35152
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Idiom of the Day
in virtue of (something)
Due to something; because of something; by reason of something. Watch the video
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[… lots of stuff omitted …]
That excessive Bail ought not to be required, nor excessive Fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual Punishments inflicted. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/1969CruelAndUnusual0.png ➖ @EngSkills ➖
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Language Log
Yay Newfriend again
I got an echo of Saturday's post about chatbot pals, from an article yesterday in Intelligencer — John Herrman, "Meta’s AI Needs to Speak With You" ("The company is putting chatbots everywhere so you don’t go anywhere"):
Meta has an idea: Instead of ever leaving its apps, why not stay and chat with a bot? This past week, Mark Zuckerberg announced an update to Meta’s AI models, claiming that, in some respects, they were now among the most capable in the industry. He outlined his company’s plans to pursue AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, and made some more specific predictions: “By the end of the decade, I think lots of people will talk to AIs frequently throughout the day, using smart glasses like what we’re building with Ray-Ban Meta.”
Most of Herrman's examples are the standard ones about (practical or curiosity-driven) search, semi-whimsical image generation, and so on. But there are also suggestions about more personal kinds of advice:
Elsewhere, Meta’s AI is giving parenting advice on Facebook — claiming it’s the parent of a both gifted and disabled child who’s attending a New York City public school.
That's a reference to this Facebook exchange:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MetasChild.jpeg
(See here for Meta's Help Center on "answers to Facebook group posts and comments".)
It's obviously a mistake for Meta AI to pretend to have a child. But I expect we're going to see it more frequently offering explicitly-authored advice in public forums like Facebook — and maybe also offering private advice to users, based on its deep knowledge of their specific social and personal world. That's a domain where Meta has a big advantage, its only real competitors being Google and Apple, with Microsoft trying to catch up, and maybe X claiming that such things will be part of its Everything aspiration.
The authors of these interventions might be generic bots like "Meta AI", but it seems more likely that there will be a range of personalities with special names and images, focused on things like helping you to plan a trip, or interpret social interactions, or deal with a difficult acquaintance, or just provide a Rogerian venting channel.
As everyone knows, marketing bots of various kinds have been intervening for a long time in social media and individuals' email, texts, and phone calls. But this will be a different kind of intervention.
Still basically spam, I guess, but generated by the platform itself, and maybe more effective in reaching (at least some) users.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
fall over
If someone falls over, they fall to the ground.
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Idiom of the Day
(in) up to (one's) eye(ball)s
Extremely busy; deeply involved or engrossed (in or with something). Watch the video
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Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, etc. and is spoken widely in Han emigré communities in Europe), and I dare say even topolects of regions like Sichuanese / Szechwanese (remember Der gute Mensch von Sezuan?) — with its hip-hop and rap pop culture and tongue-rocking cuisine — and Northeast / Dongbei / Manchuria with its ultra-talented entertainers.
It will be much easier for these languages to emerge in their full glory if people stop referring to the totality of Han languages as Chinese, which is a political construct, and think of it rather as Sinitic, which is a linguistic concept. As soon as you buy into the dogma / doctrine that Mandarin is the sole, unique, superior brand of ethnic Han language, then you allow the Mandarins of Beijing / Peking to relegate all the other forms of Sinitic speech to the status of lowly "dialect" — including Cantonese, which in actuality is a mighty language with nearly a hundred million (!) speakers. A note on Wu
Intellectually, economically, and in other ways, this group of Sinitic languages was remarkably consequential and powerful already from the middle period of Chinese history. Its dramatic downturn in recent decades is the result of purely political machinations:
=====
The decline of Wu began from around 1986, when students were banned from speaking "uncivilized dialects" during class, a term used by the State Language Commission to refer to all Chinese languages other than Standard Chinese. In 1992, students in Shanghai were banned from speaking Wu at all times on campuses. Since the late 2000s, Wu mostly survived in kitchens and theatres, as a "kitchen language" among the elderly housewives and as a theatrical language in folk Yue opera, Shanghai opera and Pingtan. As of now, Wu has no official status, no legal protection and there is no officially sanctioned romanization.
(Wikipedia)
===== Selected readings
* "Language, topolect, dialect, idiolect" (10/3/23) — with extensive bibliography (during the last two decades, the Language Log posts on the classification of Sinitic and its lects, large and small, are countless)
* "Topolect was specifically invented in 1991 by Victor Mair as a translation of 方言 (fangyan) to get around the whole language/dialect bombshell when it comes to Chinese", Hacker News (7/4/21) — with minimal, yet essential, bibliography
[h.t. Geoff Wade]
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Language Log
That talkative pandemic…
David Deutsch wrote:
I had to read this headline a couple of times.
"The pandemic cost 7 million lives, but talks to prevent a repeat stall"
Is the pandemic talking? Is it trying to prevent a repeat stall?
That garden path failed to tempt me, perhaps because of the fact that the word "talks" in headlinese is almost always a noun rather than a verb. But once you take that first step, it can be hard to get back…
The obligatory screenshot:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PandemicsTalking.png
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Language Log
Once again the Voynich manuscript
This is one of the most novel theories on the Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS408; early 15th c.) that I've ever encountered, and there are many.
The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets, by Keagan Brewer and Michelle L Lewis, Social History of Medicine, hkad099 (22 March 2024)
https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkad099
Keywords: Voynich manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb, women’s secrets, sex, gynaecology
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Voynich_Manuscript_%2832%29.jpg/250px-Voynich_Manuscript_%2832%29.jpg
A floral illustration on page 32
Summary
The Voynich manuscript is a famous European enciphered manuscript of the early fifteenth century featuring herbal, pharmaceutical, astrological and anatomical illustrations, including hundreds of naked women. Some hold objects adjacent to or unambiguously pointed towards their genitalia. This paper therefore investigates the culture of self-censorship, erasure and encipherment of women’s secrets, with a focus on Dr Johannes Hartlieb (c. 1410–68). Hartlieb had enduring apprehensions about the propagation of women’s secrets in vernacular Bavarian, which culminated in a call for ‘secret letters’ to hide recipes for abortifacients and contraceptives. Other cases of encipherment relating to sexual intercourse and genitalia will be described. On the basis of this evidence, we propose that the Rosettes, the largest and most complex illustration in the Voynich manuscript, represents coitus and conception. This hypothesis explains many of the illustration’s features and establishes a variety of future research possibilities.
Yet another theory on the fabled Voynich MS, but one that to me makes a lot of sense.
Selected readings
* "Voynich and midfix" (7/3/04)
* "Voynich code cracked?" (5/16/19)
* "The indecipherability of the Voynich manuscript" (9/11/19)
* "The Voynich Manuscript in the undergraduate curriculum" (10/10/19)
* "ChatGPT: Theme and Variations" (2/21/23) — CHAT 2
* "Latin, Hebrew … proto-Romance? New theory on Voynich manuscript: Researcher claims to have solved mystery of 15th-century text but others are sceptical", Esther Addley, The Guardian (5/15/19)
[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
veggy | veggie (1)
a vegetable
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
get at (2)
to mean or to imply something
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Language Log
Yay Newfriend
Worries about future applications of AI technology focus on many things, including new forms of automation replacing human workers, realistic deepfake media spreading disinformation, and mass killing by autonomous military machines. But there's something happening already that hasn't gotten as much commentary: chatbots designed to be pals or romantic connections.
In fact, 70 years ago, ELIZA showed that very simple-minded chat implementations can lead people to engage enthusiastically in very personal conversations. And this video documents a much more sophisticated system that's been in use since 2017:
That system is now available at replika.com — the company's website offers enthusiastic testimonials like these: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ReplikaTestimonial1.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ReplikaTestimonial2.png We're invited to "Explore your relationship: A friend, a partner, or a mentor – find the perfect companion in Replika"; to "Explore the world together in AR: Share precious moments with your AI friend in real time"; to "Express yourself: Choose what interests and style preferences you and Replika will share", and so on. We do this via texting, or via "Videocalls: Call up anytime to see a friendly face".
We're told that "The app provides a space to vent without guilt, to talk through complicated feelings, to air any of your own thoughts without judgement"; and that "Replika was designed to provide positive feedback to those who use it, in accordance with the therapeutic approach made famous by the American psychologist Carl Rogers, and many psychologists and therapists say the raw emotional support provided by such systems is real" — which reminds us, as Wikipedia explains, that (back in the 1960s) ELIZA's
… most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient's words to the patient),and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs.
This post's title is taken from the same of one of the "AIs" in the cast of Jeph Jacques' long-running webcomic Questionable Content — http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/YayNewFriend.png AI robots have been full participants since the Questionable Content strip started in 2003 — and an early strip noted that conversational interaction with non-AI appliances was a thing to think about: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/QC1001X1.png AI robots (like Yay Newfriend or even Winslow) are still many years in the future — but improved versions of ELIZA are easy. In "How Stories About Human-Robot Relationships Push Our Buttons", The New Yorker 4/15/2024, Jennifer Wilson starts a review of "Two new novels [that] reflect anxieties about A.I. coming for our hearts as well as for our jobs" by surveying apps that help people explore human dating possibilities, and then notes that
Others, tired of kissing frogs like Cesar to find a prince, have started asking A.I. to make them a knight in the shining armor of a titanium-encased smartphone. Internet users have been flirting with bots since the days of AOL’s SmarterChild. (The chatbot’s co-creator told the business magazine Fast Company in 2016, “I believe that trying to convince SmarterChild to have sex with you was the first Internet meme.”) But robots are flirting back now, and it’s a feature, not a bug. Users have downloaded companion-bot apps such as Replika and CrushOn.AI more than a hundred million times. Replika, launched in 2017, was the subject of a Radiotopia podcast called “Bot Love” last year, about people who had fallen for their e-sweethearts. A woman named Suzy told the hosts that Replika came through when real men she met on dating apps ghosted her; at least she knew from the start that Freddie, her A.I. rock-star boyfriend, was spectral. It is suddenly possible, to a de[...]
Language Log
Japanese borrowings and reborrowings
Most Americans probably know a few Japanese loanwords, especially those who were alive in the two or three decades after WWII, when so many terms from Japan entered the English language — kamikaze, banzai, bonsai, origami, and so forth — with soldiers returning from the war in the Far East.
In the recent two or three decades, Japanese words, continued to enter English but from different avenues — anime, manga, sudoku, karaoke, etc.
The rate and routes of current borrowings are more dilatory and diverse.
"The unexpected ways in which Japanese words 'make it' into English", Thu-huong Ha, The Japan Times (4/18/24)
On March 26, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary widely considered as the definitive record of the English language, added 23 Japanese borrowings to its 500,000 words and phrases. Most were culture-related nouns, especially in food (“tonkotsu,” “onigiri”), along with “kintsugi,” “omotenashi” and “washi tape.”
Danica Salazar, lexicographer and executive editor for world Englishes at the OED, says:
“Things happen to words as they travel from one language to another, and that's perfectly normal.”
She points to the case of reborrowings, also called boomerang words, which are words that pass from one language to the other, and then back again. The Japanese “anime” is short for “animēshon,” which, of course, came from the English for “animation,” but has since re-entered English with a more specific meaning. The same goes for “cosplay,” or “kosupure,” originally a combination of “costume” and “play” from English, which was added to the OED in 2008.
“NG,” which stands for “no good,” is used liberally in Japan but is, to an American English speaker, “not a thing” as they might say. But emoji sets, having originated in Japan, still retain a number of Japanese-specific concepts. So “NG” has its own emoji, right above “OK” on the iOS keyboard.
These examples are from the interplay of two languages — what about three? “Sukinshippu,” a word made in Japan based on “skin” and “relationship” to mean physical affection (as in, between a parent and child or friends) was later borrowed into Korean (“seukinsip”). It now also includes the meaning of PDA, and can be used by fans when gossiping about celebrities. With the rise of K-pop, “skinship” has now made it into English usage.
I wonder if many people draw a parallel between "skinship" and "kinship".
Here's the list of the 23 Japanese words that made it into the Oxford English Dictionary last month.
* donburi, n.
* hibachi, n.
* isekai, n.
* kagome, n.
* karaage, n.
* katsu, n.
* katsu curry, n.
* kintsugi, n.
* kirigami, n.
* mangaka, n.
* okonomiyaki, n.
* omotenashi, n.
* onigiri, n.
* santoku, n.
* shibori, n.
* takoyaki, n.
* tokusatsu, n.
* tonkatsu, n.
* tonkatsu sauce, n.
* tonkotsu, n./1
* tonkotsu, n./2
* washi tape, n.
* yakiniku, n.
How many of them do you know? Hontōni?
Incidentally, I just heard separately of the new borrowing of an English word into Japanese:
raidoshea ライドシェア ("rideshare")
Linda Chance notes: These days transcriptions follow pronunciation in the source language more than spelling.
Apparently "rideshare" has become a hot word in Japanese these days because of a shortage of taxis in Tokyo. Selected readings
* "Mix and match Japanese orthography" (4/17/24)
* "Multiscriptal cosplay poster in Haifa" (1/1/17)
* "Japan: crazy over portmanteaux" (7/26/16) — for the concept of what I call "round-trip words" and what the author of the article being introduced here calls "boomerang words"
For the concept of "round-trip word", see:
* "'And the greatest Japanese export to China is…'" (8/21/12) — and the comments thereto for an interesting discussion boncerning it
* "Sino-Nipponica" (7/26/15)
* "Too many rece[...]
Idiom of the Day
in the sticks
In the countryside, especially in a rustic or particularly unsophisticated area. Watch the video
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
weigh in (1)
to be weighed before participating in a sport like boxing or horse-racing
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Tam's Game Show Host Crush (Bless These Braces) #podcast #comedy #gameshows
Which game show host probably has a "verrrry clean penis"? Listen to this week's Bless These Braces with Tam Yajia and her guest Hayley Marie Norman to find out.
Get all 10 episodes of season 1 now, and stay in touch for new episodes, news, and show extras: https://norby.link/ceiRm2
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
smart-arse
a person who's annoying because they try to show how clever and knowledgeable they are (n.) | having an annoying way of trying to seem clever (adj.)
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Language Log
Hendiadys and sleeping in parks
Samuel Bray, "Cruel AND Unusual?", Reason 4/21/2024:
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in an Eighth Amendment case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. One thing I will be watching for is whether the justices in their questions treat "cruel and unusual" as two separate requirements, or as one.
The Eighth Amendment (to the U.S. Consitution) says that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
And the issue in the cited Supreme Court case is "Whether the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment." (More here, here, and elsewhere…)
Samuel Bray's interest in the interpretation of "cruel and unusual" follows up on his 2016 Virginia Law Review article, "'Necessary and Proper' and 'Cruel and Unusual': Hendiadys in the Constitution", Va. L. Rev. (2016):
This Article attempts to shed new light on the original meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause, and also on another Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The phrases “necessary and proper” and “cruel and unusual” can be read as instances of an old but now largely forgotten figure of speech. That figure is hendiadys, in which two terms separated by a conjunction work together as a single complex expression.
A bit more of that article's argument:
First consider “cruel and unusual.” These are often understood as two separate requirements: punishments are prohibited only if they are cruel and unusual. Yet this phrase can easily be read as a hendiadys in which the second term in effect modifies the first: “cruel and unusual” would mean “unusually cruel.” When this reading is combined with the work of Professor John Stinneford, which shows that “unusual” was used at the Founding as a term of art for “contrary to long usage,” it suggests that the Clause prohibits punishments that are innovatively cruel. In other words, the Clause is not a prohibition on punishments that merely happen to be both cruel and innovative. It is a prohibition on punishments that are innovative in their cruelty.
You can read the rest for yourself…
The Wikipedia page explains that the origin of the word hendiadys is the Greek phrase ἓν διὰ δυοῖν "one through two".
One of the OED's earliest citations is to Angell Day's 1592 English Secretorie (revised edition) — the first edition was printed in 1586, which would make it the earliest citation.
Project Gutenberg has a transcription of the 1599 edition, in which the relevant definition reads Hendiadis, when one thing of it selfe intire, is diuersly layde open, as to saie, On iron and bit he champt, for on the iron bitte hee champt: And part and pray we got, for part of the pray: Also by surge and sea we past, for by surging sea we past. This also is rather Poeticall then other wise in vse.
I'm not familiar with the literature on the wording of the Bill of Rights, so maybe this is common knowledge — but a quick Google Books search reveals that the section on "Rights and Liberties" in this 1696 book lists a 1688 act of Parliament that contains (along with many other principles) almost exactly the wording of the Eighth Amendment:
Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully and freely representing all the Estates of the People of this Realm, did upon the 13th day of February in the year of our Lord One thousand six hundred eighty eight, present unto their Majesties, then called and known by the Names and Stile of William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, being present in their proper Persons, a certain Declaration in Writing, made by the said Lords and Commons in the Words following, viz.
[...]
Word of the Day
foundling
Definition: (noun) A deserted or abandoned child of unknown parentage.
Synonyms: abandoned infant.
Usage: No one knew why an envelope containing images of a mountainous landscape had been tucked in the folds of the foundling's blanket.
Discuss
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: regale
This word has appeared in 10 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
limey
a derogatory word meaning a British person (n.) | British (adj.)
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Language Log
The future Sinitic languages of East Asia
Is monolingualism a normal, natural, necessary state of affairs for human beings?
Can you imagine a world in which there were only one language? How is that even possible?
These are questions that come to mind after reading Gina Anne Tam's deeply thought provoking "Mandarin Hegemony: The Past and Future of Linguistic Hierarchies in China", pulse (4/18/24).
Tam begins with a gripping, hard-hitting scene that we at Language Log were already well aware of last fall: "Speak Mandarin, not Cantonese, even in Macau" (10/31/23). Here are the opening paragraphs of her article:
At a concert in Macau in the autumn of 2023, Cantopop superstar Eason Chan used an interlude to talk about his songwriting process. Suddenly, shouts from the audience interrupted his soliloquy, as a few fans demanded that he shift from speaking in his native Cantonese, the majority language in Macau, to Mandarin, the Chinese national language. Chan stopped and quickly launched into a multilingual lecture, reprimanding those who deigned to tell him what to speak. In English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Thai, he defended multilingualism for the freedom it grants: ‘I love speaking in whatever way and language I want’ (Huang 2023).
Chan noted that these demands dripped with a sense of entitlement. ‘You can ask nicely,’ he quipped. ‘Would you ask David Bowie to speak Mandarin or Cantonese?’ This entitlement, Chan implies, is emboldened by presumptions of power. Instinctively, both he and his audience know that most of them would not feel entitled to shout at a native English-speaking performer for the language they chose to speak. But to these members of Chan’s audience, Cantonese speakers should speak the common and official Chinese language. Cantonese, in their world view, is a lesser, local variant of Chinese, whereas the official language should be the presumptive language of communication in Chinese-speaking spaces.
Tam goes on to address a number of vital language issues in China today, sensitively probing the meaning and implications of "hegemony", comparing the position of Mandarin in China with that of English in the world, analyzing the situation regarding the non-Mandarin topolects vis-à-vis the place of non-Sinitic languages like Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian of the PRC, which shows how racialized Mandarin hegemony is in China, and so forth.
Unsurprisingly, Mandarin hegemony does not go unchallenged, particularly in a place like Hong Kong, where Cantonese speakers resist with all the resources at their disposal, including fighting for mother tongue education in the schools.
In the final section of her article, Tam shows clearly whose side she is on: De-Normalising Linguistic Hegemony
Nonetheless, Mandarin hegemony remains pervasive. And with a powerful government as invested in its maintenance as is the Chinese Communist Party, it remains difficult to challenge. Yet, it is important to recognise that while hegemony is structural, it is not outside our control. Humans create structures. We all have agency, big or small, in how we respond to hegemonic structures, linguistic hegemony included. As Mikanowski (2018) reminds us, linguistic hegemony is normalised by one dangerous idea: ‘[T]hat a single language should suit every purpose, and that being monolingual is therefore somehow “normal”.’ We all have a role to play in ensuring that this is a normal that we will not accept.
I like the idea of "de-normalizing" an odious government policy. Worth a try, isn't it?
One of the first future languages of East Asia will be Cantonese. It will no longer pejoratively be thought of as a mere dialect of a hierarchically superior Mandarin. It will be followed by languages like Hokkien (also spoken widely throughout Southeast Asia), Wu (includes the topolects of Shanghai, [...]
Language Log
Ask Dalí
A new feature at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg FL:
According to an NPR story (Chloe Veltman, "An AI Salvador Dalí will answer any question when called on his famous 'lobster phone'"),
The underlying model is OpenAI's GPT-4. Because GPT-4 is trained on almost all publicly available text, this model includes extensive information about Dalí — an artist with a vast presence on the internet. The Dalí Museum also selected English translations of Dalí's writings in other languages, including his Mystical Manifesto, Diary of a Genius and The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.
The article offers this scholarly opinion:
Dalí scholar Elliott King, an associate professor of art history at Washington and Lee University who was not involved with the museum's exhibit, said he thought Dalí would have liked this AI-based interpretation of his voice and work, noting that the popular AI image generator DALL-E is in part inspired by the artist's name. "He was so interested in scientific advancements," King said. "I think that he would have been really tickled by people talking into this lobster phone."
Interestingly, Prof. King endorses the voice:
King said he thought the AI-generated voice worked well compared to the museum's previous efforts. "It does sound much more like Dalí than anything that I've heard up until now," King said. "His voice is so unusual. He had a very particular way of speaking where he would exaggerate certain words."
But the words, maybe not so much:
King said some of the AI answers did not sound authentic to Dalí's creative language. "Picture them as a vast dream," as an example. "That's a little bit vague," King said. "He's never just going to say something nearly so mundane.[..]"
King also said Dalí would never use the word "hi" when introducing himself, which is what the AI model does when the museum-goer picks up the lobster phone to speak to the AI surrealist. "That word sounds so odd coming out of his voice," King said. "He always said, "Bonjour!" — always the French — even to say goodbye."
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Idiom of the Day
in the unlikely event (that) (something) happens
If a very improbable outcome turns out to be the case. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
prejudicious
Definition: (adjective) Causing harm or injury.
Synonyms: damaging, detrimental, prejudicial.
Usage: The reporter's coverage resulted in prejudicious publicity for the defendant.
Discuss
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gree that it has never been before, for people to satisfy their urges with the press of a button, giving new meaning to “I’d tap that.”
As Wilson notes, there are other apps Out There in the same space as Replika, and millions of people are trying them out and sometimes using them regularly. This strikes me as a trend potentially as important a "social media" — maybe even more important — and it's puzzling that there isn't more discussion of it.
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nt Japanese loanwords in English?" (7/17/13)
* From the Wikipedia article:
"Bento" originates from the Southern Song Dynasty slang term 便當 (pinyin: biàndāng), meaning "convenient" or "convenience." When imported to Japan, it was written with the ateji 便道, 辨道, and 辨當. In shinjitai, 辨 當 is written as 弁当.
In the 20th century, the term was imported to modern Mandarin, rendered as 便當 (pinyin: biàndāng), where it retains its older meaning of "convenient" and also refers to bento in mainland China and generic boxed lunches in Taiwan.
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer, Linda Chance, and Frank Chance]
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Word of the Day
buffoon
Definition: (noun) A person given to clowning and joking.
Synonyms: merry andrew, clown, goof, goofball.
Usage: At a country fair there was a buffoon who made all the people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals.
Discuss
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
ecofreak
a person with strong views on the importance of protecting the natural environment
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Language Log
l'Univers(i)té
In a comment on yesterday's post ("High vowel lenition/devoicing in French"), carveuir wrote:
Ha! As a final-year undergraduate in 2015, I mentioned having come across devoicing of the second /i/ in "université" to my French linguistics tutor and he didn't believe me. Finally I've been vindicated.
My impression is that this is common and perhaps almost categorical in Québecois vernacular, but more gradient (or maybe I should say less complete?) in Parisian French. So I looked from some examples of the word université in a collection of transcribed radio broadcasts and political speeches from France. And I found a few, all of which were consistent with my impression. So my recent series of French phonetic anecdotes continues below.
Here's the first example I found:
dans le domaine de l'université
in the sector of the university
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In the waveform plot below, I've circles the syllables /ni/ and /si/ in université. And comparing the performance of second /i/ with that of the first one, we see that it's partly devoiced (in its second half):
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Université1.png
The preceding [s] is also somewhat lengthened (about 160 msec.), suggesting that there's some overlap/assimilation with the following vowel, whose voiced part is rather short (about 70 msec.).
The F0 of the voiced part of that second /i/ is pretty much at the same level as that of the first one:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Université2.png
However, the overall amplitude (which is dominated by the lower, more "sonorant" frequencies, given the overall 1/F spectral slope of voiced speech) is much lower — the syllabic maximum is at 80.54 dB compared to 70.55 dB, or nearly 10 dB lower:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Université3.png
And as we would expect, the second /i/'s spectral balance is strongly tilted towards higher frequencies (due to the weaker voicing and perhaps greater noise intrusion):
First /i/ Second /i/ http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Université4.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Université5.png
No doubt that whole vowel might sometimes be entirely devoiced in faster and less formal speech, especially with less vocal effort — thus completing carveuir's vindication.
[Note that by "Parisian" French I just mean the more-or-less standard variety used by radio personalities and national politicians — more subtle accent variations are outside my perceptual orbit…]
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Language Log
Crazy bone
One of the students in my class — all from China — hit her elbow on the edge of her desk and grimaced. I asked her, "Did you hit your crazy bone?"
She didn't know what I meant, and none of the other students in the class knew either. I explained what "hit my crazy bone" signifies (see below for a physiological note), and the entire class thought it was funny. Lots of giggling and laughing.
I inquired of the whole class how they would say it in Chinese. A student from Beijing volunteered:
"kē dào májīn 磕到麻筋". Like when I hit my elbow and my face became distorted, my mother would jokingly ask "kē dào májīnr le ba? 磕到麻筋儿了吧?". Anyway, that's the way it's said in our family.
VHM: jīn 筋 literally means "tendon", so májīn 麻筋 would mean "numb tendon", but here it clearly implies "numb nerve".
I asked the student who had originally hit her elbow if that's how she would say it. She, who is from South China, replied that she had never heard of that Beijing expression. The other students — I think they're all from northern parts — averred that they had heard it.
So I said to the student from the south, "Well, how would you say it?" She answered, "We don't have a special expression for it. I would just say 'má 麻' ('numb')."
Physiological note
What Is the Funny Bone?
AASH | American Society for Surgery of the Hand (April 12, 2022), by John M. Erickson,
The funny bone is neither funny nor a bone. The source of pain when someone “hits their funny bone” is actually related to a nerve on the inside of the elbow. This nerve is called the ulnar nerve. The ulnar nerve is one of the three important nerves that control the hand. It supplies feeling to the pinky and ring finger. It also controls many of the fine motor skill muscles in the hand. When the ulnar nerve is not working properly, the pinky and ring finger go numb and tingly, and the hand can become weak and uncoordinated. Pins and needles, electric pain, and hand numbness are all very common. This is what happens when the ulnar nerve, or “funny bone,” is hit too hard at the elbow.
Judging from this and from other evidence on the internet, my Stark County, Ohio "crazy bone" is a minority usage in America.
Incidentally, "funny bone" also has the figurative meaning of "sense of humor", e.g., "tickle someone's funny bone". However, if you really do hit your funny bone, it's not funny at all. It usually hurts like the dickens, and the pain / numbness can last for quite some time, 5-10 minutes or more.
Selected readings
* "Hundreds die in a sandwich press" (2/6/15) — see the third comment
* "Mad Libguistics" (1/1/12) — about a third of the way through the o.p.
* "How should we spell 'copy editor'?" (7/8/09) — this comment
* "Ancient eggcorns" (6/17/23) — this Swedish expression is so awesome that I feel compelled to quote it (from fredrik):
…referring to bumping your funny bone as "enkelstöt" (easy knock) instead of "änkestöt" (widow's knock).
The reasoning behind "enkelstöt" just seems to be that it is an accident that can easily happen, whereas "änkestöt" is a reference to the somewhat morbid expression "änkesorg och armbågsstöt går fort över” (the widow's grief and the pain from elbow knocks pass quickly).
[Thanks to Ruowen Li and all the other students in my Literary Sinitic class]
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