Sarah Thomason (LH) posted at Facebook about the article of hers that has been reprinted most often, “one of my little papers on linguistic pseudoscience, not one of my more serious/substantial publications”:

The article is Past Tongues Remembered?, published in the Skeptical Inquirer decades ago. It’s about claims that, under hypnosis, people can be age-regressed to earlier lives and speak the languages they spoke in those earlier lives. This paper has been reprinted four times, three of them in other countries (India, Canada, Germany) and two of them in translation (French and German). Nothing else I’ve written has been reprinted more than once.

I’ve added the link, which will take you to the article (open access); here’s the start:

Suppose you want to convince people that you’ve discovered a
genuine case of reincarnation. If you can prove that your subject can
speak the language of an earlier incarnation, that would obviously be
strong evidence in favor of the reincarnation claim—provided, of course, that
the language is not the subject’s present native language and that you can
also show that the subject has had no chance to learn the “past life’s” language
in his or her current lifetime. The reasoning would go like this: Speaking a
language is a skill that requires extensive long-term exposure to the language.
If a person has that skill, but lacks such exposure in his/her current lifetime,
then the skill must have been acquired paranormally—for instance, in a
previous lifetime whose memory lingers on.

There are several published case studies in which reincarnation (or the
related phenomenon of temporary possession of a subject by another per-
sonality) is proposed as the source of a subject’s ability to speak a foreign
language. The most impressive of these case studies are in two books written
by Ian Stevenson (1974; 1984), who is Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the
University of Virginia Medical School. Stevenson has studied two native
English-speaking subjects who, under hypnosis, manifest foreign personalities
and seem to speak—very haltingly—foreign languages, specifically Swedish
and German, respectively. To establish his subjects’ linguistic competence in
these languages, Stevenson arranged sessions in which native speakers of
Swedish and German interviewed the subjects, questioning them about their
past lives; in the second case, Stevenson himself participated in the interviews,
since he knows some German

She demolishes the claims in satisfying fashion; in one sense, it’s hardly worth the trouble — to a rational mind the whole idea is silly, and someone who believes it is not going to be convinced anyway — but it’s still an enjoyable read.

[This is a guest post by Michael Witzel]

A few months ago you published a discussion of whimsical surnames. Since then I have paid attention and have found new ones in  almost every news broadcast.

It is said that there are 1 million (!) surnames in the German speaking area of some 95 million people (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Alsace, Luxemburg, Eupen in Belgium and some 1 million remaining in Poland). I leave aside the many millions of German immigrants in America  etc., such as the notorious politician Witzel in Rio de Janeiro. Also, many Jewish names are the same as “regular German” names (;like Schuster =Shoemaker, head of the German Jewish Central Committee).

What I found is that almost all (hair) colors, animals, etc. are used, just as are designations of occupations, etc.. etc.

Beyond that, there are many funny names. Here is a small selection:

Schweinsteiger  “pig incline” (a soccer player)
Mestmacher “dung maker”
Sauerbier “sour beer"
Fuellkrug “fill  the mug!”
Streckfuss “stretch the foot”
Stopfkuchen “ push down the cake — in your throat" (my teacher)
Breitbart “broad beard” (US political site)
Halbfass “half vat” (our late  Philly colleague)

Mundlos “without mouth (a terrorist)
Bauernfeind “enemy of peasants"
Von Hodenberg “testicle mountain"


Freyer  “pursuing (women)"

Liebling “dear/lover"

Bräutigam “groom"


Van Skyhawk, from Dutch:  van Schijk! (a late colleague).

via Latin:  Blei “lead” from Latin Plumbum “lead” from LPrumboom “plum tree”!!


AND NOTE  YOUR OWN NAME:

 Maier-/Meier/Mayer/Mayr/Mair < Maior domus, "the administrator of a royal domain"


 Note also typical Jewish names:

Abzug  “vent/ chimney” (Like in Bella A.)

Ladestock “loading stick (for muskets)"

Zündnagel “ignition nail (in muskets)"

Mundstein (mouth/teeth stain” (my Austrian friend)

Baumfleck  “spot on a tree” (a recent Israeli tech specialist at Harvard)

Berlinerblau “Berlin = Prussian blue (as in uniforms)


See: Max Gottschald, Deutsche Namenkunde.

Gottschald's book is the standard German work on onomastics. It explains every German surname and its parts, and cross-referencing relates one name to many others.

And the older Deutsches Namenbuch.

ENJOY!

Selected readings

• "Whimsical surnames" (3/16/24)
• "Troublesome Chinese surname" (10/1/22)
• "Concoction and elaboration" (3/5/24)
• "How to pronounce the surname 'Mair' and other Doggie talk" (2/17/22)

dreamerinsilico:

hamletthedane:

beemovieerotica:

beemovieerotica:

beemovieerotica:

qaraxuanzenith:

beemovieerotica:

beemovieerotica:

no nuance, is fish “meat”?

yes

no

See Results

save me latin america

me about to skew the results with everyone who keeps kosher weighing in: it’s not meat because it’s pareve

save me jumblr

moving downward, please indicate the last animal taxon that you still consider “meat”

mammals - cow, pig, people, rabbit

birds plus™ - chicken, other fowl, lizards

fish - *those with bones and gills

crustaceans - lobster, crab, pill bugs

mollusks - octopus, squid, snail, clams

echinoderms - sea urchins, sea cucumbers

cnidarians - jellyfish

annelids - earthworms, red worms

worms miscellaneous - tapeworms, leeches

tiny boys - nematodes, tardigrades

See Results

no joke as a scientist this is probably the most fascinating poll I’ve ever made

I’m noticing an emerging spectrum in your tags.

Nonsensical poll, leeches are annelids, and not all nematodes are tiny boys -.-

Anyway, my answer is that it’s based on human consumption (and membership in Animalia). A starfish usually isn’t meat, but you can make it meat if you try hard enough.

I say Muscle Cells is what defines meat.

This, imo, includes smooth epithelial muscle, a scattering of myocytes, AND striated muscle fibers.

Cnidarians and bilaterians have striated muscles, including annelids (earthworms), insects, all vertebrates, and some ctenophores (Comb jellies, Corals, Anemones)

So: All animals except Sponges and Placozoans contain Meat.
–

While various plants do have mechanisms which allow movement based on tissue contraction, the fiber is not muscle.

Fungus do not have muscle tissue, and so are not meat.

Bacteria do not have muscle tissue, and so do not have meat.

the-haiku-bot:

cheeseanonioncrisps:

An adaptation of Sherlock Holmes set in a world in which the fictional character/literary juggernaut Sherlock Holmes, and all the subsequent adaptations thereof, still exist.

Sherlock Holmes (pronounced Holl-mess, as he is constantly reminding people) just had the misfortune of having parents who really liked the books, and his attitude towards his fictional counterpart is pretty much the same as that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherlock runs a Youtube Theory channel called Mysteries Unwrapped with Sherlock Holmes. He has received no less than seven cease and desist letters from the Conan Doyle estate, all of which he has so faded managed to rebuff by pointing out that that’s literally his name.

(No he won’t change his name. He’s Sherlock Holmes the real live human person. Let Sherlock Holmes the non existent fictional character change his name.)

John is Sherlock’s flatmate. Sherlock almost refused to live with him once he realised that it would mean staying with a medical student named John, and only gave in once John pointed out that: a) he’s a biomedical student, which is completely different from an md, and b) his surname isn’t Watson.

It’s now been three years, which is long enough for them to have developed a genuine friendship, and for John to have a) started working towards his PhD in biotechnology, and b) for him to start dating somebody with the surname Watson.

Sherlock can feel the narrative closing in.

His Youtube channel is meant to be focused on lost media, fan theories and stuff like that, but he keeps accidentally stumbling upon and then solving genuine crimes.

His brother Mycroft may or may not have chosen that name after he transitions specifically to annoy him.

He doesn’t even live in London, but somehow the only flat they could afford was on a street named fucking Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes and the Unescapable Power of the Narrative.

Sherlock Holmes and the

Unescapable Power

of the Narrative.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

This is a story we've been following for well over a decade (see "Selected readings").  Improbable as it may seem that the Korean alphabet might be adaptable for writing an Austronesian language of Indonesia, there are some promoters of this idea who continue to push it enthusiastically:

"An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s
The Cia-Cia language has been passed down orally for centuries. Now the tribe’s children are learning to write it in Hangul, the Korean script."  By Muktita Suhartono, NYT (Nov. 4, 2024)

These fourth graders are not studying the Korean language. They are using Hangul to write and learn theirs: 

Cia-Cia, an indigenous language that has no script. It has survived orally for centuries in Indonesia, and is now spoken by about 93,000 people in the Cia-Cia tribe on Buton Island, southeast of the peninsula of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia’s vast archipelago.

Indonesia is home to myriad tribes and cultures, and to more than 700 native languages. It is the most linguistically diverse nation in the world after neighboring Papua New Guinea [839 known languages). On Buton Island alone, there are a handful of local languages and almost two dozen dialects. However, most of them are at risk of disappearing because they do not have a script.

I wonder if that is a fair statement to make.  Does a language need to have a written language to survive?

A former mayor of Baubau, where this experiment is being carried out, says:  “Language shows the civilization of a tribe, and a language without its own alphabet loses its authenticity.”  Again, I ask, is that a fair statement to make?

Abidin, a native Cia-Cia speaker who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was one of them. He spent six months at Seoul National University and is considered the pioneer of transcribing Cia-Cia into Hangul.

“After I learned Hangul, I found that there are certain Cia-Cia tones and pronunciations that could be denoted by Hangul characters. It’s not exactly the same but it’s really close,” Mr. Abidin said.

The experiment is not without its detractors:

Some critics have raised concerns about the use of Hangul, saying it could lead to cultural domination or distort the community’s identity. But others argue that the international mix could benefit the preservation process.

Furthermore, the effort to implement Hangul writing for Cia-Cia has not been smooth:

Seoul National University has tried for several years to promulgate Hangul — which was developed by a Korean king, Sejong, in the 1400s — as a script for languages without a writing system. Cia-Cia has been its only success.

Even that program, under which elementary to high school students were taught Hangul, was shelved in Baubau for a decade because of a lack of teachers, among other issues. It found new momentum after a Cia-Cia dictionary was published in 2020, which uses Hangul characters and gives a translation of the word into Bahasa Indonesia, the national language.

I presume that the Bahasa Indonesia translations are written in the Latin alphabet, which is also used for street signs and for other purposes.  So Hangul usage for Cia-Cia is ironically somewhat dependent on Latin script.

It should be phonologically testable whether there is empirical evidence indicating that Hangul is better suited than Latin script for writing Cia-Cia.  Don't forget that Arabic script was also tried and found wanting, while the national script in Indonesia is Latin, many of the regional languages of Southeast Asia are based on the Latin alphabet, and Hangul for Cia-Cia itself is partially dependent on the Latin script for support, as shown in the previous paragraph.

A few basic facts

Overall, the idea that Hangul will work well for Cia-Cia and other non-Koreanic languages of Southeast Asia is a quirkish manifestation of politico-culturally motivated language reform.

Selected readings

• "Cha-cha Cia-cia: the last dance" (10/8/12)
• "The Hangeul Alphabet Moves beyond the Korean Peninsula" (8/6/09)
• "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part II" (12/24/09)
• "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part III" (10/7/10)
• "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part IV" (1/5/24)
• "Bahasa and the concept of 'National Language'" (3/14/13) — with a lengthy bibliography
• "Hangul: Joseon subservience to Ming China" (5/14/22)
• "A Dartmouth grad's contribution to the development of Hangul" (6/25/15)
• "The pragmatic and innovative Choe Sejin — 15th-16th c. Korean phonetician, translator, and interpreter" (4/21/22)
• "The linguistic plenitude of Papua New Guinea" (12/29/23)

[Thanks to Don Keyser]

Last week, the Vatican unveiled Luce, a Japanese-style cartoon character that will serve as the Catholic Church’s mascot for its upcoming jubilee year, as well as its Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican's chief organizer for the jubilee year who presented Luce to the world, said that the mascot was "created from the desire to enter into the world of pop culture, so beloved by our young people".

I believe his excellency should have considered his desires more carefully, because there is no clearer sign that Luce has indeed entered pop culture and is beloved by young people than the fact that there are now dozens of AI-generated hardcore pornographic images of her on the internet.