Tag: language

Is 8,000-year-old Damaidi Rock Art the Origin of Chinese Writing?

The Chinese writing system is by far one of the most complex in the world, and its origins are truly ancient. In fact, ​​Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, a fact that alone makes them very, very special. It is thus only natural to ask the question: where did these characters originate? A system of writing that is so complex and unique surely has to have a special place of provenance. Some scholars believe that the characters first came to existence amongst the Damaidi petroglyphs – ancient drawings carved in stone that reach far, far back in time. Are they the key to the riddle?

Damaidi rock art, also known as the Damaidi petroglyphs, are a collection of stunning ancient rock carvings found in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. They are situated close to the village of Damaidi, which is set amid the Weining Mountains on the north bend of the famed Yellow River . These carvings have been dated to between 6,000 and 8,000 years before present and depict a wide variety of images, including animals, humans, and abstract symbols . The images are carved into local cliffs, and in total there are 3,172 sets of early Chinese petroglyphs , all of which feature 8,453 individual figures. These are stunning numbers, indicating that the site was filled with art over many generations.

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2,000-Year-Old Unknown Kushan Language Is Finally Deciphered

Since the 1960s, archaeologists in Central Asia have found rocks carved with a mysterious unknown language. Now, a team from the University of Cologne has deciphered the unknown script, revealing it emerged among traders on the Silk Road.

Founded by the Kushan tribe, the Kushan Empire flourished from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. Spanning Central Asia and parts of South Asia, Kushan religion was influenced by Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism, which all penetrated Kushan culture via trade along the Silk Road .

Cologne University was founded in 1388 AD by Pope Urban VI, focusing on theology, philosophy and linguistics. Now, keeping in alignment with the institute’s original traditions, a research team from the University’s Department of Linguistics has decoded 60% of the ancient Kushan writing system known as the “Unknown Kushan Script.”

According to UNESCO, both Sanskrit and Prakrit languages pre-date the Kushan Empire, and Bactrian and Sogdian were spoken by the merchants who engaged in Silk Road trading across Central Asia. However, while much is known about these language systems, until now there remained much to be discovered about the languages of the Kushan Empire.

The so-called “unknown Kushan script” was first identified by archaeologists in the 1960s, but now, Professor’s Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann and Natalie Korobzow have examined sections of the unknown script found on cave walls, clay pots and bowls in several Central Asian countries.

The team initially announced their “partial” decipherment of the language on 1 March 2023, during an online conference organized by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan . Now, a new study about their work has been published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society under the title “A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script.”

According to the new paper, the team have successfully deciphered about 60% of the characters of the unknown Kushan language script that was widely used in Central Asia between about 200 BC and 700 AD.

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Johns Hopkins pulls ‘lesbian’ definition after uproar over use of ‘non-men’ instead of ‘women’

Johns Hopkins University removed an online glossary of LGBTQ terms and identities this week after its definition of the word “lesbian” used the term “non-men” to refer to women and some nonbinary people and fueled an online uproar.

Screenshots of the glossary before it was taken down showed that the university defined the word “lesbian” as a “non-man attracted to non-men.” It added that while past definitions have referred to lesbians as women who are sexually attracted to other women, the “updated definition” is intended to include nonbinary people who may identify with the label.

“The LGBTQ Glossary serves as an introduction to the range of identities and terms that are used within LGBTQ communities, and is not intended to serve as the definitive answers as to how all people understand or use these terms,” Megan Christin, the university’s director of strategic communications, said in a statement Wednesday. “While the glossary is a resource posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review.”

Christin did not respond to questions regarding when the online glossary was first uploaded.

Screenshots of the glossary sparked an online firestorm in recent days, with many women, including some lesbians, calling the definition “misogynistic” and noting that the definition for “gay man” did not use comparable language, such as “non-women.”

“Lesbian was literally the only word in English language that is not tied to man- as in male- feMALE, man- woMAN,” tennis star Martina Navratilova, who is a lesbian, tweeted Monday. “And now lesbians are non men?!? Wtf?!?”

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FBI documents associate internet slang like ‘based’ and ‘red pill’ with ‘extremism’

New documents released Monday warned that common internet lingo is being associated with “Violent Extremism” by the FBI.

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project said it used a Freedom of Information Act request to expose FBI documents that include glossaries showing that common internet slang has been flagged as an indication of “Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism” or “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.”

Part of the document refers specifically to “incels,” or those “involuntary celibate,” whom the “threat overview” describes as possibly seeking to “commit violence in support of their beliefs that society unjustly denies them sexual or romantic attention, to which they believe they are entitled.”

The assessment notes, “While most incels do not engage in violence,” some have been involved in “at least five lethal attacks in the United States and Canada.”

Many of the terms mentioned in the FBI’s list of incel terminology are either widely used across the internet or innocuous in nature.

The one term in the glossary is “Red Pill,” which comes from the 1999 film “The Matrix” and has been used a metaphor for seeing hidden or politically incorrect truths about the modern world, particularly when it comes to politics or dating.

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The CDC Puts Itself In Charge Of Language Too

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has come out with a guide for how we are all to speak and write. This can be found on the website titled, “Preferred Terms for Select Population Groups & Communities.” It is clear that this list is being read and distributed broadly – from medical institutions, hospitals, scientific communications, doctor’s offices, schools and universities, as well as other US Government agencies and institutes.

The CDC is the arm of the US Government tasked with disease control and prevention. It is not tasked with correcting wrong-speak.

Now, how exactly this guide fits in with the CDC mission is beyond me.

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FEMA Distributed Nonsense Emergency Brochures To Native Alaskans

FEMA hired a California government contractor to translate disaster-assistance information into two native Alaska languages, but all it and the natives got was a big heap of nonsense. 

After a typhoon hammered the west coast of Alaska in September, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hired a Berkeley-based company, Accent on Languages, to translate instructions for applying for disaster aid. 

FEMA quickly turned the company’s work into tri-fold, glossy brochures that left native Alaskans utterly perplexed, as they encountered phrases like: 

  • “Your husband is a polar bear, skinny.”
  • “Tomorrow he will go hunting Alaska very early, and will (bring) nothing”  
  • “When she said so, the dog ran farther off from the curtain.”

University of Alaska Fairbanks linguist Gary Holton says one of the translations is a random assortment of phrases copied from a compilation of far-eastern Russian folklore: “Yupik Eskimo Texts from the 1940s.” 

“They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense,” Holton told AP. He summed up the work as a “word salad.” 

In a publicly-posted letter, Accent on Languages CEO Caroline Lee said her firm will reimburse FEMA $5,116. “We make no excuses for erroneous translations, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused to the local community.” 

Lee said when the “horrifying,” botched translations came to her attention, that her company hired a new team of translators to do the project over again. FEMA has fired the company. 

Former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney wants more than a reimbursement, saying the company is guilty of fraud — “and you can’t put a price on the impact of denying services to vulnerable communities because of misinformation.” The grandstanding Sweeney even called for congressional hearings. 

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Language Police: USC Removes ‘Field’ from ‘Field Work’ Because It May Be ‘Anti-Black or Anti-Immigrant’

USC’s School of Social Work is removing the word “field” from its curriculum and practice, arguing that it “could be considered anti-black or anti-immigrant” to say someone is “going into the field” or conducting “field work.” The university explains, “our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge inclusion and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies.”

“We have decided to remove the term ‘field’ from our curriculum and practice and replace it with ‘practicum.’ This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” a letter from the Practicum Education Department read.

The letter was shared by Houman David Hemmati, a board-certified MD Ophthalmologist and Ph.D. research scientist, who said the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work “will no longer use the word ‘field’ (as in ‘conducting field work’) because it’s perceived as racist.”

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Enigmatic ‘writing system’ in ice age cave art deciphered

Hunter-gatherers who painted on cave walls 20,000 years ago also left behind something quite unexpected.For years, archaeologists have worked to understand the hidden meanings in the thousands of examples of prehistoric art found on cave walls across Europe.

These artistic works often featured animals such as bison, fish, reindeer and (the now extinct) aurochs, but some of them also included a sequence of dots and marks that seemed to be some form of writing system – one which experts had long struggled to fully interpret.

Now, though, a new collaboration between researcher Ben Bacon and experts from Durham University and University College London has finally lifted the lid on exactly what these symbols meant.

It turns out that the marks were actually part of an ancient writing system – a lunar calendar which was used to document the timing of the reproductive cycles of the animals.This type of information would have been highly relevant to the hunter-gatherers of the time.

“The results show that ice age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar,” said archaeologist Prof Paul Pettitt of Durham University.

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Cambridge Dictionary Changes Woman Definition to Push Transgenderism

The Cambridge Dictionary appears to have followed Merriam-Webster down the rabbit hole into woke oblivion by changing the definition of “Woman” to appease transgender radicals.

Though it remains inconclusive as to when the Cambridge Dictionary made the switch to include transgenderism, the definition for “Woman” now includes the following as a subset of the actual definition: “An adult who lives and identifies as female though they have been said to have a different sex at birth.”

The definition then includes the two following example sentences:

She was the first trans woman elected to national office.

Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.

According to the archives dating back to March 2022, the Cambridge Dictionary only featured the normative definition of the word woman to mean “an adult female human being.”

The related words and phrases in the SMART Vocabulary section of the definition included such charged words like gender reassignment and heteronormative.

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