We’ve discussed Spanish and Russian swearing, and had a brief go at Chinese; now, courtesy of Dinesh Rao, I direct your attention to a more detailed post on the latter over at From a Singapore Angle, wherein a Chinese article by Lin Siyun, “Inquiry into the Chinese and Foreign Philosophies of Swearing,” is discussed and in part translated. Some very interesting stuff:

When a person does something wrong, the usual way in other countries is to swear at the culprit himself; the Chinese way is not to abuse the culprit directly, but to swear at his mother and ancestors. Foreigners found this peculiar way of doing things very hard to understand: This person did wrong, what’s it to do with his mother or ancestors? Anglo-Americans will say “F— you”, but usually not “F— your mother”; the Japanese will say “You bakaro“, but normally not “Your ancestors bakaro.” (bakaro = 馬鹿野郎 or ばかやろう; roughly, “dumbass”.)
And when the Chinese swear, they seldom use terms that displays racial discrimination (unlike the case of the Anglo-Americans), and in any case, such terms are rare in the Chinese vocabulary. Take the often encountered waiguo guizi (外國鬼子; i.e., “foreign devil”): if we were to think it through, we’ll realize that it actually contains an element of “respect”. It seems that the Chinese would only call those foreigners who had been able to bully or invade them “devils”—such as meiguo guizi (美國鬼子; i.e., “American devil”) or riben guizi (日本鬼子; i.e., “Japanese devil”). China fought wars with India and Vietnam before, but they don’t usually say yindu guizi (印度鬼子; i.e., “Indian devil”) or yuenan guizi (越南鬼子; i.e., “Vietnamese devil”)—it is as if these are not good enough to be guizi.

I don’t agree with everything the author has to say about English swearing, but I’m glad to know about the distinction in deviltry.

It’s a pleasure to be able to offer unalloyed praise for a NY Times story about linguistics, Michael Erard’s “How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages.” I’ve been using Ethnologue in print form since I was in college (its availability online at no cost is one of the best things about the internet), and it was interesting to learn that it started as far back as 1951. There are some great quotes in the piece:

“I occasionally note in my comments to the press,” said Nicholas Ostler, the president of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, “the irony that Ethnologue’s total count of known languages keeps going up with each four-yearly edition, even as we solemnly intone the factoid that a language dies out every two weeks.”

This dissonance points to a more basic problem. “There’s no actual number of languages,” said Merritt Ruhlen, a linguist at Stanford whose own count is “around” 4,580. “It kind of depends on how one defines dialects and languages.”

The linguists behind the Ethnologue agree that the distinctions can be indistinct. “We tend to see languages as basically marbles, and we’re trying to get all the marbles in our bag and count how many marbles we have,” said M. Paul Lewis, a linguist who manages the Ethnologue database (www.ethnologue.com) and will edit the 16th edition. “Language is a lot more like oatmeal, where there are some clearly defined units but it’s very fuzzy around the edges.”

The Yiddish linguist Max Weinrich once famously said, “A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot” (or “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”). To Ethnologue, and to the language research organization that produces it, S.I.L. International, a language is a dialect that needs its literature, including a Bible.

I love the fact that he worked a Yiddish quote into a piece about a Christian organization, and remember, folks, you heard it here first! (I was wondering why I chose the spelling “diyalekt” in that entry, but it seems I picked it up from here; in any case, Erard’s version is indisputably better.)

Update. See now UJG‘s post, with an actual image of Weinreich’s original Yiddish.

When I wrote this entry, I lazily took Scipio’s word for it that there were no other blogs in Latin; had I given it a moment’s thought, I would have realized that couldn’t be the case (there are a couple of blogs in Klingon, after all), and miram in the comments kindly directed me to three others: DEVS EX CRAPVLA, colloquia in lingua latina, and Diarium latinum. Furthermore, Justin of The Mad Latinist’s Journal mentions that he will be posting only in Latin from July 29th to August 6th; he also links to a list of a half-dozen other blogs in Latin. Me paenitet offendisse!

Zackary Sholem Berger posts about how he combines his medical studies with his interest in languages:

Like every other medical student, I have a command of several different kinds of medical terminology: the mind-numbing jargon of the scientific literature, the half-macho talk of rounds and last but certainly not least important, the normal words people use to talk in English about whatever’s the matter with them.
It’s this last kind of vocabulary that I lack in Spanish. I can talk a blue streak about genetic predispositions and infectious agents, about endoscopies and anesthesia — these are international terms, much the same in Spanish, English and many other languages. But lay language is different. I’ve already experienced a certain kind of linguistic blockage more than once. I’ve started a conversation with a Spanish-speaking patient, we’ve built up something of a rapport, she’s complimented my Spanish, I’ve figured out why she’s come to the hospital. Then, all of a sudden, I need to ask a specific question to narrow down the field of possible diagnoses. I use what I think is the right word, and one of two expressions appears on the patient’s face: either outright incomprehension, or a polite glazed-over look that means, “I’m going to keep my mouth shut until I can figure out what the heck this nice doctor is saying.” It’s then that I have to search my dusty old neurons for a Spanish word I learned once, many years ago, or for a synonym that’s used in the home country of this particular patient. During one memorable conversation, a patient and I sat through a long, awkward pause before she figured out that I was asking about her period.

He points out that a lot of people would think he should be concentrating on the medical stuff, but says “I’m a person who doesn’t mind sacrificing a little efficiency (or even a lot) to get a good conversation going with the person sitting in front of me. Will that make me a better doctor? Beats me, but I know I’ll have more fun this way.” I personally think it will make him a better doctor, and in fact one reason my wife and I like our current doctor so much is that he actually converses with us as well as treating us. It is possible to be (in the words of his clever title) a medicine mensch.

[Read more…]

Scipio Scripsit is the blog of someone who, frustrated that [he had found] blogs about Latin but none in Latin (or, as he puts it, “Plurimi de latina, sed nullos in ipsa latina”), decided to remedy the deficiency. [Note: I should have checked before taking his word for it that there were no others; see next entry.] (He’s a real blogger, too—in his second post he has a picture of his dog Bomilcar.) Gaudete omnes! (Via Classics in Contemporary Culture.)
Update. Aug. 2006: Blog appears to be defunct, or, as the blogger would have put it, defunctus.

Eurolang “is a specialist niche news agency covering topics related to lesser-used languages, linguistic diversity and national minorities within the European Union.”

It provides an expanding on-line daily service across Europe, to language NGOs, the media, European, State and local government, academia, researchers and the general public.
The purpose of Eurolang is to provide, on a daily basis, relevant and current news about lesser-used language communities to the general public and to national and regional media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, internet media) in Europe and worldwide.

Thanks for the link, Rick!

Via Incoming Signals I discovered an archive of scripts for the British sketch comedy show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.” As an aficionado of the Higher Lower British Humor, I was delighted, but didn’t expect it to be LH material—until my wife drew my attention to “Gordon and Stuart eat Greek.” If you have some acquaintance with Greek, either Ancient or Modern, you will enjoy this little scene.

If you don’t know Ancient Greek, the bit about the word “genoymeen” will zip right past you, so I’ll explain that it’s an old-style Brit pronunciation of γενοιμην, an optative form meaning ‘may I be’ or ‘that I might be’ that was so familiar to those who partook of an old-school classical education that Rupert Brooke could insert it into an English poem, “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,” which is online in many places but apparently only here with the Greek bit in actual Greek:

ειθε γενοιμην . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!

A Moscow Times story by Victor Sonkin reports on a dictionary I’d very much like to have (at least, if it were a convenient little book instead of a “module” for a piece of equipment I don’t own):

In April, the Moscow-based company ABBYY Software House released a new electronic dictionary. It is the first work of its kind, even though the dwellers of Russia’s two largest cities have needed such a tool since time immemorial. It is a Moscow-St. Petersburg dictionary—one that gives “translations” of Moscow words into Petersburgese.

Social and cultural differences between the two Russian capitals have been piling up for more than three centuries, and language has been no exception to this process. The variations start with phonetics: Muscovites pronounce certain words differently from their northwestern rivals. For instance, the “ah” sound, as in “Mahskvah,” is more prominent in their speech. Small interjections and greetings follow suit. In Moscow a general question is “Chto?” (What?), while in St. Petersburg you will hear “Kak?” (How?) in the same context, at least from older people.

The more noticeable division, however, is lexical: when different words are used for the same things. One often cited example is the word for “curb,” which is bordyur in Moscow but porebrik in Petersburg. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ABBYY’s dictionary contains 76 items; there are actually many more. The list of objects and notions that are expressed differently includes metro pass, house entrance, eraser, doughnut, turtleneck, newsstand, grand (as in the slang word for “a thousand”), cigarette stub and chicken, to name a few. Even borrowed words react differently. The Middle Eastern snack known in the West as a gyro or doner kebab is called shaurma in Moscow but shaverma—with a different stress!—in St. Petersburg.

The two “dialects” are mutually comprehensible, but misunderstandings do occur. Once, while visiting my St. Petersburg relatives, I went to a shop to buy some bread. “Is the bread fresh?” I asked the woman behind the counter. Bewildered, she replied, “We don’t have any.” Now it was my turn to be puzzled, since the shelves behind her were bursting with bread. Then it dawned on me: It was all white bread, called bulka in St. Petersburg; they only say khleb, or “bread,” when referring to the dark kind.

I can’t find any mention of it at the ABBYY sites (Russian, English), but I probably just don’t know where to look; I don’t imagine Sonkin made it up. At any rate, I’m fascinated by this sort of dialect difference, and would appreciate any further information from Russian readers. For one thing, what are the differing stresses on shaurma and shaverma? And of course I’m curious about the words for metro pass, house entrance, eraser, and so on.

(Via blogchik, Michele Humes’s Russophile blog.)

Addendum. See the article by V.I. Belikov, “Сравнение Петербурга с Москвой и другие соображения по социальной лексикографии” [Comparison of Petersburg and Moscow and other observations on social lexicography].

Update. The Словарь «Языки русских городов» is online and expanding as people add entries.

A Language Log post by Mark Liberman introduces me to a very interesting word which he spells “dykes,” meaning ‘diagonal cutting pliers’ (“as a tool term, dykes is always plural, like scissors“). Now, googling “diagonal cutting pliers, dykes” (without the quotes) gets me 367 hits, while changing “dykes” to “dikes” almost doubles the number, to 706, so there may be a slight preference for the latter spelling, but both the totals and the difference between them are small enough that it’s impossible to tell. One wants, therefore, to consult a dictionary—but as Mark says, the word “isn’t in the AHD, M-W Unabridged, the OED, or Encarta.”

I think this is really strange. As far as I know, dykes is the standard American term for this ubiquitous and useful tool. In my experience as a child working on bicycles and later cars with my friends, as a mechanic in the army, and hanging around electronics technicians at Bell Labs, “dykes” was as common as a term as hacksaw or chisel. I mean, what else would you call them?

It is indeed strange; I don’t recall previously seeing a normal word of long standing, even one of limited circulation, that was not in any dictionary; that snub is usually reserved for recent slang terms. For what it’s worth, this site says “The diagonal cutting pliers, commonly called ‘diagonals’ or ‘dikes’…”, which suggests a shortening of diagonal and would seem to support the spelling with i. But one JAX in this discussion [2024: not archived, alas] says “Dykes was the surname of the guy who invented the best of its time wire cutters. ‘side Dykes’ was the name of the later diagonal model.” Until the lexicographers take note of this neglected lexical item and settle on an etymology, you can pick whichever spelling looks right to you and no one can prove you wrong.

Thanks to the indefatigable aldiboronti (who should really set up shop as a linguablogger), my attention has been directed to a wonderful essay, “The Perils of Lexicography,” by Judith Robertson, an Australian lexicographer who takes the trouble to investigate the true origins of a number of purportedly Australian words:

I was recently examining Jonathon Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (1998). This work contains 70,000 words and phrases from a variety of English-speaking countries. In its Acknowledgements Green admits that ‘the profession of lexicography is, inevitably, a plagiaristic one, a linguistic Pacman that moves on, gobbling up its predecessors as it goes’. But there are very real dangers in this kind of plagiarism…

Cornelius Crowe’s Australian Slang Dictionary has been widely used by scholars researching Australian English. In spite of the book’s title, it obviously includes words that are not exclusively Australian. But what scholars have failed to realise is the fact that almost every entry in Crowe’s dictionary has been plagiarised from other dictionaries… Matsell’s Secret Language of Crime and the anonymous Slang Dictionary of New York are not well known in Australia. The entries in both American dictionaries are close to identical, and both dictionaries were produced for the New York Police. The 1997 reprint of the Slang Dictionary of New York describes the work as ‘the comprehensive dictionary to which novelists and historians turn to make the streets of 19th century America come alive’. Unfortunately, Cornelius Crowe turned to these American dictionaries to make the streets of nineteenth-century Australia come alive…

There is a very good lexicographical lesson to be learned from all this. Although it is common practice to use other dictionaries, and it makes sense to do so, the lexicographer who uses dictionaries without discretion is in great peril. And the lexicographer who uses only other dictionaries for evidence of the existence of a word is in greater peril.

Ouch! I’ve already emended the false entries in my copy of Cassell (a superb work otherwise), and I hope more lexicographers are doing the unglamorous but essential work of eliminating such fake words from reference works.