I suspect that the very notions of “natural” language and “native” speakers can probably be traced back as secularizations of magical-language ideas.

今日はアイヌ刺繍のお教室でした。新しい仲間が2人増えたのでますます楽しくなりそう。今日はもう少し頑張ろうかな。

The Chinese reads Daqing 大清; it looks like "Great Qing (=Clear) [State]" But Manchu reads: Amba (=great) Daicing Gurun (=state). This is not "Great Great Qing"; Daicing comes from Mongol Dayičing, 'Warrior.' Chinese Daqing matches the phonetics with different semantics! 1/4

Coming Soon!

Just found this wonderful website to read beginner-level stories in a bunch of different Asian languages. Great for learning new vocabulary. letsreadasia.org

The American exceptionalism of pseudo-anti-imperialists is such a poisonous form of anti-solidarity.

Many Sinophone people rightly criticise Mandarin chauvinism. However, it's disconcerting that they discredit Mandarin for its supposed 'impurity', citing ad nauseam that it is the result of population mixture between 'Han people' and 'nomadic tribes'. This argument, which aims to

in retrospect, it is a grandiose exercise of self-orientalism, celebrating the triumph of oriental collectivism (if not despotism). that was peak China Boom, a "good" time to reflect on.

once again i encourage everyone to read Arif Dirlik who wrote already in the early 2000s about various claims about "alternative" modernities, value systems & civilisations in the postcolonial world and how it reinforces internal & external hegemonies. such as the "asian values"

Linguists Philologists

You with your fancy Zotero v. me manually inputting every bibliographic reference ever

There’s nothing I find more annoying than those leftists trying to ”academize” why victims of Russian & Chinese imperialism are less worthy to care about than victims of American imperialism.

The new issue of MIC is out! In it, we focus on what remains of cultural differences at the end of the dream of communist pluralism and ethnic autonomy and on how Blackness has been imagined, defined, or practiced in Chinese history. Download for free at madeinchinajournal.com/2024/08/27/ben…

我说内蒙取消了蒙语教学，西藏取消了藏人学校。 我同胞：文化是会自然消亡的。 我说藏人的孩子4岁就被强制送往寄宿学校，有的孩子半年才能回一次家。那里只有汉语教学，孩子回家后几乎无法交流。 我同胞：为他们将来就业打下基础。他们必须融入社会。 汉人眼里的“自然”和“社会”，姓皇名汉。

The University of Chicago just received $100 million from an anonymous donor. Donations of that size fundamentally shift an institution’s programming and priorities, and we know that donors exert influence on campus policy. So this is—as one of my colleagues put it—basically dark

MIT just studied how ChatGPT impacts our brains time.com/7295195/ai-cha…