She says that the flood of Japanese words that inundated China during the last century and more has finally begun to recede and that the Chinese are starting to create their own words for new ideas, concepts, and things. It would be good to know what some of these are and whether they are seeping into the vocabularies of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Singapore.
As far as I can tell, Uncle Bot doesn't talk, but Jake does, sometimeswith compliments and sometimesnot, but in both cases displaying accurate perception of the person addressed.
No doubt these interactions are managed by a human teleoperator, just as the robotic bartenders at Musk's Robotaxi party were. But Uncle Bot and Jake are not limited to an invitation-only party, and Gay Jake advertises this with the "NOT ELON'S BITCH" sign on his chest.
Rizzbot is making a splash in the news and in varioussocialmedia, so props to the Unitree PR team. Maybe interactive advertising is an actual application for teleoperated humanoid robots? Will we see Jake passing out Coca Cola samples, or spreading the word about an upcoming concert, or promoting a movie?
If so, it's one of the first examples out there of an actual use for humanoid robots — see Brad Porter, "The Problems With Humanoid Robots" for some relevant background.
At the Swarthmore Farmers Market this past Saturday morning, I came upon a new stall selling onigiri, which are Japanese rice balls, a popular and versatile snack or meal component. They consist of steamed rice formed into various shapes, often triangles, and typically filled with savory ingredients like pickled plums (umeboshi), salmon, or tuna with mayonnaise. They are often enclosed in nori (seaweed).
These onigiri were wrapped in cellophane and had a label stuck on the side. As soon as I saw the design on the label, which looked like a human face, I found that I could "read" it:
I didn't know what it "meant", but I knew what it "sounded like": hehenonomoheji. Moreover, the nose and the jaw plus left side of the face, sans the nose, were pronounced "moji 文字", which means "writing", as in "emoji 絵文字" ("picture writing"), now a common English word — or so it seemed to me (I don't know if Japanese would view it that way).
The Edo period dates from 1603-1868, so that means this kind of emoji face has been around a long time, at least more than a century and a half. I suspect, though, that it is part of a deeper tradition called etoki 絵解き ("picture explanation"), which goes back to medieval times and I wrote about in Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1988).
A henohenomoheji featuring in a manga panel in the 1910 issue of the Japanese girls' magazine Shōjo.
The word breaks down into seven hiragana characters: he (へ), no (の), he (へ), no (の), mo (も), he (へ), and ji (じ). The first two he are the eyebrows, the two no are the eyes, the mo is a nose, and the last he is the mouth. The outline of the face is made by the character ji, its two short strokes (dakuten) forming the ear or cheek.
Henohenomoheji is often used to symbolize an undistinguished or generic human face, such as the faces of kakashi (scarecrows) and teru teru bōzu. The characters are often sung as they are drawn, making the henohenomoheji an ekaki uta (絵描き歌, drawing song).
Entertainment and education combined in a popular activity that was fun for its participants.
Apparently, birds are not considered wild animals by law. Reference here, where apparently feeding them in parks in permitted except if they are red masked parakeets:
SEC. 486. FEEDING BIRDS AND WILD ANIMALS PROHIBITED. It shall be unlawful for any person to feed or offer food to any bird or wild animal in or on any sidewalk, street or highway of the City and County of San Francisco. It shall be unlawful to feed or offer food to any Red Masked Parakeet in any park of the City and County of San Francisco. (Added by Ord. 268-64, App. 10/2/64; Ord. 133-07, File No. 070467, App. 6/15/2007)
The sign and the ordinance title have "birds and wild animals", while the body of the ordinance has "any bird or wild animal". And the ordinance specifies three (or four?) disjunctions within the scope of "unlawful": what you can't do ("feed or offer food"), who you can't do it to ("any bird or wild animal"), and where you can't do it "in or on any sidewalk, street or highway". Multiplying it all out, this gives 2x2x3 = 12 (or if we include "in or on", 2x2x2x3 = 24) specific prohibitions.
The uncertainty arises because the interaction of "in or on" with "any sidewalk, street or highway" is kind of fuzzy. It's fine to say that you can't feed any bird on any sidewalk, but it's unidiomatic at best to tell you not to do it in any sidewalk. And both "in any street" and "on any street" are plausible phrases, but they seem to mean almost the same thing. (Though maybe it matters whether it's the feeder or the food that's in or on the street…)
Anyhow, given that birds are biologically animals, and therefore non-pet birds are "wild animals", Charles relies on the Gricean Maxim of Quantity to infer that the San Francisco Police department adheres to a non-standard taxonomy of species. But it seems more likely that they're trying to avoid the misunderstandings that might arise if they left out the explicit prohibition again feeding birds.
And of course there's also the ambiguity of shall, though in this case the prescription of plainlanguage.gov to replace it with must doesn't work, since the subject is expletive it ("?It must be unlawful for any person…"). The Pennsylvania legislature (along with many other groups) uses plain old is in that context ("It is unlawful for any person …"), which is less fancy but clearer.
All in all, a good example of why legal drafting is hard.
I'll leave it to readers to tell us about the Red Masked Parakeets.
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
languagelog_feed) wrote2025-07-23 10:13 pm
