked at me somewhat perplexed: “But your German is great.” I cackled and rolled my eyes at my husband. As if. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “I don’t know why you still think you speak bad German. OK, it is not perfect, but who cares?” Who cares indeed.
Ying gives a number of specific examples of how this "who cares" attitude toward L2 acquisition works out in practice, but one that is especially powerful tells about a diminutive South American woman:
[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
come into
to be given something after its owner dies
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
hold (someone) in good stead
Especially of a talent, ability, or experience, to prove particularly useful or beneficial to someone in the future. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
sporty
Definition: (adjective) Marked by conspicuous display.
Synonyms: flashy, gaudy, jazzy, showy.
Usage: The Thompsons thought it inappropriate that their newly widowed neighbor wore such a sporty outfit to her husband's funeral.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
musette
Definition: (noun) A small French bagpipe operated with a bellows and having a soft sound.
Synonyms: shepherd's pipe.
Usage: The young man was adept at the musette and would play it during celebrations.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
A Bat Mitzvah Dream Come True (Bless These Braces) #podcast #comedy #funnyordie
A Bat Mitzvah Dream Come True (Bless These Braces)
➖ Sent by @TheFeedReaderBot ➖
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
in one blow
All at once, with a single decisive or powerful action. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
worriment
Definition: (noun) A difficulty that causes anxiety.
Synonyms: troublesomeness, inconvenience.
Usage: To him, everything was a worriment, and his anxiety increased every day.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
San Francisco Cantonese
From Charles Belov:
While riding the 22 Fillmore bus through the Mission District in San Francisco today, I overheard a conversation in Cantonese. It was nearly 100% in Cantonese, not the Cantlish* that I rarely also hear. What surprised me, though, was when one of the elderly speakers said "Hong Kong" they used the English pronunciation, not the Cantonese one. Aside from those two words, it was all in Cantonese.
And my Cantonese is so minimal that I know nothing of the topic of their conversation aside from the words "faan heui," to return-go, shortly after which the words "Hong Kong" occurred. Not that it would be any of my business – I don't care what people say; I just care how they say it.
Just so you know, the Mission District is mainly known as a Latinx area – I also heard Spanish there on my walk today – although there have been Chinese businesses in the area for many years and it has also seen quite a bit of gentrification in recent years.
—-
*"Cantlish" is the Cantonese learner’s equivalent to "Chinglish" (e.g., when you use English word order with Cantonese words). (source)
Etymology
From the Cantonese 香港 (hoeng1 gong2, “Fragrant Harbor”), the former name of a settlement in what is now Aberdeen on the southwest side of Hong Kong Island.
Pronunciation
* (UK) IPA(key): /ˌhɒŋˈkɒŋ/
* (General American) IPA(key): /ˌhɔŋˈkɔŋ/
* (cot–caught merger) IPA(key): /ˌhɑŋˈkɑŋ/
* (Hong Kong) IPA(key): [hɔŋ˥ kʰɔŋ˥]
* Rhymes: -ɒŋ
* enPR: hǒngʹ kǒngʹ
(Wiktionary)
Mandarin to IPA Translator
香 /ɕjɑŋ55/ 港 /kɑŋ21˦/, /xʊŋ51/
Selected readings
* "Spoken Hong Kong Cantonese and written Cantonese" (8/29/13)
* "Languages of Hong Kong" — Wikipedia
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Elle Cordova puts a beat on medicinal rat-a-tat
<svg<g<g<g<path
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Elle Cordova (@ellecordova)
Another version:
François Lang:
Her diction and memory are amazing. It really reminds me of the Major-General's patter song from The Pirates of Penzance.
Selected readings
* "'Famous authors asking you out'" (3/10/24)
* "AI humor of the day" (2/25/24)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Aggressive Chinese toponymy
According to the CCP, India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh is now part of the PRC's "South Tibet", in other words, of China, so is to be named "Zangnan" — says nobody except the PRC.
India rejected China's renaming of about 30 places in its northeastern Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh on Tuesday, calling the move "senseless" and reaffirming that the border province is an "integral" part of India.
Beijing says Arunachal Pradesh, which its calls Zangnan, is a part of South Tibet – a claim New Delhi has repeatedly dismissed. China similarly ratcheted up tensions a year ago by giving Chinese names to 11 locations in the state.
Troops of the nuclear-armed neighbours engaged in minor scuffles along their disputed frontier in the state in Dec. 2022, and tensions eased after extensive military and diplomatic talks.
Yet the state is frequently the cause of friction between the Asian giants whose ties have nosedived since a bloody border clash between their troops in the western Himalayas in 2020.
China, in a statement on Saturday, said it had standardised the names of about 30 places in what it calls South Tibet, "in accordance with the relevant regulations on place name management of the State Council".
"Assigning invented names will not alter the reality that Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India," foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters that "changing names will not do anything".
"If I change the name of your house, does it become my house?" he said.
Last month, following a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the state to inaugurate infrastructure projects, China had said it was opposed to his activities in the region. India termed the arguments "baseless".
The U.S. also weighed in on the issue, saying it recognised Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory and "strongly opposed" any unilateral attempts to make claims on it by military or civilian "incursion or encroachments".
China had opposed these remarks, saying the matter "has nothing to do with the U.S.".
India and China share a 3,800 km (2,400 mile) border – much of it poorly demarcated – over which they also fought a bloody war in 1962.
Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops were killed in hand-to-hand combat in 2020, prompting both countries to fortify positions and deploy extra troops and equipment along the border.
(Reporting by Sakshi Dayal; Additional reporting by Bernard Orr in Beijing; Editing by YP Rajesh and Michael Perry)
As the brilliant Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar quipped, "If I change the name of your house, does it become my house?"
Selected readings
* "Tightening the noose on Mongolian in Southern Mongolia" (8/30/20)
* "'Tibet' obliterated" (12/13/23)
* "Weaponized Tibetan Pinyin" (5/12/17)
[Thanks to AntC]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Leave The Dolphins Alone with Megan Gailey (Bless These Braces: Episode 6)
Comedian Megan Gailey (I Love My Kid, But...) joins Tam for a stroll down memory lane to reminisce about retainers, all girl Summer camp, and various piercings.
Get notified when we drop new episodes, news, and show extras: https://norby.link/ceiRm2
2:05 - Retainer Necklaces
9:10 - Bat Mitzvah DJ Hookup
12:04 - Ear Piercing for Communion
16:50 - The Best Hotel In Indianapolis
18:34 - Bat Mitzvah Parties and Themes
20:18 - Why 7th Grade Was Hard
27:56 - Pictures From Childhood
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1
Get more Funny Or Die
-------------------------------
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie
Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie
TikTok: funnyordie" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
in (one's) heyday
In, at, or during the period of one's greatest success, power, vigor, etc. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
prosody
Definition: (noun) The study of the metrical structure of verse.
Synonyms: metrics.
Usage: He was a master of meter, and contributed certain modifications to the laws of Chinese prosody which exist to the present day.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
When I was still learning elementary German, I remember being in awe of a Chilean woman in my class who, despite her poor grasp of German grammar, spoke confidently. While I was meek and often squeaked out my words, she commanded attention – all 4ft 9in of her. I asked her how I could be more like her. “After 10 years of living in Germany, I no longer care. I’m not trying to be Goethe,” she said.
Philip Taylor, who called this article to my attention, added in an e-mail:
From my own experience, I know that learning to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak <languagevery well" in <languagecan be very much a two-edged sword, in that if one learns to say the phrase too accurately (native speaker intonation, etc) the effect can be the opposite of that desired, since by using the phrase one has unintentionally appeared to demonstrate one's seeming (but non-existent) fluency in the language … I once had to sit through four hours of more-or-less non-stop Polish while travelling from Warszawa Centralna to Białystok, having foolishly said "excuse me" in Polish while endeavouring to take my seat ! Bonus
Just as I was about to sign off on this post, I noticed the following headline in a sidebar of the article:
"German call for English to be second official language amid labour shortage:
Politician from governing FDP says skilled foreign workers are being put off by unwieldy bureaucratic German", by Philip Oltermann (2/10/23)
Since it is highly relevant to Ying Reinhardt's article, and since similar calls have been made in Japan, Taiwan, and other countries, and English is already an official language in India and Singapore, this is a proposal that must be taken seriously. Selected readings
* "L2 shortcut?" (12/6/16)
* "Learning to speak Sicilian" (2/20/20) — VHM tip: the importance of imitating models
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Everything's Fine
Eve Armstrong's latest — "Everything's Fine", arXiv.org 3/29/2024:
I investigate the peculiar situation in which I find myself healthy and strong, with a darling family, stimulating job, top-notch dental plan, and living far from active war and wildfire zones — yet perpetually ill at ease and prone to sudden-onset exasperation when absolutely nothing has happened. My triggers include dinner parties, chairs, therapists, and shopping at Costco. In analysing this phenomenon, I consider epigenetics, the neuroscience of neuroticism, and possible environmental factors such as NSF grant budgets. Yet no obvious solution emerges. Fortunately, my affliction isn't really all that serious. In fact, it's good writing material. So while I'm open to better ideas, I figure I'll just continue being like this.
The experimental html version gives us a sequence of alternative titles:
"What’s Chasing Me?"
"Why Am I Running When There’s Nothing Chasing Me?"
"What Am I Running From?"
"What Am I So Mad About?"
"Why Am I So Mad When Nothing’s Wrong?"
"Why Do Things Upset Me For No Reason?"
"What Am I So Irritated About?"
"Why Am I So Edgy For No Reason?"
"Why Am I So Mad When Nothing Happened?"
"Why Am I So Edgy When Nothing’s the Matter?"
"I’m okay."
"Everything’s Fine."
Eve has been producing relevant papers at this time of year for a while — my favorite is still "A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997", 2017:
We use a feed-forward artificial neural network with back-propagation through a single hidden layer to predict Barry Cottonfield's likely reply to this author's invitation to the "Once Upon a Daydream" junior prom at the Conard High School gymnasium back in 1997. To examine the network's ability to generalize to such a situation beyond specific training scenarios, we use a L2 regularization term in the cost function and examine performance over a range of regularization strengths. In addition, we examine the nonsensical decision-making strategies that emerge in Barry at times when he has recently engaged in a fight with his annoying kid sister Janice. To simulate Barry's inability to learn efficiently from large mistakes (an observation well documented by his algebra teacher during sophomore year), we choose a simple quadratic form for the cost function, so that the weight update magnitude is not necessary correlated with the magnitude of output error.
Network performance on test data indicates that this author would have received an 87.2 (1)% chance of "Yes" given a particular set of environmental input parameters. Most critically, the optimal method of question delivery is found to be Secret Note rather than Verbal Speech. There also exists mild evidence that wearing a burgundy mini-dress might have helped. The network performs comparably for all values of regularization strength, which suggests that the nature of noise in a high school hallway during passing time does not affect much of anything. We comment on possible biases inherent in the output, implications regarding the functionality of a real biological network, and future directions. Over-training is also discussed, although the linear algebra teacher assures us that in Barry's case this is not possible.
Some earlier LLOG posts discussing her work:
"Advances in birdsong modeling", 4/1/2017
"A dynamical systems approach to the game of Clue", 4/1/2018
"GFOOEOPQ", 4/1/2020
"Case studies of Peer Review", 4/1/2022
"'An exercise in inference sabotage'", 3/31/2023
For a list that also includes her HEP-relevant papers, see here.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: tenuous
This word has appeared in 175 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
vegetate | veg out
to do nothing
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Sound over symbol (and meaning)
Zach Hershey called to my attention a phenomenon about the relationship between speech and writing (and meaning) that I long suspected might well be true, and I even collected plentiful evidence in support of it, but I was never absolutely certain that it was true, namely, that in many cases speakers of Sinitic languages have in mind sounds over characters. Now, with information provided by Zach, we have proof that Sinitic speakers in some cases are indeed thinking of sounds separately (apart from) hanzi.
I thought of you just now when I found out the name that a friend of mine chose for their newborn son, Yiming. As of right now, the son's name is Liú 刘 Yiming, because the parents have yet to "decide on the characters" for the name. So far, they have thought of using Yìmíng 翊鸣 ("assist-call / cry / make a sound"), Yìmíng 意鸣 ("wish / intention / meaning / sense-call / cry / make a sound"), or Yìmíng 意茗 ("wish / intention / meaning / sense-tea [buds / late-picked tea"). Maybe this happens more than I know, but I immediately thought that it was fascinating that, in their minds, they like the sound of the name, but haven't put a meaning, much less characters, to the sound yet. They are going to look at the shēngchén bāzì 生辰八字 ("birthday and horoscope", more precisely, "eight characters that indicate the year, month, date and double-hour of one's birth, used in fortune-telling") before they decide on the characters.
Any suggestions for the parents of the little boy? If you give characters, please also provide tones for yiming and the literal meaning of the two characters.
Selected readings
* "Etymologizing and fantasizing: economy and relish" (2/26/22)
* "Morphemes without Sinographs" (11/18/21)
* "'Between the Eyes and the Ears': SPP turns 300" (7/20/20)
* "Between the Eyes and the Ears: Ethnic Perspective on the Development of Philological Traditions, First Millennium AD", by Shuheng Zhang and Victor H. Mair (July 19, 2020)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
