The NY Times has published Quiz: Do You Speak 2025? (“An assortment of absurd, useful and funny words and phrases entered the vernacular this year”; archived), which goes from 1. “Imagine you’re wearing a new outfit. What culinary term would you not want someone to use about your appearance?” to 11. “In 2025, what phrase might one use to describe entering a state of focus in order to achieve one’s goals?” I got 7 out of 11 (“You more or less speak 2025”), but that was with a lot of luck (including the fact that I just the other day saw a story about “the Italian brain rot crew” and happened to remember the names, which are memorable). I know it’s fluff, but hey, it’s about language; actually, I might not have posted it if it weren’t for the inclusion of Le poisson Steve, which both my wife and I found irresistible.

I won’t make a separate post out of it because it will mean something only to Russian-speakers, but Anatoly at Avva has a very interesting post about how the word обыденный changed its meaning from ‘done/made in a single day’ (which apparently was an important concept in folk culture) to its current sense of ‘ordinary, commonplace, everyday.’ There’s material on etymology and on Ukrainian and Belarusian equivalents, as well as splendid examples of peevery (Yakov Grot: «обыденный, как ясно показывает его происхождение, может значить только однодневный»).

Also, let us all join Joel at Far Outliers in his “profound gratitude and appreciation to the doctors, nurses, technicians, and orderlies of Wojewódzki Szpital Zespolony w Kielcach for saving my life during my sudden blogging hiatus this month.” Click through for his harrowing experience.

Stan Carey at Sentence first posted A list of animals who:

The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.

Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.¹ [¹ I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.]

Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books. This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity.

There are sheep, ducks, cows, and many more, ending with ants, rats, and even trees (“As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar”). He ends with:

I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.

Interesting stuff; I’m pretty sure I’ve come to use who for non-humans more and more in recent decades, and I think it’s a good development. (Not sure about the fungi, though.)

1) Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti quotes Robert Burns (1759-1796), “A Dream,” lines 30-31:

But Facts are chiels that winna ding,
  And downa be disputed.

He gives the glosses from The Canongate Burns: chiels ‘fellows,’ winna ding ‘will not be upset,’ and downa ‘cannot.’ But ding (pa.t. dang, pa.p. dung) means ‘knock, beat, strike; defeat, overcome; wear out, weary; beat, excel, get the better of,’ so I think “winna ding” is rather ‘won’t be defeated.’ And “downa” defeats me — it’s presumably a form of dae ‘do,’ but neither “downa” nor “douna” occurs in the list of forms at DSL. If we assume it belongs here:

(3) Negative: formed in the ordinary way or by the addition of the neg. particle -na, e.g. dinna, disna; dunna […]; düna […]; also daena, disnae, dinnae, dinny, dinnie, doesna, doesnae, doesny, doesni, den no’, döna, donna, din-not.

Then how does it work semantically? Shouldn’t it be ‘can’t be disputed’? Calling all Scotspersons!

2) Bunin’s 1943 story “Речной трактир,” “A Riverside Inn” in Hugh Aplin’s translation, opens with its protagonists doing some drinking at the famous Praga restaurant in Moscow (named Prague not because of any Czech connection but because it was fashionable to name fancy hotels and eateries after European capitals); the first paragraph ends:

Пообедали вместе, порядочно выпив водки и кахетинского, разговаривая о недавно созванной Государственной думе, спросили кофе. Доктор вынул старый серебряный портсигар, предложил мне свою асмоловскую “пушку” и, закуривая, сказал:

– Да, все Дума да Дума… Не выпить ли нам коньяку? Грустно что-то.

In Aplin’s version:

We had dinner together, knocking back a fair amount of vodka and Kakhetian wine and talking about the recently convened State Duma, then asked for coffee. The doctor took out an old silver cigarette case, offered me his Asmolov “cannon”* and, lighting up, said:

“Yes, it’s the Duma this, the Duma that… Shall we have some brandy? I’m feeling a bit sad.”

(The mention of “the recently convened State Duma” suggests we are in 1906 or 1907.) The footnote says:

Asmolov “cannon”: Asmolov and Co. were manufacturers of tobacco products and accessories.

Which is all well and good, but Asmolov is easy to identify (Russian Wikipedia); what the hell does пушка ‘gun, cannon’ mean here? I can’t find any relevant (tobacco-related) sense in any of my references.
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A reader sent me a quote from a post at the blog Doomsday Machines investigating the origin of the phrase “will the survivors [of nuclear war] envy the dead?” It comes from a speech Khrushchev gave at a Soviet-Hungarian Friendship Meeting that was reprinted the next day in Pravda; the relevant bit goes:

I wonder if the authors of these assertions know that if all the nuclear warheads are detonated the earth’s atmosphere will be so contaminated that nobody can tell in what condition the survivors will be and whether they will not envy the dead. Yes, yes, comrades, that is how the question stands.

The blog post continues:

The exact, original Russian from the speech seems to be: “в каком состоянии будут оставшиеся в живых люди — не будут ли они завидовать мёртвым?” — literally, “of the conditions of the surviving people — won’t they envy the dead?” […]

Did Khrushchev get the phrase from [Herman Kahn’s 1960 book On Thermonuclear War]? I have no idea. I have seen it speculated that the Russian version of the phrase is more directly traced to a particular translation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but tracing Russian origins of a phrase go beyond my ken.

My correspondent said “Naturally the last sentence triggered the thought, this is a perfect question for Language Hat.” He came to the right place, because although there are a number of Russian translations of Treasure Island, which was wildly popular in Europe as soon as it appeared (the first Russian version came out in 1886), I figured the place to look would be in the most popular Soviet translation, the 1935 one by Nikolai Chukovsky, Kornei’s son (he appears as a five-year-old in this LH post about his dad’s diary), and sure enough, I hit pay dirt — at the end of chapter 20 we find (bold added):

— Вы для меня вот как этот плевок! — крикнул он. — Через час я подогрею ваш старый блокгауз, как бочку рома. Смейтесь, разрази вас гром, смейтесь! Через час вы будете смеяться по-иному. А те из вас, кто останется в живых, позавидуют мертвым!

Stevenson’s original:

“There!” he cried. “That’s what I think of ye. Before an hour’s out, I’ll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side. Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.”

A very satisfying rummage through literary-quote history; thanks, Duncan!

I’m reading Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs (called a masterpiece by Geoffrey O’Brien; see this post) and I was struck by the final phrase in this paragraph:

Here, in a small cubic space, existed Miss Cecilia Williams, in a room that was bedroom, sitting room, dining room and, by judicious use of the gas ring, kitchen – a kind of cubbyhole attached to it contained a quarter-length bath and the usual offices.

I deduced what those offices must be, but I was unfamiliar with that use of the word; the OED (entry revised 2004) enlightened me:

7.a. In plural (formerly also occasionally in singular). The parts of a house, or buildings attached to a house, specially devoted to household work or service, or to storage, etc.; esp. the kitchen and rooms connected with it, as pantry, scullery, cellars, laundry, etc.; (also) the stables, outhouses, barns, and cowsheds of a farm.
[…]

7.b. In singular or plural. A privy, a lavatory. In later use frequently as usual offices. Cf. ease n. III.11b. Now somewhat archaic or euphemistic.

1727 The Grand Mystery..proposals for erecting 500 Publick Offices of Ease in London and Westminster.
(title)

1871 The forty-five big and little lodgers in the house were provided with a single office in the corner of the yard.
E. Jenkins, Ginx’s Baby (1879) i. 9

1890 The boys’ offices should be provided with doors.
in P. Horn, Village Educ. in 19th Century Oxfordshire (1979) 153

1909 Three reception, four bedrooms, kitchen, and usual offices.
Daily Graphic 26 July 16/1 (advertisement)

1948 Mildred had been too shy when Adam, indicating a door, had said, ‘“The usual offices”..,’ to open the door and look in.
J. Cannan, Little I Understood ix. 124

1951 I went to the usual office at the end of the passage.
N. Marsh, Opening Night ix. 220

1957 The bathroom’s to the right and the usual offices next to it.
J. Braine, Room at Top i. 13

1980 Aft of the lobby..is the dining saloon for the passengers with the offices of necessity on either side of it.
W. Golding, Rites of Passage i. 6

Even if it’s now “somewhat archaic or euphemistic,” I’m surprised I hadn’t run into it (of course it’s possible I’ve simply forgotten, as I had forgotten that Latin officium is a contraction of opificium); are you familiar with this quaint expression?

I posted my last entry in this series exactly a year ago; now it’s time to survey my haphazard 2025 reading. I started off the year with Simenon’s Maigret and the Old Lady, because we’d seen a television adaptation; it was as enjoyable as you expect Simenon to be. My Russian reading began with Alexander Veltman’s Виргиния, или Поездка в Россию [Virginie, or a journey to Russia] (LH) and left off there for quite a while (I’ve been finding it hard to choose novels that hold my attention). Because I was watching Jacques Rivette’s (very long) Joan the Maid (Jeanne la pucelle), I found myself reading Helen Castor’s excellent Joan of Arc: A History, which starts with Agincourt and presents Joan in the context of the Hundred Years’ War and the complex politics of her time rather than just tramp over the well-trodden ground of her vision, rise, and fall, and I finally got a decent sense of that stuff. (As it happens, my wife and I are now watching Rivette’s four-hour La Belle Noiseuse, which I last saw when it came out in the early ’90s, so I’ll probably be reading the Balzac story it’s based on.) I read Paul Werth’s 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution, which didn’t rock my world but was enjoyable and informative. My wife and I chose Olivia Manning’s School for Love for our nighttime reading and enjoyed it (LH). Because I loved Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea (I strongly recommend his autobiographical films Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, which are even better), I read its source material, Terence Rattigan’s play of the same name, which I liked (we talked about Rattigan here). I started Mbougar Sarr’s La plus secrète mémoire des hommes and greatly enjoyed it (LH), but for whatever reason set it aside — I hope to get back to it someday.

I liked Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States so much I gave a copy to my history-minded grandson for his birthday; it’s a great help in figuring out how we got where we are today. For Russian reading, I turned to a couple of stories by Leonid Andreev (LH), then Gorky’s The Lower Depths (LH). My wife and I read Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and liked it a lot (I wrote about the title here but for some reason never reported on the book). I started Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here but gave up on it — Lewis just isn’t a good enough writer to hold my attention. I read Zamyatin’s На куличках [The back of beyond] (LH), and as always when I read something of his I think “I really have to read more Zamyatin.” I read Maria Rybakova’s Анна Гром и ее призрак [Anna Grom and her specter], about a Russian émigré and suicide in Berlin who writes letters from her ghostly postmortem existence to the man she loved; I started out liking it but became disillusioned — as I wrote Lizok:
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Waseda University has a press release, “Phonetic or morpholexical issues? New study reveals L2 French ambiguity,” that begins:

Ambiguous speech production is a common challenge for learners of a second language (L2), but identifying whether the problem lies in pronunciation or deeper linguistic processing is not always straightforward. A new study conducted by Professor Sylvain Detey from Waseda University, with Dr. Verdiana De Fino from IRIT, UT3, University of Toulouse & Archean Labs, France, and Dr. Lionel Fontan, Head of Archean Labs, France, sheds light on this distinction. Their study was published on October 30, 2025, in the journal Language Testing in Asia.

The researchers sought to determine whether ambiguous speech errors made by Japanese learners of French could be better categorized through a combined phonetic and morpholexical assessment approach. By “morpholexical,” they refer to errors related to the way learners select and form words—such as choosing the correct verb ending, preposition, or gender marker—rather than just pronunciation mistakes. They designed an experimental protocol where learners’ utterances were evaluated by native French speakers for perceived ambiguity between word forms.

Using an innovative rating method and perceptual analysis, the team explored how certain cues in speech, such as vowel quality or gender-marking consonants, can lead to multiple interpretations. The results revealed that ambiguity in L2 speech cannot always be explained by phonetic inaccuracy alone; rather, morphological processing plays a significant role, especially when learners attempt to utter complex word forms or inflectional patterns. “Our findings indicate that some speech errors stem not only from misarticulation but also from confusion at the morpholexical level,” says Prof. Detey.

The study provides empirical evidence that calls for a shift in how L2 pronunciation and lexical access are taught. Instead of isolating pronunciation drills from vocabulary and morphology exercises, educators may need to integrate them more holistically. Such integration could help learners overcome the hidden ambiguities that occur when sound and meaning interact.

Interesting stuff; I don’t remember where I came across the link, so if someone out there sent it to me, I thank them. (The paper is open access.)

Courtesy of LH’s favorite archivist, Leslie Fields (e.g.), Juliane Tiemann’s “Archival Notations of the Norwegian Charter Material” (Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, Vol. 12, No. 14, 2015):

Medieval Nordic charters have received increasing attention in digitization projects in recent years due to their multifaceted roles in national histories, legal traditions, and cultural practices. A charter, which is a legal document, was originally a single-leaf parchment (or paper in later periods) with a recto (hair side) and a verso or dorse (flesh side). To prevent forgery and verify the authenticity of the document’s contents, various techniques were used to add visual and material authentication, for example, in the form of seals or chirographs. Such prominent characteristics set charters apart from other types of manuscripts. Furthermore, unlike other medieval sources, these documents are typically dated and geographically located.

However, I argue that while scholarship has extensively explored the linguistic and textual contents found on the recto of these documents, as well as the historical contexts of charters, there remains a significant gap in the analysis of textual additions made by later owners of these objects. These textual additions found in the blank spaces on the dorse of these objects are largely traces of documentary and archival practices in the early modern and modern period. These practices include numbering the objects and summarizing their content, often containing multiple layers resulting from reorganization of archival materials and changes in ownership. Due to the lack of scholarship focusing on these “silent” voices in the material, their significance in understanding the complex lifecycles of historic documents held in archival repositories has been largely overlooked. These additions can contribute critical provenance information and reveal how charter materials were handled and preserved, as well as details on revisiting earlier legal matters over time. In this article, I explore this issue with a particular focus on Norwegian materials. […]

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Frequent commenter Y sent me Robert H. Lowie’s linguistic memoir “A Case of Bilingualism” (Word 1.3 [1945]: 249-259) saying “This is a fun paper, from a famous figure in American anthropology. I think you’ll like it”; I do indeed, and I think you will too. Here are some choice bits:

I was born in Vienna in 1883. My father was a Hungarian from the vicinity of Stuhlweissenburg, south-west of Budapest. In that section of the country German had remained dominant, so that he learnt Magyar as a foreign tongue. My mother was Viennese, and, accordingly, High German was the language of our household. My father’s was a generalized South German form, my mother’s richly flavored with the racy vernacular locutions which even educated Austrians affect. Typical are such words as Bissgurn ( “termagant”), dalket (“awkward, gauche”), hopatatschet (“supercilious”). She was capable of expressive original creations, such as verhallipanzt (“entangled, confused”), which appears in no Idiotikon Vindobonense I have been able to consult. Again, like many educated Austrians, she was somewhat easy-going on certain points of grammar, substituting the dative for the genitive with während and wegen. On the other hand, her father, a physician, austerely criticised such derelictions when I indulged in them. It was he, too, who urged his daughter to keep up her children’s German in America since we were likely enough to learn English there.

When we left Vienna to join my father in New York, where he had preceded us by three years, I was ten and had just passed the entrance-examination for a Gymnasium, my sister being two and a half years younger. We immediately entered public schools and rapidly acquired fluency in English. My mother, obeying her father’s injunction, maintained German as the sole medium of communication between parents and children, though my sister and I soon came to speak to each other more frequently in English. The family intimates were all Austrians and Germans, and though our morning newspaper was English, in the evening and on Sunday we regularly bought the Staatszeitung. The Sunday edition of that paper had a puzzle-column, over which we pored for hours, winning several prizes in the form of German books. We occasionally went to the two German theatres and in later years visited German societies. We read the classics and the serial modern novels that appeared in our Sunday Staatszeitung.

Nevertheless, our German could not possibly develop as it would have in Austria. The range of topics discussed with our parents and their friends did not coincide with that thrust upon us in the classroom and in association with age-mates. It was not as a matter of course, but through later deliberate effort, that I learnt gleichschenkliges Dreieck, Herrentiere, and Beschleunigung as the equivalents, respectively, of “isosceles triangle,” “primates,” and “acceleration.” Similarly, dealings with storekeepers were largely in English. Important, too, was the fact that there were, of course, no compulsory school-compositions to be scrutinized by the Argus-eyes of a German pedagogue. […]

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Geoffrey O’Brien, in an NYRB review (February 8, 2024; archived) of several books on mystery novels, concludes with some thoughts on patterns in such stories that I thought were worth bringing here:

Such a book was a city held in the hand, a portable labyrinth. Every plot was also a geography, even if the action was confined to a single room or, in the end, to a single exchanged glance, as in Agatha Christie’s masterpiece Five Little Pigs (1942). The words were a diagram. To read them was to advance into different spaces, sensing a continuity of passageways from one book to another. At every turn signs could be detected, marks hovering in the air around faces, housefronts, patterns of rubble and erosion denoting a shifting border between safety and terror, free movement and confinement. It was a lot like moving through an actual city, newly conscious of such borders, recognizing their scuffed surfaces almost everywhere and finally learning to mistrust even the shiniest and most thoroughly sanitized wards.

Glimpses of space flickered in patterns that were like music. The music reverberates through Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”:

It was a labyrinth of an old house, with corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little low doors, the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the generations who had crossed them…the plaster was peeling off the walls, and the damp was breaking through in green, unhealthy blotches.

Or Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep:

A building in which the smell of stale cigar butts would be the cleanest odor…the fire stairs hadn’t been swept in a month…crusts and fragments of greasy newspaper, matches, a gutted imitation-leather pocketbook.

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