I'm excited to share that I have started a new position as Associate Professor at Tohoku University.

傘 ('umbrella, parasol') is a fun pictograph. Among the many variants, there are some 'boring' phono-semantic compounds (繖、 𢄻、 𧝠), and a whole slew of funky ways to write the pictograph 😄

Cartoon about the Russian Constitution of 1906: "When a crab sheds his shell (Absolutism) he retires into hiding ... as soon as he has grown a new one he returns."

A new gem in our collection: a remarkable 1571 copy of Plantin’s Humanae salutis monumenta. Because text, borders and plates were printed separately, no two copies are alike. This one is beautifully bound in an exceptional French fanfare binding. #earlymodern #bookhistory #rarebooks 💙📚📜

Cartoon about the Russian Constitution of 1906: "When a crab sheds his shell (Absolutism) he retires into hiding ... as soon as he has grown a new one he returns."

'Turkey today: A barely breathing sick man country'. Chinese reproduction of a Western cartoon on the Ottoman Empire, 1920. From Rudolf Wagner's essay on 'China "asleep" and "awakening" '

The most common Chinese term for Chinatown is ‘Tang people street,’ 唐人街 hong3ngin3gai4/tong4jan4gaai1, but there is another interesting term: 華埠 va3feu5/waa4fau6 (‘Chinese city’), which can still be seen in various places.

I love the Chinese translation of ‘government’ in Victoria China Town’s ‘Government Street’: 加富門 Gaa1fu3mun4/Ga1fu1mon3, WEALTH INCREASING GATE (or maybe even CANADA WEALTH PORTE?). The phono-semantic match also has a lovely Yue/Canto flavour to it 😁😁

Yeay, excited that my chapter on the afterlives of the Greek War of Independence in Asia has been published 🤩

Delighted that the third volume of our trilogy with Ivan Sablin exploring the origins of modern forms of government has seen the light of the world: From Empire to Federation in Eurasia Ideas and Practices of Diversity Management. Editing this trilogy was great fun! 😁

Just discovered the newly launched ANTE website on global legal history--looking forward to learning lots here!

友達の本は一次資料をめっちゃ使ってます

The terrible colleague at UNIL using my name has published a new paper again.👀 I don’t particularly enjoy reading it, nor do I think that it will interest anyone. All errors are solely her responsibility, not mine. www.academia.edu/164750402/Th... glorisunglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/u...

📖 New book chapter "A kingdom 'one and indivisible'. A (non-)history of political decentralization in Thailand" by DIJ's David M. Malitz www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi... In: From Empire to Federation in Eurasia @routledgebooks.bsky.social, eds. Ivan Sablin & @egasmb.bsky.social

Barhebraeus in the 13th century on Uyghur script being adapted for Mongolian:

祝逐家馬新年快樂，馬年大吉！😁

When the Daqing Empire fell 114 years and 1 day ago, the Emperor's abdication edict was carried through the streets of Beijing in a sedan chair, informing the population of the end of the dynasty

I am one of the few, who likes Teresa Teng mainly because her early musical work until ~1973. But still loving 月亮代表我的心. And as we are on the topics of covers. Other way around. bsky.app/profile/mult...

Just today I learned that Teresa Teng 鄧麗君's iconic song "The moon represents my heart" (yueliang daibiao wo di xin 月亮代表我的心) was covered, among others, by Nana Mouskouri (2008) and Bon Jovi (2015). Nana Mouskouri's Mandarin pronunciation, in particular, is impressively good!

Dia daoibh, language lovers! In time for St Brigid's Day, there's a new episode of ALILI, all about Modern Irish! The language was the choice of Liam Ó Duibhiolla, an enthusiastic, eloquent expert and the founder of the 'Learn Irish Online' platform. Listen to it here: pod.link/1703401848/e...

Very glad that the volume ‘The Reconstruction of Indo-European Stop Systems: From the Traditional Model to Glottalic Theories’ (edited by Tijmen Pronk and myself) has now appeared. brill.com/display/titl... Looking forward to hearing reactions to it!

This is genius! 😍 The sentence 不想上班那就別上 ("if you don't want to go to work, then just don't go") is mashed up into four written characters, each comprising two spoken syllables: ⿱⿰不目心⿲上丿王⿰𭃂尤⿰另上 h/t @y-wenli.bsky.social

A heartfelt appreciation for the editors of ST&HV for recognizing their peer reviewers journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @sthv.bsky.social

"Orion Klautau, the Lord of Prince Shōtoku Reception Studies". Zweifellos hat er den schönsten Namen der ganzen Welt. 😍

My friend Orion Klautau, the Lord of Prince Shōtoku Reception Studies, just published this utterly fascinating article in Japan Forum. For those interested in the history of the Meiji Constitution, this is a must!😍 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This book is coming in March with a chapter by Yours Truly 😁: Chapter 12. ‘ “Every Single Verse Seems to Be Speaking to the Contemporary Chinese”: Perceptions of the Greek Revolution of 1821 in Japan and China’

Very honoured to have contributed a chapter on constitutional interpretations of History in China to the monumental Handbook of Intepreting Chinese History edited by Kristin Stapleton, @xinfan.bsky.social, & Els van Dongen. It's in the best company of 31 more utterly fascinating chapters!🤩

this is cool i never knew the farsi word for electricity is barq lol. the arabic word for electricity is كهرباء (kahruba'a) which is itself apparently a compound word derived from farsi lmao

‎Interesting parallel between Persian and Chinese/Japanese: The modern word ‎for electricity comes from ‘lightning’. 😁 MC denH 電 > din6(hei3)/diàn(qì)/denki 電氣; Arabic barq برق ‘lightning’ > Persian barġ برق ‘electricity’. Pic is an electric street lamp in 1882 Tokyo 😁

Update for a classic of etymology nerd memes (Original from Etymology Memes for Reconstructed Phonemes)

Another review of the amazing book on global receptions of the Mahābhārata edited by Milinda Banerjee and Julian Strube. I had the pleasure and honour to contribute a chapter on Japan and China 😁 frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-cul...

What I find fascinating about 我 is that in Old Chinese, it seems to have had a (case-like?) division of work with 吾. How exactly is contested, but see sentences like: 今者吾喪我 ('I had just now lost myself'; Zhuangzi) - You wouldn't find 吾 in object position here.

So many possibilities for this week! A common one is 姦. The joke is that the three "women" (女, notice the "broad hips") together mean gossip. Well, in Chinese at least, earlier character forms look nothing like this. More commonly, it is written 奸 in early imperial China. So...a woman and a cudgel.

lmao why is this picture still in circulation credit: me

Since it's fake character origin week, here's at least a super funny one. 🤣🤣 And it's not even completely fake: 飛 is originally a pictogram of flying birds. (I don't have the original credits for this, if you know please add!)

I think it's rather profound that the Chinese for "knowledge," 知, is a picture of Robin Hood playing basketball. Knowledge should not be hoarded by the few, but shared with the many; not confined to the mind, but expressed through action.

Arnaud out here still thinking it's cool to post cringe-ass "Crisis = Danger +Opportunity" folk vibeslation...

"Mexico strongly condemns and rejects the military actions carried out unilaterally ... by armed forces of the United States of America against targets in the territory of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in clear violation of Article 2 of the [UN] Charter" www.gob.mx/sre/prensa/m...

Or how about some Chinese written *from left to right* but *horizontally*? From top to bottom we see: Tibetan (hor. L>R as usual), Manchu, Mongolian (both vert. L>R as usual), Chinese (hor. L>R -- quite unusual back then!). Very commonly seen in such multilingual Buddhist texts in pothi format. 3/

Ditto for the opposite direction. Below are the introductory remarks (fanli 凡例) to the Manchu-Chinese dictionary Manju gisun be niyeceme isabuha bithe / Qingwen buhui 清文補彙, in Chinese but *from left to right*. Such assimilation in the direction of writing is quite common in multilingual texts. 🤓 2/

Chinese is written in columns R>L while Mongolian and Manchu are written in columns L>R -- unless they aren't! 🤓 Here's e.g. some Manchu text ("Dai Hiyo") in columns *from right to left* -- just like the Chinese text right below (Daxue 大學, The Great Learning), from which it was translated. 1/

Saw someone provoke a huge backlash by posting something like "If you speak a Romance language, you are speaking a dialect of Vulgar Latin", so this has inspired me to produce a end-of-year meme. Happy 2026 everyone!!!😁😁😁

Mongolian and Manchu scripts are written top-down. But there's a big difference to Chinese and related scripts: The columns run left to right. In bilingual documents, like Daicing 大清 edicts, the 2 versions start from the edges & meet in the middle, without formal hierarchy.

Today, let's celebrate a drawn and illuminated crane that functions as a pointing gesture to a new paragraph (in a fourteenth century manuscript). It looks like he is walking into the text, right? #bookhistory

On this day 114 years ago - 29 December 1911 -, the Bogd Khaan declared the independence of Mongolia in Urga (now Ulaanbaatar). 3 days before the proclamation of the Republic of China, it was the first new state to emerge from the collapsing Daicing 大清 Empire. /

New open-access article: "Kamakura Buddhism as Japanese Reformation: Hara Katsurō's Modern Historiographical Project." doi.org/10.1080/0048...

余ノ友人オリオン・クラウタウ先生、近代日本ニ於ケル鎌倉仏教ヲ「宗教改革」トシテ解釈スルヿニ就キ、迚モ興味深キ大論文ヲ公ニセリ。是数篇ヨリ成ル論考ノ端緒ニ過ギズ、今後ノ続編ヲ待望スベシト。嗚呼！実ニ慶賀ノ至リ奉存候！ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

There was briefly a Tây Kinh, too. That dynasty didn't last very long.

The nativity of Jesus told in 17-ct. China among Daoist & Buddhist deities: 'In the year [1], the angel Gabriel announced, "God has chosen you to be a mother," and she then became pregnant and gave birth. ... she wrapped him in clothes and placed him in a stable.' Merry Christmas!

The territory of Cambodia was long contested between Vietnam and Thailand (Siam). In the 1830s, Vietnam named Phnom Penh "Nam Vang" 南榮 (Southern Glory/Prosperity). This map from 1838 shows a Nam Vang Prefecture (trấn 鎮) and a Nam Vang City (thành 城) /