Translating Engines for Email?

Linguistics in Action

I received an email reminder of an upcoming literary conference on English literature to be held in Korean:

회원선생님들께,

안녕하세요. 이제 봄날씨가 제법 완연합니다.

변덕스러운 봄날씨에 건강유의하시길 바랍니다.

중세근세학회 춘계학술대회가 한 달 앞으로 성큼다가왔습니다.

일정표 첨부하오니 참조하시고 회원선생님들의 많은 참여 기대하겠습니다.

감사합니다. 그럼 학회때 뵙겠습니다!

최지연 배상

총무이사

한국중세근세학

I can't read or speak Korean, so let's see how the Korean-to-English translation engine works:

Member Dear Sir,

Hi. Now, Mr. springtime recipe wanyeon.

Please note that the health fickle spring seeds.

Modern Medieval Society Conference has been approached stride forward one month.

These haohni see attached itinerary will expect participation of its members teachers.

Thank you. So I'll see you when the Society!

Choejiyeon damages

General Affairs Director

Korea Medieval Modern Society

How does it work? Not very well. But blame the state-of-the-art, not the state-of-the-artist.

Newly Coined Word?

Kate Winslet

My hard copy of Korea Herald for Wednesday the eleventh of October (2017) has Kate Winslet stating, with respect to the recent Harvey Weinstein scandals:

"I had hoped that these kinds of stories were just made up rumors, maybe we have all been naeurove."

Naeurove? What kind of word is that? Is it even a word? Does it belong to the set of all words having no plausible meaning? I figure this is some sort of computer glitch, but what would the original word be? Naïve?

I am an Eggcorn!

Eggcorn

Yes, that's me - the nutty intellectual egghead! My Cyber-Friend who goes by the title "The Big Henry" alerted me to this sort of linguistic error in which one word is misheard as a different word or combination of words. This kind of error is exemplified in the word "eggcorn," apparently how one woman misheard the word "acorn"! Her word "eggcorn" is now the label for errors of this sort.

Josh Lambert on Benjamin K. Bergen on Cursing

Benjamin K. Bergen

UC San Diego

In an NYT article, "Why Do We Love to Curse So Much?" (September 26, 2016), Josh Lambert turns to Benjamin K. Bergen's recently published book on linguistics, What The F (What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves), to address that question:

Bergen . . . insists that it's totally legitimate to study profanity because of what it can teach us, in general, about language and the brain.

Take aphasias and coprolalia. When brain injuries or tumors render people speechless, they sometimes still swear, while Tourette's syndrome can cause uncontrollable shouting of offensive slurs and obscenities. For comedy writers, that's all catnip, but for Bergen, these phenomena reveal where language originates: When you pay attention to the affected brains, you learn that there's a specific place where automatic, stubbed-toe expletives originate, distinct from the pathway, in the left hemisphere, that generates the rest of our talk.

That last part is an interesting fact, and it leads me to wonder if swearing is related to the automatic "signals" of sounds uttered by animals to warn of danger. Like "Sh*t!" meaning "Don't step here!" Probably not.

But is the question "Why Do We Love to Curse So Much?" or "Why Do We So Much Love to Curse?"

Mary Norris: One of three "specialist copy editors" at The New Yorker . . .

Mary Norris
The New Yorker

. . . a lady after my own editorial heart!

Ms. Norris looks not only for errors that have slipped through the many layers of security, but also for subtle dissonances in sense and style - words that are slightly off, imprecise or muddy phrases, anachronistic colloquialisms, technically correct commas that might make a sentence sound better if omitted, or vice versa.

"It's like those mechanics that only work on cars that go 200 miles an hour," said David Remnick, The New Yorker's editor. "They can see every little precise thing that can go wrong that might get you killed."

I'd prefer Remnick had said, "She's like those mechanics who work only on cars that go 200 miles an hour . . . . They can see every precise little thing that can go wrong that might get you killed." Just four minor changes, and those two sentences sound better to me, though I'm not quite sure about the word "precise." Anyway, let's read on:

You might think this sort of person would be prissy, persnickety, overly regimented, or whatever fits your image of an annoying pedant wielding a red pencil or, in this case, a microscopically fine-toothed comb. On the contrary. Ms. Norris, who has a dirty laugh that evokes late nights and Scotch, is more like the worldly aunt who pulls you aside at Thanksgiving and whispers that it is all right to occasionally flout the rules.

Take the comma. The New Yorker is fond of commas. "We get a lot of letters from people who think we use too many commas," Ms. Norris said. In the book she uses an example of what she calls "a discretionary comma" in the following sentence: "It gives starch to the prose, and can be very effective."

In such cases, "I always think: 'The writer likes that comma. That comma is doing something,'" she said. "And sometimes I take it out, and sometimes I leave it in." (Sarah Lyall, "Mary Norris Muses on a Lifetime of Literary Vigilance in 'Between You and Me,'" The New York Times, March 31, 2015)

That's exactly what I do, namely, sometimes take the comma out and sometimes put it back in . . . like Oscar Wilde! My friend Kevin Kim detests this use of the comma:

An error, spotted in this awesome article on a revolutionary new 3D-printing device:

To save your life, a surgeon will first insert a tube, and carefully guide it through the clog.

If you guessed that the error was the second comma, you'd be right. The rule is: don't use a comma in a compound predicate. Some people blithely believe you can put a comma just about anywhere because "a comma marks a pause," which is an odious - and often erroneous - intuition, given its dangerous fuzziness (as when people alter sentences because something "doesn't sound right"). (Kevin Kim, "la faute," March 19, 2015)

This is one of those few cases where I part from Kevin, and allow what I call a stylistic comma (Ms. Norris's discretionary one), whereas Kevin - clad in his rock-ribbed armor of grammatical rectitude and armed with his double-edged sword of regulation that penetrates even to the dividing of shoe sole from street spit - never allows such a comma. I, however, want the freedom to judge if my sentence requires a comma, or not! Such such is important to me. I don't know exactly why.

By the way, I'm tempted to add a couple of commas in one of Ms. Norris's remarks. To wit: "And sometimes, I take it out, and sometimes, I leave it in." But that seems excessive - too many commas. Maybe reconstruct the remark? "And I sometimes take it out, and I sometimes leave it in." Hmm . . . not quite there. Perhaps: "I sometimes take it out, and I sometimes leave it in." Better, but not quite. Let's try this: "I sometimes take it out and sometimes leave it in." Almost, but no cigar. How about: "I sometimes take it out, and sometimes leave it in." That's it, precisely!

Kevin? Your thoughts?

Death of a Master: Belated Thoughts on Alan Treloar

Alan Treloar
Google Images

I've previously mentioned Professor Alan Treloar as a master of languages whom I became acquainted with during a postdoctoral stint of mine at the University of New England, in Armidale, NSW, Australia. He was an amazing man, unfailingly courteous, ever helpful, and profoundly knowledgeable. I was recently reworking an old article of mine on an Egyptian word that surfaces in a Greek text, when I came upon his linguistic analysis:

[I]t seems to me that Neb[t]hietep, which would be Nb[t]hitp in the original, vocalised conventionally by Budge with e's, might be read hiotep. Then if the n is taken to be the article and is dropped, b is replaced by another labial, h is dropped, and the o is lengthened. You get very close to the Coptic term.

Without going into the details of Professor Treloar's analysis, let me just say that this note given to me after he read an early version of my article helped a lot in my research, and I incorporated it into my argument.

Anyway, that note was nearly thirteen years ago, but I was his colleague from 1996 to 1998 and knew him fairly well, so I found myself wondering what had ever happened to this old scholar who knew so many languages and was seeking the Mutter-Sprache of them all, a quest that led him to the Nostratic Theory, as shown by this review he wrote of Nikita Tschenkeli's Einfuehrung in die Georgische Sprache. Did he ever find that holy grail? I ran a search of the internet and found sad news.

He died two years ago, at age 91 (November 13, 1919 - July 22, 2011). Here's his obituary, "Eminent linguist fought for country," written by a former student who also became a scholar, Trevor Evans, appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (August 15, 2011):

Colonel Alan Treloar was one of Australia's greatest linguists and classical scholars and also a distinguished soldier.

Few could rival his knowledge as a scholar of ancient Greek and Latin. He had a special interest in the Roman poet Horace but had read the entire classical literatures of both languages at least twice.

He had an astonishing gift for languages and would admit, when pressed, to direct knowledge of about 80. He had a formidable command of many, such as Sanskrit, Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Hittite. In his early 80s he was investigating Bunuba, a language of the Kimberley.

Alan Treloar was born in Ivanhoe, Victoria, on November 13, 1919, the eldest of four children of John Treloar, who became the first director of the Australian War Memorial, and his wife, Clarissa (nee Aldridge), a music teacher.

His first linguistic interests were in French at six and Latin at 10. He soon took up ancient Greek as well and was learning Japanese by correspondence while at school.

He went to Carey Baptist Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, where he took a bachelor of arts and was the Victorian Rhodes Scholar for 1940 but did not take up the scholarship then because of his service in the Second Australian Imperial Force. He began his military career with the Melbourne University Regiment and went on to serve with the 2/14th Battalion from 1940 to 1944, first in the Syrian campaign, during which he was seriously wounded, and later on the Kokoda Track.

His wounding meant he was no longer able to march with the infantry and he was transferred to a staff appointment at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. After hours, he worked for his master of arts degree from the University of Melbourne, which he took in 1943. He then transferred to the Australian Army Intelligence Corps from 1944 to 1945.

In 1945 he married Bronnie Taylor, a fellow linguist and diplomatic staff cadet.

On release from the army, Treloar was a lecturer in classics at the University of Melbourne and tutor at Trinity College, Melbourne, before taking up his Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford, he chose to read classical moderations and greats.

He also served with the British Army of the Rhine in 1946 and from 1949 to 1950 was assistant lecturer in ancient history at the University of Nottingham. He then went to the University of Glasgow from 1950 to 1959. During this period, he was attached from the Australian Army to the University of Nottingham Training Corps and then the Glasgow Highlanders, then was transferred to the Territorial Army.

In 1959 the Treloars moved back to Australia. He became first warden of Hytten Hall and reader in classics at the University of Tasmania in 1959 and, in 1960, moved to the University of New England, where he was master of Wright College (1960 to 1966) then reader in comparative philology (1966 to 1984).

He also continued his military involvement, transferring back to the Australian Army to serve with the Tasmania Command and then the Sydney University Regiment in command of New England Company until retiring in 1969.

Academic retirement came nominally in 1984 but in fact ended only with failing health in the past few years. He continued to be sought out for expert advice by scholars from around the world and to make his skills available as an inspirational teacher to a string of students.

His publications reflect the diversity of his interests and include The Importance of Music (1987) and Lyra (1994), as well as academic and military papers.

Treloar was a reserved and dignified man of honesty and integrity and a warm and generous friend. In 1992, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of New England.

Alan Treloar is survived by his children, Anna and Jeannie, son-in-law James and grandchildren Sarah, Katy and Alex. Bronnie died in 1991, as did daughter Meg, in 1995.

Professor Treloar told me some of these stories, but I learned still more from this obituary. For those interested in learning yet more about such an impressive scholar, go to this three-part remembrance of the man by a former colleague.

As for me, I knew him only for about two years, but I'll remain impressed with him all my life.

Noam Chomsky was right about Bruno's discoursability!

Noam Chomsky

(Wikipedia)

I have to eat my words. That fabulous ape Bruno Littlemore is utterly -- or should I say unutterably -- incapable of language! Just look at Bruno's description of the interest that students on the University of Chicago campus showed in him:

When they saw Lydia and I strolling hand in hand across the campus, they would approach us and try to speak to me, and want to touch me. (Ben Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, page 79)

Gnome Chompy can have Bruno now, for all I care! In fact, Chompy can eat my words for me -- and Bruno's failed words, too! J'accuse -- that chimp doesn't know the difference between accusative and nominative!

Some impeccable linguist Bruno be!

Bruno Littlemore on the Evil Gnome Chompy

Noam Chomsky

or
Gnome Chompy?
(EAGAINST)

I am still reading Benjamin Hale's novel and laughing out loud at the deeply intellectual humor that reminds me a bit of Thomas Pynchon's humorous style in Gravity's Rainbow. For instance, the scene in which Bruno the chimp overhears the name of a dangerous creature seemingly out to get him:

I remember intuiting that they were, ultimately, though perhaps indirectly, talking about me. I remember that they often uttered a word, or series of words, that sounded to me like, "Gnome Chompy." Of course I understood what a gnome was, because a gnome happened to be the protagonist of my second-favorite TV show, Francis the Gnome. Francis was portrayed as a small, benevolent force in a big, wicked world. So I assumed that they were speaking of a gnome named Chompy. However, I could ascertain from the wrathful tones in which the two women spoke of the Gnome Chompy that they considered him to be a harmful and vituperative creature, much unlike the magnanimous-hearted Francis. I imagined Chompy -- as his surname connotes -- as a predatory gnome with a great gnashing jawful of evilly gleaming teeth, with which he dismembers the innocent creatures of the forest and devours their bloody entrails. I remember how they hated the Gnome Chompy. I remember hearing them say -- or thought I heard them say -- that they would have to protect me, Bruno, from the Gnome Chompy. I remember that they mentioned -- and when they did their tone took on almost conspiratorial tones -- they even mentioned Norm Plumlee's name once or twice in connection with the Gnome Chompy, as if they believed that Norm and Chompy may have been in some kind of collusion. (Benjamin Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, New York: Twelve, 2011, pages 159-160)

This a wonderful, creative misunderstanding on Bruno's part of the name of the linguist Noam Chomsky, who holds that only humans, and no animals, have a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), an innate sort of neural network for language located in the brain. Being a mere chimp, Bruno would necessarily lack one of those.

Chomsky wouldn't really be in collusion with Norm Plumlee, the Behaviorist director of research on Bruno, for Chomsky is actually a critic of the Behaviorist model of the mind as a "black box" and of the stimulus-response (S-R) model of language learning, for as he has pointed out, the S-R model can't account for the child's ability to construct sentences it has never heard, let alone been rewarded for producing.

Behaviorism's critique of "anthropomorphism," however, would similarly relegate Bruno to the animal world, forbidden to become human through language and acculturation. To be fair, though, Behaviorism also even forbade anthropomorphizing human beings!

Anyway, Bruno doesn't much fear Norm Plumlee, whom he knows too well, but he does have nightmares about Gnome Chompy, beginning the very night that he learned of the terrible gnome, when he dreams of Chompy stalking his parents in the jungles of Zaire. Bruno tries to call out to warn them of the great danger, but he finds that the Gnome Chompy "had robbed me of the power of speech"!

A clever little inside joke . . .

What sin a name!

Fearless Bikings

(En-Uk's Art Blog)

My family and I took an extended bike trip on Saturday, lasting about six hours in the finest weather for biking -- a cool, cloudless but somewhat hazy day that reduced the glare. We had such a fine time cycling up the riverside path that I decided to share the joy with the denizens over at the Marmot's Hole, a Korea blog peopled by expats and Koreans who sometimes bicker over differences small and large. Saturday evening when I visited, I found a somewhat foul mood there on an "Open Thread" -- and some themes under discussion that a few of you might want to avoid. That sometimes happens at the Marmot's Hole. Anything can come under discussion. Anyway, I joined the others in the burrow and posted a cheerful comment:

Meanwhile, I passed an innocent Saturday cycling with my family -- my wife Sun-Ae, my 13-year-old-daughter Sa-Rah, and my ten-year-old-son En-Uk -- along one of the Han River's tributaries.

We biked several miles upstream to our favorite hole-in-the-wall . . . actually a tent-on-the-upper-bank that used to be a tables-and-chairs-under-the-subway-bridge, but it's all the same.

Good food. Maek-chu. San-nak-gee. Dubu-kimchee. Jae-yook-bok-um. So-ra-moo-chim. Hong-hap. We ate so much that we elected to bike several miles further upstream to burn off all the calories. Our entire outing lasted from around 10:30 in the morning till about 4:30 in the afternoon.

I feel great . . . today. Tomorrow might be another story . . .

People seemed to like the comment, for it garnered several thumbs-up in the evaluation scheme used over at the Hole, but someone eventually found a bone of contention, and posting under the name "Craash" wrote:

I am sorry -- but I feel sorry for your young son being named "En-Uk."

I asked my students also -- and they said that is a very strangey boys name.

If there's one thing that blogging has taught me, it's to remain unfazed and unoffended, so I replied with a whimsical observation:

Craash (#66) wrote: "they said that [En-Uk] is a very strangey boys name."

They must be very 'strangey' people to say that.

After posting that lighthearted response, I thought that I should do more to gladden the hearts of others on the open thread, so I added:

And for those who would like to see my 'strangey' boy's 'strangey' blogs, go to either of the two blogs that 인욱 [En-Uk] writes.

I extend sympathy to Craash (#66) for having to teach private students either late on Saturday evening or early on Sunday morning. Life can be hard.

But life can also be a dream, and I wish for everyone family happiness at least as full as mine . . .

One of the Korean-American regulars at the Hole who goes by the handle "Pawikirogii" wrote:

i liked your son’s art, jeffery. thanks for sharing it w us.

Folks often use abbreviations online, but that's clear enough, and I was heartened by his response . . . yet Craash proved unmoved:

As I said, myself and my students feel sorry for your son being named [En-Uk].

Just as I feel sorry for my sisters son -- because she named him "Emmett".

How much better his drawings would be, if only he had a cool name like HyunShik or JuHwan or JaeYeun.

I channeled Jane Austen and replied in the manner of a character out of Pride and Prejudice:

Craash, your concern is vastly appreciated . . . but nevertheless superfluous. En-Uk is a very happy boy who has never suffered even the least ridicule for his 'strangey' name.

I then responded to Pawi for his kind words:

You're welcome, Pawi. I'll let En-Uk know.

In his turn, Pawi informed Craash:

craash, it's never ok to talk sh*t about other people's children. perhaps you should stay away from the boon's farm and ripple.

Pawi was joined in this opinion by by a fellow calling himself "Iceberg":

I've got to agree with Pawi on this one. This fixation on the kid's name is pretty bad form. It's the name his parents gave him, so obviously they like it. Who really gives a sh*t what your students think of it?

Right, especially students forced to attend an English lesson on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning! Would they offer a positive opinion of anything at such a time? Anyway, another fellow, going by "Hoju-Saram" (i.e., "Australian"), wrote in response to En-Uk's art:

Your son should open up a gallery. I'd pay good money for "Kim Jong-il Smell," and "Wow."

Let's take a look at those images. First, that limber, smelly feller, Kim Jong-il:


For some reason, I think of Limburger. Now for "Wow":


These are nice. I'd accept good money for them! I suspect, however, that many people interested in En-Uk's art will simply download what they like and print it out for free. C'est la vie.

Anyway, at this point, Iceberg briefly returned to put in that he likes En-Uk's characteristic manner of closing a blog entry with "Bye":

In addition to his art, I like his efficiently quirky way of signing off. Bye.

Hoju-Saram concurred:

I was going to mention that too. Bye.

Another regular, calling himself "Dogbertt," added:

인욱's a great name. He's a lucky boy, having you as his father.

He was followed in agreement by a Korean woman who goes by the name "Yuna":

Yes, 인욱 is a perfectly normal sounding & quite a nice Korean name. Both my boy cousins have "인"자 앞돌림. I don't understand the orignal comment by craash, unless he meant it sounds strange in English but then it doesn't sound strange in English either. Quite close to Enoch I think.

Of course, I needed to respond to all these kind people, and I started with Iceberg:

Iceberg (83), that is a quirky quirk of his. I'll tell him that you like it. I like it, too. Bye.

I then addressed Hoju-Saram:

Hoju-Saram (82), if you liked "Kim Junk-ill," you'll love his masterpiece of political art: Kim Jong-il.

Long-time visitors to Gypsy Scholar will recall this one:


It bears an astonishing resemblance to an official photo of the manster:


Well . . . I suppose the official Kim Jong-il is a bit less skeletal, but En-Uk knows that the 'Dear Leader' is starving his people and is thus best depicted as a death's head figure -- and that makes En-Uk's caricature genuine political art.

Anyway, I then thanked Dogbertt:

Thanks Dogbertt (88), but I'm really the lucky one.

And I am, so very fortunate indeed to have such a good wife and kids, all three better than I deserve. And then came my turn to thank the perceptive Yuna:

Thanks, Yuna (89). I also like the name "인욱." In fact, you are right about "Enoch." We tried to choose a name that would work in Korean as well as in English, and my father-in-law approved of the Chinese meaning, something like "Shining Person," I think.

En-Uk is more likely to get ribbed about his middle name, "Sequoya," since people might associate it more with the enormous Sequoia tree than with the man who developed a syllabary for the Cherokee to write their language with. But I wanted to recall my maternal grandmother's Cherokee heritage, whatever others might think.

At this point, my old friend "Sonagi" added her linguistic analysis:

인, meaning "person," = 人. A related character is 仁, meaning "benevolence or kindness." 욱 is probably 煜, meaning "shining."

My wife Sun-Ae confirmed Sonagi's analysis. Sometime after Sonagi's contribution came a great comment by Lollabrats, who took upon himself an extended analysis of En-Uk's artwork. Lollabrats began his comment by first quoting a remark -- one posted prior to the controversy over En-Uk's name -- by some individual who had found the earlier bickering on the open thread a less-than-satisfying experience:

"So I had a thought that I would chime in and comment about how this is one of the worst open threads in memory."

Lollabrats then began his own remarks:

It was [one of the worst] -- until En-Uk's art gallery redeemed it. I want to suggest to his father to consider buying his son a stylus and tablet interface device. But, the crazy outlines, spare details, interesting "framing," and the use of the fill-in color function with colors from the default pallete make these images unexpectedly compelling to me.

"Kim Jong-Il" is interesting to me because it is contrary to the way professionals caricature the dictator. For instance, En-Uk draws sharp-angled "shadows" into his cheeks. I am blindly guessing that he learned to do that from reading American comic books. Superheroes get their cheeks shaded because the artist wants to show that his hero works out. But other artists draw the shadows to create an emaciated appearance -- to make a face look more like a skull with skin. En-Uk achieves the latter in a pretty interesting way -- by setting the triangular shadows in a block-shaped head, using the rectangle function. The result is that the straight lines and sharp angles of the head and cheek shadows make him look more like a fat-less head, or a skull.

But anyone familiar with KJI-caricature knows that it is not unusual to give him a circular or oval head. More importantly, En-Uk eschews some of KJI's trademark features, including the pair of jowled cheeks of a sated pig, which droop from the sides of his head. If En-Uk had drawn the head with the oval function and kept the trangular shadows, then the effect of the skull might have been lost and the result might have been incongruous. Although there is nothing wrong with being portrayed as being emaciated -- as with Gandhi or the Buddha -- giving the figure the name, Kim Jong-Il, lends the image a cartoonishly sinister effect.

There are some other interesting features, I think. Which is to say that I like it, too. A nice gallery indeed!

I hope you didn't mind this feedback.

Mind? How could I possibly mind such a complimentary comment? I thanked him, of course:

Lollabrats (114), thanks for the extended analysis of En-Uk's art.

To respond to your musing on American comic books . . . I doubt that they've had much influence. He reads mostly East Asian comics. However, he did watch a lot of Cartoon Network for a while, then Disney Channel cartoons, so he might have gotten something from those.

I might ask him about this . . .

That is how things stood by the time that I composed this blog entry, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few more comments are appended to the Hole's "Open Thread."

But I'll leave those for interested readers to seek out and perhaps find . . .

Query: Origin of Hangul

Comparison of Korean and Mongolian Letters

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm told that there's a bit of an election going on about right now, but people might need a break, so here's a relaxing post on Korean linguistics.

I'm no expert on Korean -- and not much of a linguist generally -- but I have a question about the origin of the Korean alphabet. I recall that when I first came to Korea, many Korean students very proudly informed me that the Korean alphabet, or Hangul, is the "most scientific" alphabet in the world because it can perfectly express any language in the world and that it was invented by King Sejong in 1446 without reliance upon any other alphabet in the world, which meant that it was "perfectly unique."

I knew from my own experience with English words spelled in Hangul that the Korean alphabet cannot express English sounds perfectly, so I dismissed that particular claim as mere exaggeration by my Korean students.

However, I knew nothing about the origin of Hangul, so I checked with my wife about this reputed uniqueness, and she initially agreed but later checked into the issue and discovered that scholars dispute the point (as scholars are wont to do) and that some connection to a Mongolian alphabet had been proposed.

So on a recent post, when a commenter asked about the origin of Hangul, I noted that "there's a lot of dispute about the origins of the Korean alphabet, and I know too little about this vexed issue to risk broaching it."

As it turns out, I had to do more than broach the issue, for a Korean student then posted a comment inquiring what the dispute is:

Hangeul doesn't look like any other alphabets in the world . . . and that's why I referred to its uniquness -- being unique in its shape. I thought you said it is disputed because some people say Hangeul came from, or branched from some other alphabets. I know you mentioned that you know little about the issue, but I'd like to ask you in what way it is being disputed.

I responded by noting two explanations given in a 15th-century scholarly commentary, Hunmin-jeong-eum Haerye, concerning King Sejong's 1446 announcement of the invention of Hangul:

As for the dispute, you need to understand -- first of all -- that scholars dispute nearly everything. That's what scholars do, among other things -- they question received wisdom and analyze discrepancies.

In the case of Hangeul, here's the dispute. The Hunmin-jeong-eum Haerye states that the consonantal letters were designed the positions of the tongue or shapes of the mouth, depending upon the particular consonants, but it also states that the consonants were adapted them from the "Gu Seal Script". These two statements are not easy to reconcile (though I don't assert that reconciliation is impossible), and one important scholar has argued for a link to the Mongolian alphabet.

To find an easy introduction to this issue, see the . . . Wikipedia site on Gari Keith Ledyard.

I realize that Wikipedia is not a scholarly source, but it is a useful resource for getting into a subject. Please understand that I am taking no position in this dispute, but merely noting that a dispute does exist, which was my original point.

Being that I'm neither a Korean expert nor even a linguist, that's the extent of my knowledge, and I merely note the fact of a dispute among scholars. However, I am interested in this disputed point, so if Charles La Shure or some other expert on Korean would care to comment, I would be grateful, and I am sure that the some readers of this blog would also be interested in learning more.

Now, back to the US presidential election, which is already in progress.

The Pirahãs: Pariahs for Multiculturalists?

Daniel Everett with Pirahã Man

Piraña? I thought you said Pirahã!

(Image by Martin Schoeller, from 4/16/07 New Yorker)

Because my high-school-friend Pete Hale sent me a link to "Recursion and Human Thought: Why the Pirahãs don't have Numbers," with the sub-subtitle "A Talk With Daniel L. Everett," I spent my morning reading about Everett's thoughts on the problem that the language of the Pirahãs poses for Chomskian linguistics, so I have no time for a serious blog entry.

But that's never stopped me before. I simply post unserious blog entries . . . such as the following one.

The Everett article is interesting on a lot of levels, particularly for its description of the way in which the Pirahã tribe of the Amazon forest overturned not just Everett's ideas but even his identity. He didn't go native, but he changed. I'll let you read about that, as well as about recursion and such interesting things as the fact that the Pirahãs don't have numbers.

All that I have time for this morning it to note that the Pirahãs wouldn't make very good multiculturalists, for they are profoundly convinced that their culture is superior to all others:

The Pirahã's isolation is due to their very strong sense of superiority, and disdain for other cultures. Far from thinking of themselves as inferior because they lack counting, they consider their way of life the best possible way of life, and so they're not interested in assimilating other values.

On the other hand, they're very 'tolerant':

They have another interesting value, which is 'no coercion'. That's one of the strongest Pirahã values; no coercion; you don't tell other people what to do.

I suppose that multiculturalists would like this about the Pirahãs, but even this cultural value poses a problem for multiculturalism, or at least for radical multiculturalism, because this serves to underline radical multiculturalism's central contradiction, namely, that it values both tolerance and cultural equality above all else, yet these two are consistent only in a world where all cultures are equally tolerant and equally assured of cultural equality, and we don't live in that world.

The Pirahãs are tolerant but don't accept cultural equality. Would they be forced to accept cultural equality and thereby assimilate to multiculturalism?

I'm just asking...

They all deserve my allantion?

All the Skinny on Skin

(Image from Wikipedia)

As I was walking up the street toward campus from Bus 273's Kyung Hee University stop yesterday, I happened to notice that a woman just ahead of me and also heading for the campus was wearing one of those t-shirts with a long message on the back:

In your life and work, you will meet many kinds of people. Some will be hardworking. Others will be less so. Some will be outgoing. Others will be shy. Some will be kind. Others will be unkind. Some will be your friends. Some will not...

And so on in that vein of modernist binary oppositions. Kind of obvious, mundane, quotidian. And lengthy. Clearly, I thought, the guy who made that t-shirt was an unfortunate nexus of too much time and too little imagination. Until I read his conclusion:

They all deserve your allantion.

What the...? I thought. My allantion? What's that? Surely 'attention' was intended.

But this was strange. Living in East Asia, I often see what we native speakers jokingly call 'Engrish'. I still laugh about the attractive girl wearing the t-shirt with this message on its back side:

"Excreting."

That one was also strange, yet the word was familiar enough. But "allantion"? Was there some peculiar East Asian confusion of ells for tees that I had totally missed in my long years living here? That's possible. The tip of the tongue is placed in approximately the same place for the "L" and "T" sounds, and could be confused, I suppose, but I've never previously encountered this linguistic confusion.

Or was this some obscure dermatological message, for as I later discovered, "allantion" is a genuine word:

This is a product which is extracted from the roots and leaves of the comfrey plat (sic: plant). This has been used for years to speed up healing. The soothing properties of this skin treatment along with the ability to renew healthy cells makes (sic: make) this product ideal for your anti-aging skin regimen. Allantion is traditionally used to heal bruises, heal wounds, and reduce inflammation, (and) this particular product has recently become well known for its ability to treat aging and damaged skin.

Allation (sic: Allantion) is very good for soothing irritated skin. It also stimulates cell regeneration and moisturizes the driest skin. Because of these factors, Allantoin (sic: allantion) is an active ingredient which is found in many skin care products and anti-aging treatments. It is found is cleansers, toners, sun screens, and speciality skin care treatments.

If this was meant, then I suppose the message intended by the t-shirt designer was that everybody I meet needs good skin care, and that's probably true, but why does everybody deserve my allantion? And why do they deserve it? I neither have any allantion that I'm aware of nor understand why I'm placed under a moral obligation to supply all others with any allantion that I might happen to have.

Well, to hell with that! Socialism has already been tried and found wanting! Any allantion that I come into possession of will be my own allantion! What is it about the concept of ownership that you don't understand, Mr. T-Shirt Maker?

Stupid fricking t-shirt maker, trying to guilt-trip me into supplying the whole world with endless quantities of my own precious allantion...

"...wasn't there again today"

Endless stairway at KPMG, Munich

(Ascended at Wikipedia)

Possibly everyone knows this little nonsense rhyme by William Hughes Mearns (1875-1965), even if they've never heard the author's name:

Antigonish, 1899

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.

But is this truly the original version? The good people of Wikipedia imply that Mearns originally penned it somewhat differently:

Antigonish, 1899

As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Wikipedia cites a 1939 news report on this as the original version but neglects to give the source, so take this with a dose of salt. Anyway, the report states that Mearns composed the rhyme in 1910, which -- I take it -- would imply that the date given in "Antigonish, 1899" does not refer to the date of composition but to the imagined non-event itself.

But why "Antigonish"? Was the town in Nova Scotia famous for nonexistent people? By the way, according to the fine scholars at The Global Oneness Commitment: Co-Creating a Happy World, "Antigonish" is:

Derivied from the Mi'kmaq word nalegitkoonechk, meaning "where branches are torn off".

They give as their scholarly source ... Wikipedia. Let's see that Wiki entry on Antigonish:

The name Antigonish is of Mi'kmaq origin and is believed to refer to the place where tree branches are torn off by bears gathering beech nuts.

Nothing here about the word nalegitkoonechk, but with Google, anything can be tracked down. The website Antigonish County Placenames says:

The word Antigonish is of Micmac origin. According to Dr. Silas Rand it is derived from Nalegitkoonechk (Nalegitkoontech or Nalegitkunech), meaning "where branches are torn off." It is said that there the bears broke down branches to get the beech nuts. The earliest known use of the name which persists as Antigonish is in Nicholas Denys, The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America which was published in 1672. In that book it appears as Articougnesche. On Jumeau's map of 1685 it is seen as Antigonieche and by 1755 it appeared in its present form Antigonish.

Interesting. Initially, I rather doubted the Mi'kmaq etymology, but given the variants on the name that this passage notes, that explanation looks a lot more likely.

But who was Silas Rand? As it turns out, he was one of those obscure Protestant missionaries to whom modern linguists owe so much. According to the Esther Clark Wright Archives, Silas Tertius Rand (1810-1889) lived among the Mi'maq Indians during the mid-19th century and accomplished a great deal:

He produced scriptural translations in Mi'kmaq and Malecite, compiled a Mi'kmaq dictionary and collected scores of legends, including the tales of Glooscap. His scriptural translations, Mi'kmaq dictionary and legends were all published.

Rand's work with the Mi'kmaq was recognized by three universities: Queen's University presented him with an honorary L.L.D. degree (1886); Acadia College with an honorary D.D degree (1886); and Kings College with an honorary D.C.L. degree.

Perhaps the fellow knew what he was talking about in deriving "Antigonish" from "nalegitkoonechk."

At any rate, while this trek has been very interesting, I've come no nearer to uncovering why Mearns titled his poem "Antigonish, 1899." I doubt that it had anything to do with Rand.

Anybody know the answer?