Language Log
Kanji brush writing on an iPad

The article is in Japanese, but you should be able to get an idea of what's going on from the videos and stills.

iPad書道はいいぞ pic.twitter.com/P4hregIAl1
— 書きちらし (@kakichirashi) June 29, 2024
As we would say in Japanese:  珍しい【めずらしい】 (mezurashii) ("amazing!)!

The app used is this.  It is called Zen Brush 3.
Selected readings

* "Writing characters and writing letters" (11/7/18)
* "Swype and Voice Recognition for mobile device inputting" (1/22/14)
* "The esthetics of East Asian writing" (4/7/12)

[thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]

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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
XYZ

"code" said to alert someone that their zipper, or fly, is open

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Word of the Day
extralegal

Definition: (adjective) Not permitted or governed by law.
Synonyms: nonlegal.
Usage: The vigilantes believed they were simply dispensing an extralegal form of frontier justice.
Discuss

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
dicker

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 8, 2024 is:

dicker • \DIK-er\  • verb

To dicker is to talk or argue with someone about the conditions of a purchase, agreement, or contract.

// My favorite thing about flea markets is dickering over prices.

See the entry >
Examples:

“They haggled and dickered and bargained through a good number of dealerships.” — Terry Woster, Tri-State Neighbor (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), 7 Dec. 2023
Did you know?

The origins of the verb dicker likely lie in an older dicker, the noun referring to a quantity of ten animal hides or skins. The idea is that the verb arose from the bartering of, and haggling over, animal hides on the American frontier. The noun dicker comes from decuria, the Latin word for a bundle of ten hides, and ultimately from the Latin word decem, meaning "ten." The word entered Middle English as dyker and by the 14th century had evolved to dicker.

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Idiom of the Day
be not just another pretty face

To have distinguishing achievements, intelligence, skills, or abilities beyond what was or may have been assumed. Watch the video

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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
sit up (2)

to not go to bed until later than usual

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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: parched

This word has appeared in 83 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

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Language Log
Meme collision of the week

Lauren Jack ("Do you hurkle-durkle? What the Scottish word taking over social media means and where it came from", The Scotsman 1/24/2024) embeds a TikTok video from 7/18/2023:

@devriebrynnme my Scottish ancestors = just chillin’ as a culture♬ original sound – Devriebrynn
Ben Zimmer quickly picked it up lexicographically — "To ‘Hurkle-Durkle,’ or Lounge in Bed, Is a TikTok Trend That’s 200 Years Old: A 19th-century Scottish rhyming phrase has resurfaced and gone viral", WSJ 3/1/2024. And a Google News search for the term turns up dozens of recent articles.

So I should have been ready for 6,272 words from Lance Eliot at forbes.com on how the "Trend Of ‘Hurkle-Durkling’ In Bed Gets Boosted To High Form Via Modern Generative AI" (7/7/2-24). The article starts with a lot of standard thoughts about hurkle-durkling, morality, electronic media, mental health, and so on. But it does bring in generative AI, starting with this framing question:

"Modern-day generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are readily used while lounging around in bed. Does this then change the proposition underlying the considered negative perceptions of doing a hurkle-durkle? Should we reconsider the nature of hurkling-durkling?"

It continues with "a quickie backgrounder" on generative AI, for those who've been meditating in a cave for the past few years, and a list of "significant approaches that intertwine generative AI and hurkle-durkling". And it ends with "a series of dialogues with ChatGPT" about the topic, based on the prompts

* “What is hurkle-durkling?”
* “Is hurkle-durkle good or bad?”
* “Give an example of a person lying in bed that opts to do a hurkle-durkle and what is possibly going on in their mind as they do so.”
* “If a person was doing a hurkle-durkle, how might generative AI be of use to them during that time?”

I'm tempted to write a program that uses the same template to generate a long article about an arbitrary topic, but I have a feeling that Mr. Eliot has been there already.

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Language Log
Another meme collision

Today's SMBC:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_SiliconValleyBaptists.png
The mouseover text: "Wishing I had just taken this job instead of joking about it."

The aftercomic:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_SiliconValleyBaptistsAfter.png

For more, check out anything by Ray Kurzweil…

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Language Log
A Romano-Sarmatian soldier in circa 2nd c. AD Britain

We have occasionally mentioned Sarmatians on Language Log, but usually in association with the Scythians, of whom we have often spoken (most recently here, with extensive bibliography).

These two peoples of ancient times both spoke languages in the Iranian language family and lived in the area north of the Black Sea. The languages and cultures of the Scythians and Sarmatians were related but distinct. In particular their styles of warfare were different. The Scythians were noted as mounted archers. They may have been the inventors or one of the inventors of the stirrup. The stirrup enabled mounted archers to fire (shoot) arrows reasonably accurately while riding. The Scythians attacked in a mass firing of arrows. If their adversaries were not overwhelmed by the hail of arrows then the Scythians turned and rode to a safe distance for regrouping to mount another mass attack.
Most adversaries were overwhelmed by the Scythian battle tactics. It was only the Sarmatians who found a successful counter-strategy to withstand the Scythians. The Sarmatian warriors and their mounts were protected with armor. Usually the armor consisted of metal plates of bronze or iron sewn onto leather garments. This armor enabled the Sarmatians to withstand a Scythian attack. After a Scythian onslaught the Sarmatians would attack the Scythians with fifteen-foot-long lances. The Sarmatians were probably the originator of the armored knights of medieval Europe.

(source)

Before focusing on the single ca. 2nd c. AD Sarmatian who is the main subject of this post, we would do well to learn more about the Sarmatians themselves.

The Sarmatians (/sɑːrˈmeɪʃiənz/; Ancient Greek: Σαρμάται, romanized: Sarmatai; Latin: Sarmatae [ˈsarmatae̯]) were a large confederation of ancient Iranian equestrian nomadic peoples who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD.

The earliest reference to the Sarmatians is in the Avesta, Sairima-, which is in the later Iranian sources recorded as *Sarm and Salm. Originating in the central parts of the Eurasian Steppe, the Sarmatians were part of the wider Scythian cultures.[3] They started migrating westward around the fourth and third centuries BC, coming to dominate the closely related Scythians by 200 BC. At their greatest reported extent, around 100 BC, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south.

(Wikipedia)

Now we have a detailed scientific report about one of those Sarmatian soldiers who made the roughly 1,500 mile trek to Romano-Britain during the early part of the first millennium AD. Ancient Skeleton From Southern Russia Surprises UK Scientists, by Sam Anderson, ExplorersWeb (December 27, 2023)

Offord Cluny 203645 was a complete, well-preserved male skeleton, buried without any personal effects in a Cambridgeshire ditch. A team led by the Francis Crick Institute could tell the remains were clearly ancient. But with no contextual clues to go on, they might have hit a dead end.

Updated forensic technology intervened, and provided the first biological proof of a certain, far-flung immigration pattern during the Roman Empire.

The man was a Sarmatian, and the team’s tests proved he made it from his homeland in what is now the southern Russia/Ukraine area to his final destination in the United Kingdom.

The article explains how the archeologists found where the man came from:

First, they extracted DNA from a tiny bone in his inner ear. This turned out to be his best-preserved body part containing the most complete DNA samples. Dr. Marina Silva, of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick[...]

Institute, extracted and analyzed the samples for the study.

“This is not like testing the DNA of someone alive,” Silva told The BBC. “The DNA is very fragmented and damaged. However, we were able to [decode] enough of it. The first thing we saw was that genetically he was very different” from the Romano-British individuals they’d previously studied.

…

That still didn’t connect the dots, though. How could the scientists prove that he was born in Eurasia and immigrated to the place of his death?

For this, they examined his teeth. Even two millennia after his death, the tissue harbored chemicals in varying amounts at different layers. Offord Cluny underwent pronounced dietary changes at ages 5 and 9 and began to level out around 13.

…

The changes, the team found, followed chemical trends you could expect from a person adapting to available food sources while traveling west across Europe.

Millets and sorghum grains, scientifically called C4 crops, are plentiful in the region where Sarmatians lived. These dissipated in his diet as he matured. Wheat — more common in Western Europe — replaced them.

“The [analysis] tells us that he, and not his ancestors, made the journey to Britain. As he grew up, he migrated west, and these plants disappeared from his diet,” said Janet Montgomery of Durham University.

These results are extremely interesting and important because they show that Offord Cluny made this long trip from the Pontic-Caspian steppes to Britain, not just in one lifetime, but within the period of a few years.

The Iranian-speaking peoples who were present in Britain during the Roman period had a profound impact on many aspects of culture, e.g., the Arthurian story cycles and their associated images.  Some of these men participated in the defense of Hadrian's Wall (begun in AD 122).

"The Sarmatians in Europe: Gravestone of a Sarmatian Horseman"

The term "Sarmatians" is believed to refer to various horse-riding peoples from the territory of present-day Iran. From the 3rd century BC, they settled in present-day southern Russia and Ukraine, where they displaced the Scythians. From the 3rd century onward, Sarmatian tribes also settled in the Roman Empire, often adopted Roman citizenship and served in Roman legions, having been hired as auxiliary troops. In Britain, for example, the Sarmatians defended Hadrian's Wall against the attacks of the Scottish Picts. The photograph shows the gravestone of a Sarmatian horseman from the Roman settlement of Deva Victrix (in present-day Chester in northern England).
https://www.ieg-ego.eu/illustrationen/der-noerdliche-schwarzmeerraum/die-sarmaten-in-europa-grabstein-eines-sarmatischen-reiters/@@images/cc363e14-292a-4ba9-a5be-a45ab712361d.jpeg
Gravestone of a Sarmatian horseman who fought for the Romans in Britain, Grosvenor Museum, Chester, England, colour photograph, 2011, photographer: Wolfgang Sauber; image source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

For a masterful treatment of the impact of Romano-Iranian forces on English tradition, see:

C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor, From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (New York and London: Garland, 1994; rev. pb. 2000). In the British journal, Religion, 28.3 (July, 1998), 294-300, I [VHM] wrote a review in which I pointed out that the celebrated motif of a mighty arm rising up out of the water holding aloft the hero's sword can also be found in a medieval Chinese tale from Dunhuang. That review is available electronically from ScienceDirect, if your library subscribes to it. Otherwise, I think this version on the Web is a fairly faithful copy. Selected readings

* "A medieval Dunhuang man" (7/17/23)
* "The Ossetes" (7/25/21)
* "Ashkenazi and Scythians" (7/13/21)
* "Research reveals man born thousands of miles to the east traveled to Cambridgeshire 2,000 years ag[...]

o", Phys.org, by The Francis Crick Institute (more information available here)

[Thanks to Sunny Jhutti]

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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
mo

moment

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Word of the Day
lidless

Definition: (adjective) Watchful; vigilant.
Synonyms: sleepless.
Usage: He was vigilant—a lidless watcher of the public weal—and took great care to make sure that all was well with his neighbors.
Discuss

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Idiom of the Day
(something) won't get (someone) anywhere

Something, typically a certain behavior, will not help someone progress or succeed in any way. Watch the video

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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
appeal to

If something appeals to you, you like it.

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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: varnish

This word has appeared in 20 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?

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Language Log
The evolving PubMed landscape

Following up on "Are LLMs writing PubMed articles?", 7/7/2024, Cervantes suggested a factor, besides LLM availability, that has been influencing the distribution of word frequencies in PubMed's index:

As an investigator whose own papers are indexed in PubMed, and who has been watching the trends in scientific fashion for some decades, I can come up with other explanations. For one thing, it's easier to get exploratory and qualitative research published nowadays than it once was. Reviewers and editors are less inclined to insist that only hypothesis driven research is worthy of their journal — and, with open access, there are a lot more journals, including some with low standards and others that do insist on decent quality but will accept a wide range of papers. It's even possible now to publish protocols for work that hasn't been done yet. So it doesn't surprise me at all that words like "explore" and "delve" (which is a near synonym, BTW) are more likely to show up in abstracts, because that's more likely to be what the paper is doing.

I agree, although it remains unclear whether those changes have been strong enough to explain the effects documented in Dmitry Kobak et al., "Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary", arXiv.org 7/3/2024.
I'll add another factor related to Cervantes' comment, namely the changing distribution of PubMed's cited sources.

Looking over the list of sources for [delve] in PubMed, I saw quite a few whose representation in PubMed has been increasing rapidly. The table below lists the per-100k citation numbers by year for the first four that I looked into, along with their proportions of increase between 2022 and 2024:
StatPearls Heliyon medRxiv arXiv 2019 0 44.3 0 0 2020 0 139.1 45.8 2.9 2021 0 169.3 35.6 3.0 2022 54.0 227.9 18.8 1.3 2023 421.2 671.3 115.1 28.1 2024 1004.2 1005.3 133.3 39.3 2024/2022 18.6 4.4 7.1 30.2
At least in the case of arXiv, this is because PubMed is paying more attention — but in any case, those proportional changes are as large or larger than the ones that Kobak et al. used to argue for the role of LLMs. This doesn't mean that Kobak et al. are wrong, just that there are other things going on that should be taken into account.

Update — additional support for Cervantes' observation can be found in a comparison of counts for [exploratory] vs. [hypothesis] over the decades since John Tukey introduced "Exploratory Data Analysis" as an alternative to "hypothesis testing":

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PubMedExploratoryHypothesis.png

Plotting the ratio:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ExploratoryHypothesis1.png

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Language Log
Bilingual Chinese lesbian slang dictionary

"Siting Yao’s bilingual dictionary translates Chinese lesbian slang:  The London-based graphic designer illustrates unique language expressions and humorous anecdotes in her colourful, graphic guide to queer code."  By Ellis Tree, It's Nice That (4 July 2024)
Made for: “Chinese speakers who are interested in but unfamiliar with queer culture, English speakers who are interested in Chinese queer culture, and Chinese lesbians who want to celebrate their own culture”, Siting Yao’s publication Lesbian Slang in Chinese collates 40 amusing anecdotes and phonetic translations into a pocketable A7 dictionary. Presented in a bilingual format, with visualisations of each slang term or expression to “enhance connections between diverse audiences”, the publication aims to bridge cultural and linguistic divides through creative publishing methods.
The idea for the creation of the tiny but mighty Chinese dictionary “comes from my own experience as a Chinese lesbian”, Siting tells us. Realising that there was no systematic record of the Chinese slang terms she used every day, the designer wanted to create a way to share colloquial phrases to new audiences and document some of the language surrounding Chinese lesbian culture. “Our community has developed a unique culture and a lot of slang”, she says “Some of this slang has evolved as a way to avoid censorship, while others have origins in famous anecdotes and stories within the community”.
Not simply a translation of terms, the bilingual publication contains a colour-coded editorial system, tailoring the illustrated stories to both English and Chinese audiences: “When writing the Chinese sections, I focused on explaining the meanings and origins of the slang terms. For the English sections, I made sure to clarify the puns and phonetic nuances in the slang and included references to similar expressions in English to aid understanding,” Siting explains.

The dictionary’s distinct orange and green colour combo is inspired by the colours of “the lesbian pride flag” and one of the dictionary’s slang phrases: (júlǐjúqì 橘里橘气) which translates to “the smell of citrus aroma” – Siting explains that the phrase connotes the scent of oranges and is often used to “describe a flirtatious vibe between two women”. So by going all out on orange, the designer intended to “create a visual cultural symbol exclusively for Chinese lesbians”.

Her visuals on the other hand took from screen printed protest posters by the See Red Women’s workshop. “The feminist print collective’s use of visual media in activism greatly influenced my approach to visualising and communicating queer-feminist ideas,” Siting shares, leading her into the use of Risograph printing for the production of her book and accompanying one-page zine. As a print ephemera enthusiast, she tells us that the project may have also taken from the various “tickets and leaflets, to hardcover books and independent magazines”, that the designer always seems to find herself collecting.

Amply illustrated — in orange (with green), of course.  The Chinese text is printed in orange and the English text in green.  Very attractive and artistic.
Selected readings

* "The language of sexual minorities" (2/2/16)
* "Female voyeuristic literature on male homoerotic themes" (3/14/23)
* "λhttps://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2665.png [love]" (5/14/11)

[Thanks to Mark Swofford]

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