Advanced English Skills

Language Log Graphic Contexts Determine Characters' Functions [This is a guest post by J. Marshall Unger.] I do not believe it is useful, let alone necessary, to classify every character of a writing system as a phonogram, logogram, syllabogram, logosyllabogram, or any other kind of “gram.” Characters function logographically or phonographically depending on the degree to which they reflect the phonological, as opposed to the lexical, structure of the part of an utterance they are used to represent. One and the same character can function phonographically in one context, logographically in another, and in both ways in yet another. This is a consequence of what Martinet called the double articulation of language, i.e. Hockett’s duality of patterning or Hjemslev’s plereme/ceneme distinction. One may say for convenience that a character that functions logographically in a particular context is a logogram, but to the extent that doing so invites the unwary to think that logograms enjoy some sort of context-free existence in a Platonic universe of symbols, it is a bad idea. In writing systems with fewer than about eight dozen characters, most function phonographically most of the time, though some are occasionally deployed logographically in abbreviations, anachronistic spellings, and so on. This is because keeping texts short and retaining customary spellings often has practical value. Likewise, predominantly phonographic writing systems, unless specially designed to do so, seldom encode small phonetic differences in the realization of phonemes; indeed, some do not require notating certain predictable phonemic information (e.g. vowels in Arabic script). Only in writing systems with many hundreds of characters is a substantial degree of logographic representation even possible. In such systems—Chinese is the prime example—the difficulty of learning a large number of characters well enough for reading and writing with ease is compensated for by introducing phonographic mnemonics into the graphic structure of many characters. If these design features were absent, the set of characters would be no better than the multidigit numbers in a large codebook, which assures that messages they are used to encode are meaningless to anyone without knowledge of the codebook but hardly embodies a learnable writing system for practical purposes. Selected readings * "Script origin and typology, part 1" (7/1/24) * "Script origin and typology, part 2" (7/5/24) * "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22) ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Learn English Through Football Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final In this football language post we look at the phrase 'build up to the final' as we look forward to Sunday's final at the 2024 Euros The post Euro 2024 Football Language Phrase Day 30: Build up to the final appeared first on Learn English Through Football. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: surmise This word has appeared in 30 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Irish eggcorns A guest post, via email from Maitiú Ó Coimín: I just watched the interview Rob's Words on YouTube did with you last year. You mentioned that you'd like to hear about eggcorns in other languages. I think I have two for you from my first language: Irish. The first relates to the animal the squid. One of the Irish names for a squid is a "máthair shúigh". The two component words are "máthair" generally meaning "mother" and "shúigh" which is a genitive form of the word "súiche", meaning "soot". The "mother" in this sense means "source of" rather than a female parent. The name basically means "thing that creates/is the source of soot", referring to the blue-black ink released by squids. "Súigh", without the h, is the verb "to suck" and people think the squid's name refers to the suction pads on its tentacles, something like a "sucking mother". The second one is the phrase "a chairde gaoil" which people use at the start of speeches to address a crowd of friends or family etc. The components are the vocative particle "a", "cairde" meaning friends, and "gaol" meaning here "kindred", "related" or "dear". The phrase sort of means "dearly beloved" or something like that. People think it is "a chairde Gael", which means something like "Gaelic friends" or "Irish friends". Above is a guest post by Maitiú Ó Coimín. ➖ @EngSkills ➖

s"): Unknown. Possibly from a Central Asian language; compare Mongolian айраг (ajrag, “fermented milk of mares”), Uzbek pishloq (“cheese”) and Turkish ayran (“yoghurt mixed with water”). The phonetic similarity between Chinese 酪 (OC *ɡ·raːɡ, “milk”), Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”) and Latin lac (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵlákts (“milk”) is worth noting (Schuessler, 2007). (Wiktionary) "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19) — very long post directly related to the question of what lào, luò 酪 ("fermented milk; yoghurt; sour milk; kumiss") is Li and Hope opine: The diets of British and Chinese people are differentiated by foods such as cheese. Austen periodically mentions cheese, for example in Emma when Mr Elton describes a party with “the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root and all the dessert”. Such references are problematic for Chinese translators because of cultural differences. … Although several translators attempted to evoke Stilton’s characteristics (such as its “dry” texture) and used transliteration to convey something of original place names (“North Wiltshire” becoming “North Wēněrtè”, for example), most Chinese readers would have been none the wiser compared with a British reader’s understanding of the original text. Translation is hard, and probably no aspect of it is harder than conveying the taste, texture, flavor, etc. of food, no matter which language you're translating from and which language you're translating into. What is mouthfeel in contemporary English?  Al dente in Italian?  QQ in Taiwanese?  If you know the nuances of such terms, you are a gourmand gourmet. Selected readings * "FOOD & BGVERAGGS, with a focus on naan / nang" (2/12/16) — displaying much food erudition * "Lactase and language: the spread of the Yamnaya" (7/16/20) [Thanks to Mark and Greg Metcalf] ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Food in the works of Jane Austen as seen by early 20th-century Chinese "How Jane Austen’s Early Chinese Translators Were Stumped by the Oddities of 19th-Century British Cuisine:  How do you get a reader in 1930s China to understand what a mince pie is?" By Saihong Li and William Hope, The Conversation (9/15/22) / Get Pocket. Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) works are globally renowned, but they were unknown in China until 1935 when two different translations of Pride and Prejudice were published. Today, her novels are increasingly popular and have been translated into Chinese many times – notably there have been 60 different retranslations of Pride and Prejudice. Translators face the creative balancing act of remaining faithful to the source text while also ensuring that the translation is a smooth, informative read. One intriguing task for translators of Austen has been how to describe the 19th-century British food featured in the many convivial sequences that shed light on characters through their social interaction. How do you get an early Chinese reader of Austen’s work in the 1930s to understand what rout-cakes are and why Mrs Elton in Austen’s Emma considers poor versions of these a sign of a bad host? The world was not as globalised as it is now and information not so accessible. Nothing could be simpler and more routine in English cooking / baking than pies.  We have mince pie, shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pie, meat pie, and so on and on and on, not to mention humble pie, and what would Chinese of any age make of "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pye"?  And Little Jack Horner sitting in a corner eating a Christmas pie, into which he sticks his thumb and pulls out a plum?  Mostly when Chinese talk about "pie" they use the word "bǐng 餅", which could be flat cake, pancake, cookie, pastry, biscuit, In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennett contrasts her girls’ upbringing with that of their neighbour, Charlotte Lucas, who assists in cooking “the mince pies”. The notion of a pastry dish containing fruit, meat or vegetables is difficult to convey in Chinese as there are only limited similarities with Chinese “bĭng” which are wheat flour-based items resembling flatbreads, biscuits, or pancakes. Although early mince pies contained meat, they became sweeter and more fruit-based in the 18th century as sugar imports increased. However, Chinese translators conveyed “mince pies” in different ways, including “steak”, “steamed bun”, and “meat pie”, revealing translation errors or strategies such as the use of Chinese equivalents. The two wartime translations, made during Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 of “mince pie” were “steak” and “steamed bun” but in mitigated circumstance the translators probably had limited access to dictionaries during this period. The article touches on many other types of food in Jane Austen's time and describes the challenges they posed to 20th-century translators who strove to render them into Chinese.  For example, "brawn", which is "a cold cut terrine or meat jelly made from a pig’s head and bones, spiced, boiled, then cooled." Translation strategies have grown ever more sophisticated in recent decades, for example: “Happiness pancakes” are small, round, and made of flour, sesame seed and white sugar. They display a motif signifying happiness and are decorated with red silk. They have been a wedding delicacy for 2,000 years, whereas western-style wedding cakes are relatively new to China. Nevertheless, the newly coined, cosmopolitan concept of “jiéhūn dàngāo” (“wedding cake”) has materialised in recent translations. Ah, but then comes cheese, for which the Chinese are hard pressed to find even one term to match the hundreds of English terms.  They have tried this and that kind of lào 酪 ("junket; curd[...]

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub keep off (2) to avoid something like a certain food or a certain topic in conversation ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Idiom of the Day keep a cool head To maintain a calm demeanor and think clearly in a difficult, stressful, or troubling situation. Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

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Word of the Day disfavor Definition: (verb) Put at a disadvantage; hinder, harm. Synonyms: disadvantage. Usage: These laws clearly disfavor the underprivileged and poor because they do not address the problem of child labor. Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖