2. New Light on an Old Puzzle: The ‘Phags-pa Script Voicing Flip-flop in Yuan Chinese Documented by the Menggu Ziyun Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 2-4 p.m. Bâtiment de recherche sud, Salle 0.015, 5 Cours des Humanités, Campus Condorcet, 93322 Aubervilliers Cedex (See abstract in the attached file)

By far the best English-language journal titles are those that simply take the original Japanese title and add the definite article to it. 😘 "The Bijutsu Kenkyu" < 美術研究

Do I have an expert on Hakka in my timeline who could check potential loans?

Startet mit uns und @crossasia.bsky.social ins Jahr 2026: Unsere Vortragsreihe schaut genauer auf Forschungsdiskurse und Objekte in den Sammlungen unserer Ostasienabteilung. Die Termine für Januar, Februar und März findet ihr hier 👉 blog.crossasia.org/crossasia-ta...

Koloniale Spurensuche zwischen Dahlem und Mitte: Das #GeheimeStaatsarchivPreußischerKulturbesitz und die @stabiberlin.bsky.social laden ab dem 29.1. ein zum gemeinschaftlichen Arbeiten mit historischen Akten des Berliner Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen. Jetzt mitmachen: lab.sbb.berlin/sos/

GPhRS PhP MPs GSST! Also, medical prescription.

Oh, the irony ... 🫣 Il[=r]oniaノ事 'On irony'

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/

"Die Daten wurden extrapoliert." vs. "Die Daten wurden extra poliert." (Data Enrichment?) 🤔

Samuel Robert Ramsey 2025 The Japanese and Their Language: How the Japanese Made Their Language and It Made Them (Sino-Platonic Papers 372) @ sino-platonic.org/complete/spp...

Honest mistake... #NewberryLibrary (Inc. 2772)

It is unclear to me how much traction Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is getting on BlueSky. I am thinking of switching communication about new papers to LinkedIn, which gives better insight into the # of views garnered. Give us a like if you want Glossa to stay on the Blue side of things.

Today, my etymological doublet series is coming to an end with an episode on German, on request of several people. The orange German words on the right have the same origin as the blue ones on the right, but they took a very different path. Many of the examples are courtesy of Matthieu Pierens.

Top 10 of this year's most read pieces — no.9: our post on a 1678 pamphlet, The Mowing-Devil, which includes the earliest known depiction of a crop circle: publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-mowing-devil/undefined... (Full Top 10 here: publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/12/t...)

💡⛰️: "kein Brot. u. keine Ehre: Metaphysica, Logica, Critica" (Puh, da muss ich ja echt mal überlegen, wo "mein" Fach eigentlich hingehört ... 😆) < 1800 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's vermischte Schriften, Bd. 1, S. 266 @ www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/...

Spilled my coffee travel mug in my backpack this morning - can you imagine the horror - so let’s just say some time with these wonderful #earlymodern miniature books was very much needed! 1) Gregorian Calendar (1585) #rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜 /1

Yes, he did do twice! The first time (in 1575) he gathered all the first quires and the second year just the title pages. My favorite is the only copy of Plantin’s first edition of a Gregorian calendar in 128 format (1570) printed on a single paper sheet!

Are these by any chance ... Eleph🐘-🐜ants? 🤭 < 1499 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili @ books.google.de/books?id=lJs...

This is so cool -- the 1715 catalogue of Dillingen-based printer & publisher Johann Caspar Bencard (1649-1720), providing the titlepage for each book, sorted by language (Latin > German) and format (folio > quarto > etc.)! 😻 Are there more examples like this? 🧐 < books.google.de/books?id=NYV...

"Japanese Language Shizuo Kondo says one can speak it in three months. Many Characters, but of Simple Pronunciation [...]" < The Morning Oregonian, 3 Feb 1896

Finally 🥳🙏 -- a digitzed copy of Thomas Osborne's 1752 catalogue, including "A Catalogue of a curious Library of printed Books and Msts in the Chinese and other Oriental Languages, late the Revd D. Bayer and the Revd D. Gerdes" @ books.google.de/books?id=NH3... 1/

岡島昭浩教授　最終講義のお知らせ｜大阪大学日本文学・日本語史学（国語学）研究室 お知らせ 日時：2026年2月14日（土）14:30開会（14:00開場）、17:00頃閉会 場所：全学教育推進機構　大講義室 講義題目：「日本語の音韻用法の変遷と不易—日本語の語形史を意識して—」 nichibunkokugo.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-8...

A new short piece of mine just came out in the centennial issue of Speculum that (briefly) tries out comparative, rather than global, history on medieval archives from the Shōsōin, Dunhuang, and the Cairo Geniza. www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/JRDRZ...

Diagram from Solomon Barrett, *The Principles of Grammar* (1857). (1857), from The Principles of Grammar. Source: @librarycongress.bsky.social Available to buy as a print. https://pdimagearchive.org/images/8056dab3-2194-4808-ac8c-6f75cbb06bac #diagrams #schematics #education #language #pedagogy

Ziemlich keile Terminologie hier: "Keil-Charaktere" 🤓 < 1817 Catalogus bibliothecae Olai Gerhardi Tychsen

ローマ字のつづり方（令和7年12月22日内閣告示） www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihon... (How about some maccha in Toukyou? No thanks. 🤗🤓)

Es geht doch wirklich nichts über eine "regelmäszige" und nicht "unregelmässige" Orthographie! 🤡 < Hoffmann 1877 Japanische Sprachlehre @ books.google.de/books?id=w-2...

Nothing to see here. < resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB000063910...

This book is interesting. While it no doubt furthers the case that print had a major impact during the Song dynasty(960 to 1279), when it was adopted by the state and state actors, a couple of areas were completely unexplored. For ex, not a single surviving material text is discussed.

国立国語研究所「日本語史研究用テキストデータ集」にて、日葡辞書，言海の見出し語データ（txt，xlsx）が公開（2025-10-30） www2.ninjal.ac.jp/textdb_datas...

W[...], (illegible) now this sounds [...] (remainder of the text missing) 🤓

Somebody just found out that the source code of @langscipress books is available on the page of the books and thanked me enthusiastically. So, in case you do not know this yet. The source code of ALL our 308 books is available on github and linked from within the books and from the langsci book […]

Made ナ🫤タ my day. < dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870892/1...

Language contact at its best 🤔

Autorの間に異論もある事だからganz sicherにfeststellenされたDatenのみを口述するに止めたのである。 👍 Principles to live by ... 🤓

Now #openaccess J-Stage Vols. 1 & 2 of Japan Studies in Classical Antiquity (2011, 2014) www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/jastc...

"Denn Indo-, Sino-, Yamatolog, Die schätzen die Gänseleber hoch ..."

旧字旧かなというくみあわせ - kzhr's diary kzhr.hatenadiary.jp/entry/2025/1...

Holy moly 🤯 (I don't know, but the first line reminds me of every second blog entry by a certain somebody. 😅)

How to romanize クラブ? "Kurabu," "club"? Well, why not "klab"? 🤓

The most important thing I learned in Vienna this week: I always thought the logo said “univeristät wien”, until a friend told me it’s actually “տiversität”. The first letter is an Armenian տ (t)! 😆

於乎, what a masterfully Englished book title: HITORI-ANNAI 🤔 OF NEW NATIONAL READER. 2. < dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870892/1/3

Made ナ🫤タ my day. < dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870892/1...

"sinologues and yamatologues"

"The existing language of Japan, taken as a whole, is neither Japanese nor Chinese, but a jargon made up of Japanese and mis-pronounced, and often mis-used, Chinese;" Quite a thing so say ... and of course in English. 😅 (Featuring also: ear- and eye-languages. 🤔) < books.google.de/books?id=RR3...

Interesting misprint, many pages apart: p. 650: "Yo[=ō]kioku Tsūkai 經世新報" p. 661: "H[=K]eisei Shimpō 謠曲通解" < books.google.de/books?id=RR3...

アドベント・カレンダー「言語学な人々」12日目は岡島先生の漢字音の話です。「唐音」ってそんなことになってるんだあ（マツコ風）／唐宋音・唐音・宋音 www.notion.so/2c66116d1a1e...

Xmas "ta" タ or "eve" 夕? 🧐 < 1887 ロングマン第一リーダー独案内 @ dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870910/1...

Große Zahlen rund um #kleinefaecher: Der Bericht zum Stand der Kartierung kleiner Fächer 2025 über 163 Fächer mit 2697 Professuren an 254 Hochschulen ist frisch veröffentlicht! Zu finden unter www.kleinefaecher.de/fileadmin/us...