Language Log

From the renowned cartoonist, Rebel Pepper xí tǎngpíng 习躺平 ("practice lying flat") Selected readings "'Lying flat' and 'Involution': passive-aggressive resistance" (6/4/21) "'Lying flat' and 'Buddha whatever' (part 2)" (6/24/21) [h.t. anon]

"What Happens When We Lose a Language?" by Sophia Smith Galer, The Guardian (5/12/26) The Ubykhs are people I've known about for half a century, but now I wish that I knew them better. We are lucky to know anything at all about the Ubykh language. In the 1800s, tens of thousands of people spoke it on the Black Sea coast. When Russia conquered the region, the Ubykhs resisted until they were forced into exile in the Ottoman empire. Transported thousands of miles by a traumatised community now…

According to the Washington Post (5/14/26) The old Ru/Lu (卢) was a neutral character typically used for surnames. The new one (鲁) carries a different meaning: rash, rude and clumsy. Selected readings "PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi's not-so-subtle reprimand falls on deaf ears" (2/10/25) "Transcription matters" (1/22/25)

You may remember the "Customer Experience Manager" named Steven Dreibelbis whom I met in a Home Depot about half a year ago (see the post I wrote about him and his surname, the first entry in "Selected readings" below). This afternoon, I received the following communication from his father: This is James (Jim) Dreibelbis, father of the Steven Dreibelbis mentioned in the original post on your Language Log. Steven's son, Esteban Dreibelbis, a student at Drexel, found and sent me this interesting…

Keywords Berlin and Kay; Jules Davidoff; Himba; Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity); pigment synthesis; lapis lazuli; Russian; goluboy, siniy; time; space; emotions; William Gladstone; κύανος > κυανός > cyan "Got the blues"? Selected readings "Was Homer (color)blind?" (5/3/26) "Sacré bleu! — the synesthesia of Walmart cyan" (10/8/22) "Color vocabulary and pre-attentive color perception" (2/23/09) — P. Kay "It's not easy seeing green" (3/2/15) "Grue and bleen: the blue-green…

On May 9, M. Paul Shore sent this note to me: A belated thank-you for the April 22nd Galuppi (1706-1785) link*. I’d never heard of him. That whole Baroque-to-Classical transition phase is a fascinating and enjoyable but underappreciated one. The composers from that phase who get the most attention (and deservedly so) are two of J.S. Bach’s sons, J.C. and C.P.E. *"A bridge between Baroque & Classical" Here, for your entertainment, are YouTube links (legally posted, by the recording company…

Selected readings "Crab raccoon" (9/1/24) "Crab raccoon, part 2" (9/2/24) "Commas matter, Oxford and otherwise" (4/17/22) — lengthy bibliography on commas

Some of you would have known the solution to the strange wording on the label immediately even without this key. Selected readings "'Here comes the prince'" (4/8/25) "Looking on the bright side" (3/28/20) "Preaching the gospel of wrong is right?" (8/20/09) — 4th, 6th, 13th, 35th, and 51st comments

"How Six Minnesotans Are Preserving Their Rare Languages." Das, Shubhanjana. Sahan Journal, April 28, 2026. https://sahanjournal.com/arts-culture/native-speakers-rare-languages-minnesota/. "An Inverse Correlation between Structural Linguistic and Human Genetic Diversity." Graff, Anna et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123, no. 18 (May 5, 2026): e2526762123. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2526762123. "An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Definition of Evaluative…

Taipei City Council forms Taiwanese Language Revitalization Caucus Civic groups call for wider everyday use of Taiwanese Keoni Everington, Taiwan News (5/6/26) (in Mandarin) statistics show that in 2020, 66.4% of people primarily used Mandarin, while 31.7% used Taiwanese as their main language, CNA reported. However, 54.3% reported using Taiwanese as a secondary language, indicating that many people have some ability in the language but lack an environment in which to use it. AntC observes: The…

"Does the Brain Really Know What Word Is Coming Next?" Antonello, Richard J. eLife 15 (April 27, 2026): e111163. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.111163. "The Sound of Populism: Distinct Linguistic Features Across Populist Variants." Wang, Yu et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (April 27, 2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-06799-8. "The Phonology of Sperm Whale Coda Vowels." Beguš, Gašper et al. Royal Society Proceedings B: Biological Sciences 293, no. 2069 (April…

I was aware of this article nearly a week ago, but was too preoccupied with other matters to post on it till today. French researcher cracks 4,000-year-old Elamite script from IranThe 4,000-year-old Linear Elamite script from what is now Iran has long eluded archaeologists hoping to unlock the secrets of a near-forgotten age. French archaeologist François Desset's work on deciphering the writing system now has some comparing him to Jean-François Champollion, the famed philologist who deciphered…

This makes me think of the time before we had color photography and cinematography. Somehow, we could transpose all of those shades of black and white into a full spectrum of color, and some people still prefer their photographs and films that way. (I say this as a French hornist who was constantly having to transpose from one key to anothe.) Selected readings "Color vocabulary and pre-attentive color perception" (2/23/09) — P. Kay "It's not easy seeing green" (3/2/15) "Grue and bleen: the…

The Chinese says shìzǐmǐ 柿子米 ("persimmon rice"). That didn't seem to match anything else on the menu. It didn't take me long to notice, however, that the Japanese word for "oyster rice", right below the Chinese, is kaki han かき飯. That is one way you could say "oyster rice" in Japanese, but homophonously it is also one way you could say "persimmon rice". Oysters and persimmons are both favorite food items for the autumn season, so wouldn't that lead to confusion? Japanese can transcribe "oyster"…

There was a proverb not so legibly tattooed on the back of a woman, but a couple of ChiLings worked it out, got a better picture, and gave the translation. Carl Masthay, with the assistance of John Carlson and Harold Campbell. Selected readings "Queen of the World" (3/10/12) "Hooked on pot" (7/9/13) "Hooked on pot" (10/4/16)

I asked Diana Shuheng Zhang whether she thought the video was shot at natural speed or was speeded up. Her reply: Given the movement of the hand, I think it was filmed at real time. Actually, the faster the hand moves, the easier it is to write the strokes well, especially the big strokes. Together it says: guófù mínqiáng, zìqiáng bùxī 国富民强，自强不息 (“Prosperous nation, strong people; unceasing self-improvement”). The biggest character is qiáng 强 "strength", and there are also two small fú 福s…

一个叫KAHO的日本小姐姐模仿上海和潮汕口音，太好玩了。不但口音学得像，表情和面相都会跟着一起变 pic.twitter.com/Ye1IN9BVDK — iPaul (@iPaulCanada) April 29, 2026 The speaker is a Japanese girl named Kaho. Comment from Xinyi Ye, who is living and working in the area where some of the languages in the video are spoken: Oh wow that’s super impressive! Her Chaoshan accent sounds exactly like my colleagues from this area speaking! The words she use are also very accurate: Shanghai aunties call young ladies 小姑娘 and Chaoshan merchants use the word…

This article by Niall Ferguson, "Texting Makes U Stupid" skipped my notice when it first appeared in Daily Beast (9/11/11). I would have missed it again this time around had it not been called to my attention by Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Anyway, it's still a hot button issue, so better late than never. Abstract The good news is that today’s teenagers are avid readers and prolific writers. The bad news is that what they are reading and writing are text messages.…

The speaker's name is Shabnam Nasimi. She is a British-Afghan social activist, writer, and political commentator. Selected readings "The Story of Puccini & Turandokht" "Turandot and the deep Indo-European roots of 'daughter'" (3/16/20) "More on Persian kinship terms; 'daughter' and the laryngeals" (3/18/20) "Correspondences between Ancient Greek doȗle (voc.) 'slave' and 奴隷 Jpn dorei / Tw lô·-lē" (10/9/25) "A cricket writer enlightens us on the Urdu tense system" (8/31/10) "Language in…

‘Gilgamesh’ Review: Love and Death in MesopotamiaThe epic of Gilgamesh is more than 40 centuries old. Simon Armitage’s new translation feels thrillingly alive.By William Giraldi, WSJApril 24, 2026 Much as I admire Simon Armitage's translation, I must say that I am overwhelmed by the excellence of the reviewer, William Giraldi. He is much plauded for his fiction, literary criticism, and journalism. Reading though this review, I often find myself celebrating his uncanny ability to find the mot…

Below is a guest post/email by Preston C.: I wanted to share a compact ambiguous sentence in the spirit of “Buffalo buffalo…,” but built from more ordinary English resources: In Buttons’ Buttons, Buttons Buttons buttons Buttons Buttons’ buttons Buttons Buttons’ buttons’ buttons button. One workable parse treats “Buttons Buttons” as a proper name, “Buttons’ Buttons” as a store, and button/buttons as verbs (“to fasten”). On that reading, the sentence means roughly: In the store Buttons’ Buttons,…

Project Kino (3/23/26) From Alex Baumans: Around the 6:00 (out of 18:10) mark there starts a discussion about how the tonal structure of Chinese influences songwriting and how that makes really catchy tunes difficult. One of the workarounds is of course switch to English. This presentation is full of excellent insights and analysis, comparing Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and other languages / music. Far too much gratuitous flinging around of the "f" word for my taste. Selected readings "The…

Last August and September, President Donald Trump asserted that his actions would reduce drug prices by as much as 1500%, and more recently claimed actual reductions by as much as 600%. On April 22, Elizabeth Warren questioned RFK Jr. about this. She registered a doubt about the mathematics of a reduction in price by greater than 100%, although she mainly focused on the fact that Costco's prices for some cited drugs are substantially less than those at Trump Rx. The president pitched his Trump…

Homer's Iliad Book 1 Recitation | Lines 1-21 | Restored Ancient Greek | Greek History (4/19/26) 2:27 The famous Iliad was composed by Homer or unknown author(s) (800-700 BCE) and was likely orally transmitted before being standardized in the contemporaneously developing Greek script [Robert L. Fowler 2004]. The Iliad by Homer is the oldest European poetic and liturgical tradition, and has been significant in historical linguistics for its striking similarities with the Rigveda of Ancient India…

‘If This Be Magic’ Review: A Great Feast of LanguagesShakespeare has resonated with audiences in Swedish, Swahili and beyond. But translating the Bard requires some difficult choices.By Henry Hitchings, WSJ (April 22, 2026) Transferring Shakespeare's works into another language is hard work: Samuel Johnson complained, more than 250 years ago, that William Shakespeare’s style was “ungrammatical, perplexed, and obscure.” Many students and theatergoers since have shared that view. Yet even if we…

In "Poem in the key of what" (10/9/2006), I blogged about a paper by Maartje Schreuder, Laura van Eerten and Dicky Gilbers, "Speaking in major and minor keys". Its abstract: In music the difference between sad and cheerful melodies is often indicated as a difference between a minor and a major key. In order to investigate whether the same difference can be found in language, we analyzed intonation contours in emotional speech. We made cluster analyses in order to find out which fundamental…

"Japan announces new name for days over 40C after hottest summer ever", by Ruth Wright, Euronews (4/20/26) They have words for it. The one that's taking the online media by storm is kokushobi 酷暑日. That literally means "harsh / cruel + hot days". I can attest to this characterization of scorching days in Japan. I remember one summer in Kyoto, which I wouldn't think of as a particularly hot city, when I stood on the sidewalk and was getting ready to cross the street, the pavement of which seemed…

A note from Ambarish S.: There’s an ongoing controversy in India with Prime Minister Modi being accused of blackface during an election campaign in the south, where people have darker skin on average. The Alert (a Hindi news website of unknown reputation) had the following Hindi sentence on it’s X: तमिलनाडु रैली में मोदी जी का लुक वायरल! where only the postpositions (में and का) and arguably the honorific जी are Hindi! तमिलनाडु and मोदी are proper nouns, while रैली, लुक and वायरल are…

Much heard on Language Log. Selected readings "Slang affixation: it's all mystery-y-ish-y" (6/25/09) "ish and moreish", Separated by a Common Language (9/6/07)

I never dreamed that I would be subjected to an MRI or a CAT scan or other sophisticated diagnostic system that enables medical specialists to see detailed tomographic images from inside your body. For both of these devices, the patient lies on a flat surface and is inserted in a tube-like scanner. They both make conspicuous noises all the while you are inside of them, and that is a normal part of their function. The CAT scan makes clicking, buzzing, humming, and whirring sounds. The MRI is…