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We’ve discussed the Indus/Harappan script before (2009, 2017); I’m happy to report that it can now provide you with big bucks. Soutik Biswas for BBC News:

Every week, Rajesh PN Rao, a computer scientist, gets emails from people claiming they’ve cracked an ancient script that has stumped scholars for generations. These self-proclaimed codebreakers – ranging from engineers and IT workers to retirees and tax officers – are mostly from India or of Indian origin living abroad. All of them are convinced they’ve deciphered the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation, a blend of signs and symbols. “They claim they’ve solved it and that the ‘case is closed’,” says Mr Rao, Hwang Endowed Professor at the University of Washington and author of peer-reviewed studies on the Indus script.

Adding fuel to the race, MK Stalin, the chief minister of southern India’s Tamil Nadu state, recently upped the stakes, announcing a $1m prize for anyone who can crack the code.

[There follows a long account of the script and attempts at decipherment.]

Back in India, it is not entirely clear why Mr Stalin of Tamil Nadu announced a reward for deciphering the script. His announcement followed a new study linking Indus Valley signs to graffiti found in his state. K Rajan and R Sivananthan analysed over 14,000 graffiti-bearing pottery fragments from 140 excavated sites in Tamil Nadu, which included more than 2,000 signs. Many of these signs closely resemble those in the Indus script, with 60% of the signs matching, and over 90% of south Indian graffiti marks having “parallels” with those from the Indus civilisation, the researchers claim. This “suggests a kind of cultural contact” between the Indus Valley and south India, Mr Rajan and Mr Sivananthan say.

Many believe Mr Stalin’s move to announce an award positions him as a staunch champion of Tamil heritage and culture, countering Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules in Delhi. But researchers are confident that there will be no claimants for Mr Stalin’s prize soon. Scholars have compiled complete, updated databases of all known inscribed artefacts – crucial for decipherment. “But what did the Indus people write? I wish we knew,” says Ms Yadav.

We all wish we knew… (Thanks, Bathrobe!)

Elizabeth Weise at USA Today writes about a worthy cause (archived):

If you can read cursive, the National Archives would like a word.

Or a few million. More than 200 years worth of U.S. documents need transcribing (or at least classifying) and the vast majority from the Revolutionary War era are handwritten in cursive – requiring people who know the flowing, looped form of penmanship.

“Reading cursive is a superpower,” said Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog in Washington, D.C. She is part of the team that coordinates the more than 5,000 Citizen Archivists helping the Archive read and transcribe some of the more than 300 million digitized objects in its catalog. And they’re looking for volunteers with an increasingly rare skill.

Those records range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line to immigration documents from the 1890s to Japanese evacuation records to the 1950 Census. […] To volunteer, all that’s required is to sign up online and then launch in. “There’s no application,” she said. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”

So there you are; if you have the increasingly rare skill required (insert rant here) as well as the time and temperament, go for it. (Thanks, Nick!)

And speaking of archives, check out Preservation of Osor’s rare book collection through digitisation (EAP1517):

The target material is the surviving private collection of uniquely rare books in the traditional Mongolian script held by Mr. Bat-Ochir Osor, who was one of the nation’s prominent educators and Mongolian language promoters of mid 20th century modern Mongolia.

His collection comprises exceptionally rare books printed in the traditional Mongolian script in the 1920s through to the 1940s, before Mongolia was forcefully shifted to Russian Cyrillic in the 1940s.

Thanks, Trevor!

I am a bit hesitant to post David J. Lobina’s lengthy 3 Quarks Daily takedown of Inclusion in Linguistics because it could be seen as anti-diversity and anti-inclusion and, well, just plain reactionary, but that kind of thinking leads to intellectual sterility, and it seems to me (not having seen the actual book, mind you) that Lobina’s bile is justified. In any case, it is highly entertaining, and I think that is enough of a basis to present these excerpts to you; he introduces it by saying “this is possibly the worst book I have ever read in my career,” so you have been warned:

The volume Inclusion in Linguistics showcases the work of over 40 authors across 20 chapters on what is perceived to be a lack of inclusion in the field of linguistics, with North America as the main focus of attention (with some exceptions). Edited by Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz, this collection of papers is part of a project that includes the volume Decolonizing Linguistics, also published by Oxford University Press. […] The volume itself is divided into 4 thematic parts. Part 1 focuses on intersectional models of inclusion; Part 2 details possible institutional pathways to achieve more inclusion in linguistics; Part 3 is devoted to some of the resources available to teachers and lecturers to build more inclusive classrooms in schools and universities; and Part 4 outlines various examples of inclusive public engagement in the field. […]

What to make of it?

Well, it is hard to believe this book exists at all; or rather, it is hard to believe that Oxford University Press has published this volume under its Oxford Academy section. Inclusion in Linguistics is mostly a product of political advocacy, not of scholarship, and whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, the problem here is that both the politics and the advocacy on display are incredibly tendentious. The book is populated by myriad claims and denunciations, and even though most of these are rather contentious in nature, they all go largely unargued for (in addition, some material is close to mockery and even slander, and one has to wonder what OUP were thinking; more about this below).

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Jordan Salama writes for the New Yorker (archived) about Andean immigrants in New York and how they keep in touch with the folks back home; here are some especially Hattic bits:

Doña Elvira, who lives eleven thousand feet above sea level in Ecuador, wakes up before dawn. These days, the first thing she does is check her phone. […] Elvira, a forty-nine-year-old mother of eight and grandmother of five, didn’t use social media before María and another daughter, Mercedes, left home. She didn’t even have a smartphone until the pandemic, when Ecuador switched to virtual schooling, bringing widespread Internet service to her impoverished area, in the mountainous center of the country. She doesn’t post comments on TikTok; she hardly knows how to write. Nor does she read or speak much Spanish—her native tongue is Kichwa, an Indigenous language spoken widely in the upper Andes. Nonetheless, whenever one of her daughters posts a video, Elvira watches it over and over. […]

At first glance, the videos are fairly unremarkable. They often feature shaky, low-quality camerawork and use kitschy stock effects that give the people in the clips glittering faces or puffed-up lips. But overlaid on the group choreography and the street scenes are grainy, scrapbook-style photographs of relatives still back home in Ecuador, to whom the videos are dedicated. The captions and onscreen text are messages to loved ones, often in poorly written Spanish: “Me duele estar lejos mi kerida familia. . . . Dios me los vendida” (“It pains me to be far away, my dear family. . . . May God bless you”), “Tu y yo por100pre juntos los 3 luchemos por nuestro sueños” (“You and I together forever, the three of us, let’s fight for our dreams”). The clips almost never use camera sound. Instead, they are set to chicha music, a popular genre of cumbia that combines traditional Andean sounds with techno-psychedelic instrumentals, and is known for lyrics about heartbreak and migration. Many previously unknown chicha artists have become famous in recent years because songs of theirs have gone viral on TikTok. Some artists—such as Ángel Guaraca, who sings the hit “El Migrante” and calls himself the Indio Cantor de América—have even embarked on U.S. tours, stopping in places with large Ecuadorian communities, such as Queens and Brooklyn; Fall River, Massachusetts; and Danbury, Connecticut.

The most popular videos have hundreds of thousands of views. It is clear that users are emulating one another, particularly given that certain errors are repeated so often that they become trendy. The emoji of the red-white-and-blue Liberian flag is regularly used instead of the American one, and places in the New York area are spelled as they would be pronounced by Spanish-speaking migrants. (Junction Boulevard in Queens is called “La Jonson”; Roosevelt Avenue is “La Rusbel.”) […]

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Magda Teter had a review in the December 7, 2023, NYRB (archived) of what she calls “a frustrating book, requiring a patient reader,” Moshe Taube’s The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe; after describing “a late-fifteenth-century Russian collection called the Academy Chronograph” that “follows almost verbatim a medieval Hebrew text known as Midrash Ma’aseh Hanukkah,” she says:

Yet at the time this manuscript was produced, Jews were not allowed to live in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, or Muscovy, where this particular manuscript appears to have been created. Vasily I (1371–1425), the grand prince, did not allow Jewish merchants or immigrants; neither did his successors. […]

How did medieval Jewish texts such as the Midrash Ma’aseh Hanukkah end up translated into Slavic languages in regions from which Jews were banned? This is a puzzle Moshe Taube seeks to solve in The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe. Taube, an Israeli scholar of linguistics and Slavic philology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who spent thirty years studying and comparing different manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and various old Slavic languages, unravels a fascinating if difficult to follow story of pre-Ashkenazi Jews’ presence in medieval eastern Europe and their intellectual contributions, which have been lost within Jewish culture but were preserved in east European Orthodox Christian society.

What makes the existence of this Slavic version of medieval Hebrew texts even more intriguing, Taube points out, is that Muscovy was then a backwater, its clergy “barely literate.” No “classical learning of the ancient Greeks and Romans penetrated the walls of pious obscurantism in Russian church institutions, including the monasteries.” If so few scholars had Greek, certainly none were trained in Hebrew. And even Kyivan Rus’, a region where Jews lived that was politically and culturally distinct from Muscovy, was a place known “as a source of furs and slaves,” not erudition.

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Hannah Seo writes for the NY Times (archived) about her experience with ASL:

Learning ASL was both a culture shock and a bruise to my ego. As a writer and journalist, I pride myself on a certain facility with language. I was taught that there’s an optimal combination of words that can most precisely communicate any thought. Often, my preoccupation with language as the primary tool for expression has meant that in talking or writing about my emotions, I have held them at a distance. This is compounded by the fact that learning a new language, or speaking in a language that I haven’t mastered, is always frustrating. It’s why I avoid situations where I’d have to speak Korean (I never spoke it growing up, and I communicate with the vocabulary of a 6-year-old). My deficits make me simple, unfunny, a bit childlike and too direct — not at all as I imagine myself to be.

With ASL, I expected to feel similarly, and thought fluency would come once I collected a critical mass of signs. The first thing you learn in ASL class is the alphabet. As my classmates and I asked and answered questions using words we didn’t have the signs for, those early weeks were filled with laborious spelling. This was embarrassing: Seeing a dozen politely smiling faces watching me as I slowly spelled, misspelled and restarted spelling words — often multiple times — was its own kind of purgatory.

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My wife and I were admiring an image of the strange-looking bird called the nightjar when she asked me, naturally enough, what the “jar” in its name meant. I, naturally enough, turned to the OED, whose entry was revised in 2003:

1.a. A nocturnal, insectivorous, migratory bird, Caprimulgus europaeus (family Caprimulgidae), of Europe and eastern and central Asia, which has grey-brown cryptic plumage and a distinctive churring call. Also called fern-owl, goatsucker.

1630 Ill boding Owles, Night-iarrs, and Rauens with wide-stretched throats.
T. May, Continuation Lucan vii. sig. K4
[…]
1991 Suddenly another sound begins, completely evoking the spirit of the ancient heath—the hypnotic ‘churr’ of the nocturnal nightjar.
Bird Watching June 75/3

It has this interesting etymology:

The second element in the name reflects the bird’s distinctive call; compare other (chiefly regional) names for the bird, as churn-owl n., churr owl n., eve-churr n. 2, eve-jar n., jar-owl n., nightchurr n. Many similar imitative formations for the name of this bird are found in other languages.

(It would be nice if they’d mentioned some of those imitative formations.) If we turn to the synonym goatsucker (entry revised 2016) we find an equally interesting etymology:

< goat n. + sucker n.,

after classical Latin caprimulgus (Pliny; < capra she-goat (see capriole n.) + mulgēre to milk: see milk v.),

itself after ancient Greek αἰγοθήλας (< αἰγο-, αἴξ goat (see Aegipan n.) + θηλάζειν to suck).

Compare goat-milker n.

Whence also the Russian козодой ‘goat-milker.’

You can hear “the bird’s distinctive call” here.

I’ve never read the Ionesco play, but I always found the title intriguing, and Wikipedia provides a very satisfying explanation:

The idea for the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. Impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, he decided to write an absurd play named L’anglais sans peine (“English without toil”). Other possible titles which were considered included Il pleut des chiens et des chats, (“It’s raining cats and dogs”, translated in French literally); “L’heure anglaise” and “Big Ben Follies”.

Its actual title was the result of an error in rehearsal by actor Henri-Jacques Huet: the fire chief’s monologue initially included a mention of “l’institutrice blonde” (“the blonde schoolteacher”), but Huet said “la cantatrice chauve”, and Ionesco, who was present, decided to re-use the phrase.

Now, that’s what I call Theatre of the Absurd. I got there via Mark Liberman’s Log post, where you will find further absurdities, including James Thurber’s quotes from Collins’ Pocket Interpreters: France, such as:

There are no towels here.
The sheets on this bed are damp.
I have seen a mouse in the room.
These shoes are not mine.
The radiator doesn’t work.
This is not clean, bring me another.
I can’t eat this. Take it away!
The water is too hot, you are scalding me!

Thurber described it as a “melancholy narrative poem” and “a dramatic tragedy of an overwhelming and original kind.”

I’ve started reading a novel by my man Veltman that I had somehow missed when I was reading my way through the nineteenth century, his 1837 «Виргиния, или Поездка в Россию» [Virginie, or A Journey to Russia]; the protagonist, Гектор д’Альм [Hector d’Alm], is a Parisian who has had to move to Besançon because he bought property there and is terminally bored by provincial life. He goes to a solar festival, “праздникѣ солнца (Sauleou),” that involves families bringing fried eggs, and Veltman remarks:

Однакожъ этотъ праздникъ не казался
ни сколько замѣчателенъ Гектору, онъ
не видѣлъ въ немъ безотчетнаго уже
обряда одной изъ древнѣйшихъ религій;
онъ смѣялся бы, еслибъ ему сказали, что
яичница есть символъ jao, того перво-
бытнаго яйца, которое, по мнѣнію древ-
нихъ, носилось въ Хаосѣ, и изъ котора-
го произошла Вселенная.

But this festival didn’t seem in the least remarkable to Hector, who did not see in it the inexplicable rite of one of the most ancient religions; he would have laughed if someone had told him that the fried egg is the jao, the symbol of that primordial egg which, according to the ancients, floated in Chaos and from which the Universe arose.

Does anybody have any idea what this “jao” might be? The j could represent any number of sounds — Veltman could have taken it from Sanskrit, Chinese, a Germanic language, or who knows what else.

John D. Norton (of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh) wrote an essay back in 2012 called “What is Time? Or, Just What do Philosophers of Science Do?” I figure that as an attempt to define a word it’s LH material, but it also confirms me in my belief that philosophers think they have a better grasp on language than they do. He begins:

There is a competition, the “Flame Challenge,” underway at the time I write these words for the best answer to the question “What is time?” The target audience is eleven year old children and children of this age will be the ultimate judges. […]

The challenge is introduced with a perfunctory and familiar disclaimer. First comes a celebrated quote from Augustine

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
– Saint Augustine

The sentence that follows arrives with reliability that night follows day follows night and was offered, I expect, without reflection. Doesn’t everyone know that…

It’s a deep question, and it has no simple answer.

Is that really so?

He goes on to say that “the question ‘What is time?’ as asked is not really a scientific question at all”:
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