Language Log (original) (raw)
L-complex
October 19, 2025 @ 7:13 pm · Filed by under Dialects, Intelligibility, Topolects
From Peter Daniels:
Do the 7 or 8 (or whatever) “dialects” of Sinitic constitute what Hockett called an “L-complex,” like Romance, such that you could traverse the entire domain and never encounter neighboring villages that didn’t understand each other, with cultural centers where the language described in the regional grammar book and dictionary is spoken, or are they distinct languages as far back as one can look?
Characters at hand
October 19, 2025 @ 8:59 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language reform, Standard language, Writing systems
We've been discussing simplified characters, both official and unofficial (believe you me, they're all out there). They come and go as people find them useful or not. This is one thing that makes characters very different from alphabets and syllabaries. The latter two types of writing systems tend to settle down to a more or less fixed number of elements / letters / symbols (generally around 50-100 symbols for a syllabary and 20-40 or so for an alphabet, whereas morphosyllabographic / logographic writing systems tend to keep burgeoning out of control if they are a living, functioning script.
Unofficial simplified characters
October 18, 2025 @ 8:28 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language reform, Phonetics and phonology, Writing systems
It has often been mentioned on Language Log that the simplification of Chinese characters by the PRC government did not come at one fell swoop in 1965, but was spread out over a long period of time, and had at least one additional formal stage, in 1977, that was retracted in 1986.
This has resulted in uneven acquisition of separate sets of simplified characters by students who went through primary and secondary education at different times.
The (ir)reality of the MingKwai typewriter
October 17, 2025 @ 11:54 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Typing, Typography, Writing systems
The (ir)reality of the MingKwai typewriter
There's been a lot of hoopla about the famous Chinese author Lin Yutang's (1895-1976) purported MingKwai ("clear-quick") typewriter in the last few years. Fortunately, linguist Julesy popped the hallucinatory bubble about the proclaimed wonders of the MingKwai by grappling with the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the MingKwai: "The many myths about the Chinese typewriter" (9/7/25).
Now, in a new video that I just learned about two days ago, we get inside a replica of the MingKwai and can see how incredibly complex its innards are:
How to pronounce the name of the ruler of the PRC
October 16, 2025 @ 7:01 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and politics, Names, Pronunciation
Xi Jinping.
There are countless online suggestions for how to pronounce the name of the Great Helmsman. Most of them are well intended, but I fear that so far they have failed. People who are well informed about Chinese affairs still murder the Paramount Leader's name. So as not to muddy the waters, I will give a completely non-technical transcription. No phonology, no semantics, no frills.
What I'm going to suggest on the next page is intended for the English-speaking layperson who has no specialized knowledge of Chinese language. It will not be exactly the same as Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) spoken by a native, but it will get you close — sans tones, which would take a long time to explain and practice
Remember, there are countless Sinitic topolects, dialects, and idiolects, and endless variations even among MSM speakers. Be confident. If you pronounce the Paramount Leader's name the way I advise on the next page, any well-disposed/intended speaker of MSM will understand whom you're referring to.
Oh, by the way, if you haven't formally studied Mandarin and try to pronounce the "X" in some linguistically sophisticated way, you will most likely miserably fail.
Don't try to make it fancy or exotic.
Pronounce the words the way you would in English.
Here goes:
Semiliterate restaurant Chinese
October 15, 2025 @ 4:47 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and food, Literacy, Signs, Writing
Charles Belov saw this sign on Clement Street (aka New Chinatown) in San Francisco:
AI to the rescue of a Greek philosopher's work buried by Vesuvius
October 15, 2025 @ 4:43 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Decipherment, Language and philosophy
A year and a half ago, we learned of the initial AI-assisted decipherment of a charred scroll that had been buried for two millennia under the volcanic ashes of Mt. Vesuvius (eruption 79AD) in the city of Herculaneum: "AI (and human ingenuity) to the rescue" (2/6/24).
Since then, researchers have continued to work on the scroll until now they have identified the precise text on it:
Lost Work of Greek Philosopher Philodemus Unearthed from Herculaneum Scroll
By Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporter (May 6, 2025)
Steve Anderson, RIP
October 14, 2025 @ 3:47 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Obituaries
Steven R. Anderson has passed away. Sally Thomason wrote today on Facebook:
Linguist friends, I am very sorry indeed to report that Steve (Stephen R.) Anderson died last night, October 13, after a diagnosis last month of aggressive stage 4 esophageal cancer. He died at home, peacefully and free of pain, surrounded by his loved ones. Steve was a giant in our field, with highly significant publications in phonology and morphology, among other areas (including, for instance, animal communication systems). He was a fellow of the AAAS and other prestigious organizations, and the only person, as far as I know (and certainly in recent decades), to serve two years as president of the Linguistic Society of America: he graciously accepted the burden of the second year when his elected successor was unable to serve.
I first met Steve at a conference in Poland in the late 1970s; later, we served together on various LSA committees, and I always enjoyed working with him and, in off-work hours, gossiping with him over drinks. One of the most memorable meals I ever ate was when he and I were both at a conference in Amsterdam, and he chose an Indonesian restaurant and ordered the food: spectacular. Our paths haven't crossed since we both retired and went in different directions (and, in my case at least, stopped flying off to conferences often), but I am sad to know that there is no longer any chance that our paths will cross in the future.
Free-er indirect speech
October 14, 2025 @ 9:05 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Style and register
The Wikipedia entry on Free Indirect Speech quotes Norman Page's 1972 analysis of a passage from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility:
[1] Mrs John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. [2] To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy, would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. [3] She begged him to think again on the subject. [4] How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum?
Page explains that "the first [1st] sentence is straight narrative, in the 'voice' of the [narrator]; the third [3rd] sentence is normal indirect speech; but the second [2nd] and fourth [4th] are what is usually described as free indirect speech." In these two sentences, Austen presents the interior thoughts of the character and creates the illusion that the reader is entering the character's mind.
Jane Austen's usage is so easy to follow that most readers probably don't even notice it. But in Thomas Pynchon's latest novel Shadow Ticket, there are some examples that are harder.
"Think" in Japanese
October 13, 2025 @ 6:58 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Spelling, Syllabism, Variation
From Mok Ling:
Meh
October 13, 2025 @ 8:12 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Words words words
The OED dates meh as an interjection back to 1992, in an internet newsgroup, and as an adjective back to 2007 in The Guardian:
The man could scarcely walk. Two hours later he was cheerfully high-kicking a suicide bomber out the back of a train. Nuts. But somehow it all seemed, to use a bit of internet parlance, a bit ‘meh’.
But this bit of "internet parlance" has started showing up in news headlines, without excuses or scare quotes, and not just in places like college papers.
[**Update–** For more on the origins and progress of _**meh**_, see "Meh-ness to society" (Ben Zimmer, 6/98/2006), "Awwa, meh, feh, heh" (Ben Zimmer, 2/16/2007), "The 'meh' wars" (Ben Zimmer, 11/21/2008), "The 'meh' wars, part 2" (11/24/2008), "Meh again" (Arnold Zwicky, 12/1/2011), "Words for 'meh'" (Mark Liberman, 12/22/2011), "Three scenes in the life of 'meh'" (Ben Zimmer, 2/26/2012).]
"Moloch's bargain"?
October 12, 2025 @ 8:36 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Artificial intelligence
In “Agentic Culture” (8/30/2025), I cited some work by economists about agentic collusion in fixing prices and dividing markets — to which I might add links here, here, and here. And in that post, I noted that the problematic effects of AI agents learning from their social interactions in other areas have been mostly ignored.
But here it comes: Batu El and James Zou, "Moloch's Bargain: Emergent Misalignment When LLMs Compete for Audiences", 10/7/2025.
The tyranny of literacy
October 11, 2025 @ 6:13 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Literacy, Phonetics and phonology, Typing, Writing
Following on Mark's "Literacy: peasants and philosophers" (10/10/25) yesterday, also a number of posts on this subject that we have written in the past (see the bibliography), i herewith offer an account of myth and literacy:
Memories within myth
The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records
By Patrick Nunn, Aeon (4/6/23)
This is a long, richly documented article, from which I will take only a few representative selections. It begins:
In the 1880s, the American journalist William Gladstone Steel made several visits to a freshwater lake that filled the caldera of an extinct volcano in Oregon. For Steel, these visits were the fulfilment of a dream that began while he was just a schoolboy in Kansas. It was one day in 1870, while reading the newspaper wrapped around his school lunch, that he noticed an article about the ‘discovery’ of a spectacular body of freshwater named Crater Lake. ‘In all of my life,’ Steel would later recall, ‘I never read an article that took the intense hold on me that that one did…’ When he finally made it to the lake in 1885, he was so captivated that he determined to have the area designated as a National Park. But designation was not easily gained and required extensive documentation of the region.