Jackson Crawford put up this interesting little video yesterday:
Also this 3h 45m commentary on Hávamál, if you’ve got a particularly slow winter’s evening.
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That reminds me of this gem from the department of “please pay professional translators”
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I learnt a new Chinese phrase today; or, to be specific, an idiom of Hong Kong Cantonese.
一盅兩件 means “one bowl with two pieces”, ie. a bowl (now teapot) and two pieces of dim sum.
Such four-character Chinese phrases are called 成语 chéngyǔ.
Their Japanese equivalents are known as 四字熟語 yojijukugo.
For more examples of chengyu, see Chengyu - Wikipedia
There are dictionaries for them as well, and most are culture and literature related. And they usually have interesting stories behind them.
https://dict.idioms.moe.edu.tw/search.jsp?la=1
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I always thought the pronunciation of 圍棋 in Holo(Taiwanese Hokkien), is just the combination of 圍 uiˊ and 棋 kiˊ, but was surprised to found a Japanese-Holo dictionary published in 1931, listed this entry
ブヌˇ キイˇ (bun3 kii3) 文碁, and it is supposed to be based on the language used at the time.
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We all love werewolf/mafia. There’s a video game Gnosia which is basically werewolf in sci-fi setting. Soon it’ll be available in English for Nintendo Switch. But for now you can watch Japanese let’s plays on youtube. Which is what I do. It’s not like I have any of those fancy consoles anyway.
The game looks like a visual novel, maybe like Danganronpa a little bit. So there’s werewolf part where you play with AI opponents. Since it’s a game, you only have a few possible actions, e.g. “doubt X person”, “defend Y” and so on. Everyone has stats, and abilities they can use. Depending on stats players tend to believe you, or you can act more often without standing out too much and things like that. Kind of RPG elements there. So I think it’s really cool, especially for people without friends. And there’re social elements and main story in the background.
The advantage here from learning perspective is that you don’t need to understand Japanese very well to understand the games themselves. During the games only actions are important and the text is just a flavor. And since it’s repetitive from game to game same words are repeated, and you pick them up.
By the way, in mafia, at least in Russia, players are either red (citizens) or black (mafia). In werewolf in Japanese it’s white or black. So when two people claiming to be seers point at the same person, one as black, one as white, this situation is called panda. I think?
I’m watching SANNINSHOW playthrough 【SF人狼】鉄塔のグノーシア
In the meantime I found nihongonomori’s N3 grammar videos to be useful. While grammar itself is on easier side, it’s still good to repeat. And they subtitled the whole series so I can train listening skills. Without subtitles it can be hard to learn anything since you have no idea what’s being said, haha. JLPT N3 grammar #20 - YouTube
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Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer (1962) clarifies the second-person singular with thou / thee.
Section of table from the book:
Singular
| Case | Latin | English |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | tū, | thou, you (Voc. also) |
| Acc. | tē, | thee, you |
| Gen. | tuī, | of thee, of you |
| Dat. | tibi, | to thee, to you |
| Abl. | tē, | (from) thee, (from) you |
Plural
| Case | Latin | English |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | vōs, | you (Voc. also) |
| Acc. | vōs, | you |
| Gen. | { vestrī | of you |
| “” | vestrum } | |
| Dat. | vōbis, | to you |
| Abl. | vōbis, | (from) you |
I was recently discussing the name of the Yike server on Twitch. Its full name is Yike Weiqi, which is pinyin for the hanzi 弈客围棋.
As with all pinyin words, the y is silent; the intonation is Yìkè Wéiqí. The exact meaning of 弈客 isn’t clear to me, but it appears to simply say “Go client”.
Wiktionary has no Chinese definition for 弈, but supplies the sense “xiangqi / Chinese chess” as its use in Japanese and, formerly, Korean.
I’m also going to tag on this new Crawford video (don’t want to overpost):
I have a post about ancient Go history before it is called 圍棊
yi 弈 is most likely the name of the ancient precursor of Go in the 1st millennium BC, and it later became a verb meaning playing Go or all kinds of board games (like google become googling). And the word ke (客) placed after a word means someone (or a group of people) who is defined by said action, like 遊客 (遊 means to travel, so 遊客 means tourist, people who travel). So 弈客 = people who play Go.
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I watched JLPT2020 試験対策 LIVE 15 DAYS !
It’s 15 1-hour recordings of live lessons where they go through 10 or so N1/N2/N3 exam problems and explain them. You can shorten it a little by skipping chit-chat.
The focus is on grammar and expressions, I think. So vocabulary in the problems is not too hard which is nice.
I also think it’s very interesting that there’s a noticeable difference between the explanations at different levels. I found the way they talk in N1 videos to be significantly harder.
All in all, it’s kinda sad. After watching this I feel like I’ll never be able to learn all that.
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The latest in LLL calendar discussion: the Coptic calendar, as condensed from the table at Coptic calendar - Wikipedia
| No. | (B.) Coptic & R. | Arabic R. | Origin | Ethiop. eqv. | Gregorian dates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | Ⲑⲱⲟⲩⲧ Thout | Tūt | the god Thoth | Mäskäräm | 11 Sep. – 10 Oct. |
| II | Ⲡⲁⲟⲡⲓ Paopi | Bābah | Opet Festival | Ṭəqəmt(i) | 11 Oct. – 9 Nov. |
| III | Ⲁⲑⲱⲣ Hathor | Hātūr | the goddess Hathor | Ḫədar | 10 Nov. – 9 Dec. |
| IV | Ⲭⲟⲓⲁⲕ Koiak | Kiyāhk | Spirit-on-Spirit Festival | Taḫśaś | 10 Dec. – 8 Jan. |
| V | Ⲧⲱⲃⲓ Tobi | Ṭūbah | offerings (cf. February) | Ṭərr(i) | 9 Jan. – 7 Feb. |
| VI | Ⲙⲉϣⲓⲣ Meshir | 'Amshir | a titular festival | Yäkatit | 8 Feb. – 9 Mar. |
| VII | Ⲡⲁⲣⲉⲙϩⲁⲧ Paremhat | Baramhāt | Festival of Amenhotep | Mägabit | 10 Mar. – 8 Apr. |
| VIII | Ⲫⲁⲣⲙⲟⲩⲑⲓ Parmouti | Baramūdah | Festival of Renenutet | Miyazya | 9 Apr. – 8 May |
| IX | Ⲡⲁϣⲟⲛⲥ Pashons | Bashans | Festival of Khonsu | Gənbo(t) | 9 May – 7 Jun. |
| X | Ⲡⲁⲱⲛⲓ Paoni | Baʾūnah | Valley Festival | Säne | 8 Jun. – 7 Jul. |
| XI | Ⲉⲡⲓⲡ Epip | 'Abīb | ? | Ḥamle | 8 Jul. – 6 Aug. |
| XII | Ⲙⲉⲥⲱⲣⲓ Mesori | Misrā | birth of Ra | Nähase | 7 Aug. – 5 Sep. |
| XIII | Ⲡⲓⲕⲟⲩϫⲓ ⲛ̀ⲁ̀ⲃⲟⲧ | Nasī’ | the little month | Ṗagʷəmen | 6–10 Sep. |
| Pi Kogi Enavot | or Ṗagume |
The Coptic Church uses an epoch system called the Era of the Martyrs (anno martyrum) or the Diocletian Era (anno Diocletiani). It begins on the first Coptic day of the year in which Diocletian assumed the Roman imperial throne, which was the 29th August of 284 CE.
The Diocletian Era starts 283 years after the AD / CE calendar, 1037 years after the AUC (“Roman”) calendar, and an entire 5,793 years after the ε.Κ. (Byzantine) calendar.
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Coptic is a very fascinating language and comparatively easy to learn. It has a very rigid SVO syntax and very little morphology. Most grammatical information is supplied by particles. In this regard, it resembles Chinese and English.
One feature that I find quite unique in the wider Euro-Oriental sphere is that mood and tense are expressed by a wide array of proclitic morphemes at the beginning of the phrase.
Coptic also makes for an excellent gateway to Middle Egyptian.
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This looks like a good channel to practice Greek and learn some new words and phrases:
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I recommend checking out this interview some time.
Despite the title, it isn’t all that much about Avestan. It’s mainly a lecture on the political and ritual context of the Vedas in “Ancient India” (ca. 1500 BCE, give or take a very large margin).
One of Dr. Smith’s core ideas is that the three main Vedas were meant to be performed in character rather than simply recited – the same way that certain Norse myths and Senecan tragedies have been interpreted – and that these performances would form part of a soma-drinking festival with the intention of legitimising the summer rule of a temporary confederate chief, whose role was to resolve tribal disagreements so that the clans could cohabit peacefully in the winter.
A challenging side point he presented, by the way, is that Indo-European people may have been coexisting in India with the urban Indus Valley Culture, a civilisation often interpreted as Dravidian, eg. with the IVC cities mainly on the coast and the Indo-Europeans living inland, or the IVC in the lowlands and the Indo-Europeans in the highlands etc.
Another quick takeaway is his statement that whilst the identity of the consciousness-altering drink soma isn’t certainly known, its etymology suggests the pressing of a plant into water, with the resultant solution being mixed with honey and milk; and that it’s definitely not alcohol, as soma is juxtaposed as superior to alcohol in the Vedas.
Maybe some of you might be interested and delighted to read about new German words:
Here is the “official” list by the Leibnitz Institute, including definitions and sources of where a word has been used:
https://www.owid.de/docs/neo/listen/corona.jsp#
Some words are rather boring, but some are quite nice. There are some words I haven’t heard so far, but most of them immediately make sense to me as a native speaker.
One word that I use a lot is “Maskenmuffel” for people who don’t like wearing masks. I’ve also used “Tandemfamilie” for teaming up with one other family to take turns in taking care of the kids. And “Virenschleuder” has been a thing even before the pandemic to describe someone who carelessly spreads viruses everywhere. The “Gabenzaun” has been around since the first lockdown – it is a fence where people hang food and clothes for homeless people, so they can just take what they need without getting into close contact.
A few cool ones that I didn’t know so far are
- Maskne – when you get acne from constantly wearing a mask
- Jo-Jo-Lockdown – when there’s a lockdown, which is then lifted, and then there are stricter measures again, and so on
- Nasenpimmel – “nose dick” – when someone let’s their nose hang out…
- Impfträgheit – “vaccination lethargy”, describing a group of people that could get vaccinated, but many of them don’t
- Kinnschoner – “chin protector”, used when someone wears a mask on their chin instead over mouth and nose
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Herrlich.
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I wonder, in German you guys mash together words to make big compound words, which is what German is famous for. Do these count as new words?
I looked up the same thing for Russian language. Mostly, already existing words simply changed meaning. For example, samoizolyaciya (self-isolation), quarantine and so on. They got coronavirus-related flavor to them.
Others are new words but I’m skeptical that they actually exist. I’m kinda thinking it’s linguists and philologists don’t have anything better to do so they compile these lists of words that aren’t really used.
I think covidiot is most popular actual new words here.
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Usually yes, which feels a bit like cheating to me. 
But on the other hand, these compound words often have special meanings apart from just (word1 + word2), so it makes sense to regard them as new words.
That’s also similar here. I spotted many words on the list that existed before, but either did have not the exact meaning as they have now, and/or they were barely used at all.
Jein (yes and no). I mean, it’s part of their job, right?
These words have at least been used for a few times each. I guess, many will just disappear after a while, but a few will be be used regularly in the years to come.
I’m curious if also some new sayings will emerge from this time. (Usually, one doesn’t think much about where a saying comes from, but some sayings are pretty weird. For example, when a German parent enters their kid’s very untidy room, they might say “Es sieht aus, als hätte eine Bombe eingeschlagen!” – “It looks as if a bomb has fallen here!”)
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when a German parent enters their kid’s very untidy room, they might say “Es sieht aus, als hätte eine Bombe eingeschlagen!” – “It looks as if a bomb has fallen here!”)
We have this saying in English too, though in my experience went off in here is the variation used.
The main Covid-related English word I’ve heard is superspreader, ie. “super–(virus)–spreader”, a person who infects a lot of other people,
There’s also this interesting word zoomer, which I first heard on TheLovingSun’s stream. A zoomer is a young person, but the etymology is a bit complex. The zoomers are the counterpart to the boomers; however, in modern slang boomers has slipped from being a generational term referring to the baby boomers (Westerners born '46–'64) to a more general age-related term with negative connotations [cf. the song OK Boomer].
Wiktionary states that zoomer is the result of using the Z of Gen Z to replace the B of boomer, and originally that was probably the case. But I think many people now understand the etymology to be that a zoomer means “a person who uses Zoom”. That was at least my first impression, which is why it seems like a Covid-related word.
Certainly the word of the moment is lockdown and, in England at least, tier, due to the evershifting four-tier restriction system. The NHS (National Health Service), the UK’s public healthcare system, has of course also been a common topic. And, naturally, self-isolation, quarantine, vaccine and so on.
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