Chinese diplomatic approach has long been harmful for its soft power agenda, a phenomenon admitted by certain Chinese scholar(s) too as I remember. As always, foreign policy merely mirrors domestic politics.

Of course, treaties are as reliable as the states that sign them. How are we to know what, according to Americans, counts as Russian aggression in the future? Or are the inevitable violations going to be obscured with propaganda and "who knows what happened"-narratives?

The third point in the plan is also rather strange: "It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries [...]" And if they do invade? Obviously this isn't presented in a particularly convincing way, so why mention it at all?

Regarding point 11 in this mafia-esque extortion - What the hell is this? It's not up to Americans and Russians to decide weather Ukraine is or isn't eligible for the EU membership. Neither is anything else EU-related.

It seems rather clear that the so-called peace plan was written for the sole purpose of being rejected.

Important topic. Though I'd like to emphasize that despite the standardization efforts for the Latin-based orthography, there's a variety of "unofficial" writing methods for these languages being used. I've even heard of someone still using Kanji. I think it's great, even if a bit impractical.

Pretty good lecture by Jeffrey Wasserstrom on current developments in Hong Kong - "Hong Kong 2025: Competing Visions of a City’s Past, Present, and Future" www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zrm...

A new Patreon post is out, read "Vivian Kong is the perfect poster child for the current Hong Kong" here (for free): www.patreon.com/posts/143324...

Muutama sananen mantšujen šamanismiperinteistä. substack.com/home/post/p-...

To my understanding 'horn' is 'eber' in classical Mongolian vs. эвэр in modern Mongolian. Can anyone give some context into how Buryat has seemingly preserved the "original" form? Does it have to do with Mongolian standardization (e.g. from certain dialect), transcription, or what's going on here?

Pelliot Tibétain 351 (an Old Tibetan divination text), l. 40: myi khyod gi rogs ni lha qi śi myi śi ha źe bya ste "Man, your companion is a god called Jesus Messiah." cf. G. Uray 1995, "Tibet’s Connections with Nestorianism and Manicheism in the 8th–10th Centuries"

Came across this article arguing that Qing's approach towards the aboriginals in Taiwan wasn't one of exploitation since it was "security-orientated and deliberately non-expansive." I don't see how such a "security-oriented" motif isn't based on territorial exploitation.

Introducing the first installment of the Old World Dōngxī -series, where we share interesting historical curiosities, both textual and visual, regarding the themes of the site. Today: A novel in Dungan, art in Kazakh SSR, letters of a 19th century philologist... oldworldreview.com/2025/07/09/o...

My favourite thing about Southeast Asian horror films is that they skip the "Pff, you believe in ghosts?" -part. Everyone believes, instantly.

Do folks like dictionaries? I mean where applicable - for smaller/dead languages, as well as for etymologies etc, dictionaries are still instrumental. I personally like casually browsing a decent dictionary, that's something lacking when using translation tools.

fellow nonfiction writers! if you're not currently saving EVERY SINGLE web page/web news story you cite to the Wayback Machine YOU SHOULD BE!! no more dead links in footnotes! no more dead links in bibliographies! never ever forget how fragile the internet is—save internet history!

Love this Canto phrase 見攰就唞 gin3 gui6 zau6 tau2 “feel tired then rest” cuz it illustrates how Cantonese uses words differently from other Sinitic languages 見 here doesn’t mean “to see” but “to feel” 攰 means “tired” 就 means “then” 唞 means “to rest”

HK Nat-Se Police has issued a banned on Taiwanese mobile game "Reversed Front: Bonfire", accusing the game 'promoting secessionist agendas' such as "Taiwan & HK independence"'. Anyone who shares, recommends or downloads the game may be prosecuted for sedition & subversion…

Old World Review is an online publication for exploratory essays on historical and cultural topics of Eurasia. We are particularly interested in histories of small nations and languages, on borderlands and exchanges, as well as lesser studied art histories. We take submissions!

Woah, Freddy Lim (林昶佐) of the Taiwanese melodeath band Chthonic has been appointed as the Taiwanese representative to Finland. Huge win for TW-FIN relations, ngl. www.taiwanhot.net/news/1102979...

Miten tämäkin pelle on onnistunut ns. epäonnistumaan ylöspäin? Hirvittää tämmöisen laittaminen lentoyhtiön johtotehtäviin. www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/finn...

The thing about all these pieces complaining about Marine Le Pen's conviction is that not a single one of them bothers to explain why someone found guilty of embezzling millions of Euros from public funds should be allowed to get away with it

Here (百家姓) 'Phags-pa 沈 would transliterate into "zhim", would it not? As in it's not ꡮ, but ꡚ ? Perhaps it's only a relative distinction, but I'm still wondering what would be a semi-accurate latin transliteration of 沈 from some sort of Middle Chinese? It seems close(?) to modern Hakka 'shim'.

One interesting development in China's official communication in the last decade or so is the open turn towards far-right (I guess what most would call 'fascist') style of output. The "communist" aesthetics of pseudo-solidarity have been switched to whatever the hell this is.

Saanen jatkaa kovan luokan sisäpoliittista analyysiäni toteamalla, että Kokoomus on myös mielenkiintoinen puolue kunnallispolitiikassa. Hehän eivät vaikuta edes pitävän kaupungeista. Onko uhka vai mahdollisuus, riippunee asuinpaikastasi.

It's a tragedy that these positions are in France, poor scholars.

Kuntavaaliehdokkaiden apinajoukosta löytyy toki paljon hyviäkin kandidaatteja, mutta välillä nämä hyvätkin herättävät hieman epäilyksiä. Mitä esim. tuo Limnell sitten kuitenkaan toisi Espoolle? Lisää ilmatorjuntapattereita?

A interesting war of words has recently erupted between Taiwanese historian Lee Hsiao-feng and James Soong in the Libery Times op-ed pages. Lee started it by going after Soong for saying that Taiwan was a deserted/wild/desolate island and that the Qing were Chinese. talk.ltn.com.tw/article/pape...

It's difficult to look at the American circus from abroad and not come to a conclusion that some kind of death of politics has taken place there. Policy discussions have been overtaken by fictional struggles ("woke") and terms have lost all their analytical meanings ("conservative", "radical left").

Calling the PRC, a party-state that stifles independent worker organizing in China, regularly colludes with capitalists to oppress Chinese workers, and uses the hukou system to exploit an underclass of hundreds of millions of 农民工(Nongmingong), a “workers’ state” is a form of *anti-Chinese racism*

With all due respect to all forms of artistic expression, I feel like we should import the irrational hatred for Sleep Token from the other app.

What a strange piece. While it acknowledges the natural shifts in identity, it still seems that he is lamenting that the 外省人 weren't able to disseminate their national identity enough nor keep it stagnant after the end of the martial law. Almost as if they're living in a different country.

Joyeux Nouvel An mongol ! ᠼᠠᠷ ᠱᠢᠨᠡᠳᠡᠡ ᠰᠠᠶᠬᠠᠨ ᠱᠢᠨᠡᠯᠡᠡᠷᠡᠶ Сар шинэдээ сайхан шинэлээрэй ! Bonne année du Serpent de Bois à toutes et tous ! #mongolsky #tengri #TsagaanSar

Do Americans think diplomacy is just about "making deals"? Do they believe demanding indulgence makes their country look strong? Or that they're best represented by men who get their intel from social media? Is this what they call the "epistemic gap"?

The Democratic Party says it is preparing to disband. Hard to blame them when they’ve been effectively barred from standing in HK’s “patriots-only” elections but it’s still another dark sign of the times — truly the end of the era when HKers had any hope of affecting change through the ballot box.

The (certain) origins of the 19th century Turanism. oldworldreview.home.blog/2024/06/03/c...

This is being circulated in Mr. 糖山‘s social media: A 50 Kana 五十音 table from Japanese-era Taiwan (Shōwa 17: 1942) with sinographic equivalents to be pronounced in Taiwanese Hokkien 😁

In the same way the Latin script has loads of extra letters like ⱭƁƐƏꞰŊÞẞƔ for different languages, the Myanmar script has lots of extra letters for some of the 100+ languages of Burma. Even where language groups use the same letters, different communities have their own preferred letterforms.

This book has Chinese phonetic transliteration marked above the Manchu text. Very cute.

Any #Ainu experts here? Probably a noob question but what's the difference between モシリ and ﾄｲ. My sources are sketchy, so I've probably misunderstood something.