Language and Humor Blog

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) met this week, defined the word planet, and ousted Pluto:

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A [classical] planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

However, there were very few astronomers left to vote on this definition, and some astronomers say it's a bad definition. If Pluto's orbit overlap with Neptune's orbit is "deplanetizing," Neptune should be out as well.

Discussion by astronomers

Backlash

It'll be a while before I stop writing "9 planets" on my checks.

The real problem for me is: when I sing the old Japanese pop group Shonen Knife's song "Riding on a Rocket," do I continue to sing all nine planet abbreviations, "sui kin chi ka moku do ten kai mei," or do I sing "sui kin chi ka moku do ten kai hmmm"?

"Riding on a Rocket" is a silly song ("uchuushoku: mashumaro, asupara, aisukuriimu," "space food: marshmallows, asparagus, ice cream"), but it taught me the Japanese names of the planets (from Chinese), in order, and that the days of the week are named after the planets, similar to the situation in Latin. Modern Mandarin Chinese uses a numbering system for days of the week.

In addition to the sun and moon, the five big objects in the sky known since antiquity are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (Earth isn't up in our sky). In Chinese and Japanese, these planets are each named for one of the five Chinese "elements": water, metal, fire, wood, and earth (soil), respectively. The planets and "planet" discovered within the last few hundred years—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—are translated as what the gods represent: "heaven king," "sea king," and "netherworld king," respectively. However, Chinese and Japanese just use phonetic spellings for the names of the gods.

Thus, in Mandarin (with tone numbers) and Japanese, with "star" being a vague "celestial object," and some European days of the week:

Planets (and Pluto)

Mandarin/Japanese

• 水星　Shui3xing1 / Suisei Mercury [water star]
• 金星　Jin1xing1 / Kinsei Venus [metal star] + 明星 Ming2xing1 / Myoujou [bright star]
• 地球　Di4qiu2 / Chikyuu Earth [Earth globe]
• 火星　Huo3xing1 / Kasei Mars [fire star]
• 木星　Mu4xing1 / Mokusei Jupiter [wood star]
• 土星　Tu3xing1 / Dosei Saturn [earth (soil) star]
• 天王星　Tian1wang2xing1 / Ten'nousei Uranus [heaven-king (Uranus) star]
• 海王星　Hai3wang2xing1 / Kaiousei Neptune [sea-king (Neptune) star]
• 冥王星　Ming2wang2xing1 / Meiousei Pluto [netherworld-king (Pluto) star]

Days of the Week:

Japanese

• 月曜日　Getsuyoubi Monday [moon day of week]
• 火曜日　Kayoubi Tuesday [fire/Mars day of week]
• 水曜日　Suiyoubi Wednesday [water/Mercury day of week]
• 木曜日　Mokuyoubi Thursday [wood/Jupiter day of week]
• 金曜日　Kin'youbi Friday [metal/Venus day of week]
• 土曜日　Doyoubi Saturday [earth (soil)/Saturn day of week]
• 日曜日　Nichiyoubi Sunday [sun day of week]

French/Spanish

• lundi / lunes [moon day]
• mardi / martes [Mars day]
• mercredi / miércoles [Mercury day]
• jeudi / jueves [Jupiter day]
• vendredi / viernes [Venus day]
• samedi / sábado [sabbath, not Saturn, day]
• dimanche / domingo [Lord's, not sun, day]

English

• Sunday [sun day]
• Monday [moon day]
• Tuesday [Tiu's day]
• Wednesday [Woden's (Odin's) day]
• Thursday [Thor's day]
• Friday [Freya's day]
• Saturday [Saturn's day]

German

• Montag [moon day]
• Dienstag [Tiu's day]
• Mittwoch [midweek]
• Donnerstag [Donar's (Thor's) day]
• Freitag [Freya's day]
• Samstag / Sonnabend [sabbath day / Sunday eve]
• Sonntag [sun day]

Mandarin

• 星期一 Xing1qi1yi1 Monday [week ("star period") first]
• 星期二 Xing1qi1er4 Tuesday [week second]
• 星期三 Xing1qi1san1 Wednesday [week third]
• 星期四 Xing1qi1si4 Thursday [week fourth]
• 星期五 Xing1qi1wu3 Friday [week fifth]
• 星期­六 Xing1qi1liu4 Saturday [week sixth]
• 星期日 Xing1qi1ri4 Sunday [week sun]

Roman Gods:

Japanese

• マーキュリー　Maakyurii　Mercury
• ビーナス　Biinasu Venus
• マルス Marusu Mars
• ジュピター　Jupitaa Jupiter
• サターン　Sataan Saturn
• ウラノス　Uranosu Uranus
• ネプチューン　Nepuchuun Neptune
• プルート　Puruuto Pluto

Mandarin (there are variant transliterations)

• 墨丘利 Mo4qiu1li4 Mercury
• 维纳斯 Wei2na4si1 Venus
• 马尔斯 Ma3er3si1 Mars
• 朱庇特 Zhu1bi4te4 Jupiter
• 萨图尔努斯 Sa4tu2er3nu3si1 Saturn (Saturnus)
• 乌拉诺斯 Wu1la1nuo4si1 Uranus
• 尼普顿 Ni2pu3dun4 Neptune
• 普路同 Pu3lu4tong2 Pluto

Researchers at the Universities of Dundee, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh in Scotland have developed experimental pun-generating software for children who use computerized assistance to communicate. It's called System to Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns (STANDUP).

Kudos to the researchers for recognizing the importance of language play in language development. Just as infants play with sounds and toddlers play with words, older children play with humor and the meanings of words. Dr. Annalu Waller also points out that the children get to be in charge of conversations, and "it gives them the ability to entertain other people. And their self-image improves too."

Dr. David O'Mara's related 2004 doctoral thesis: "Providing Access to Verbal Humour Play for Children with Severe Communication Impairment" [dead link] (the page links to PDFs)

In addition, at the University of Sussex, England, researchers are using computer-generated pun riddles to help children who can speak but have difficulty with reading comprehension: Riddles project. Becoming aware of the dual meanings of punned words seems to help with overall reading comprehension.

Cows in Somerset, England, seem to have picked up the local accent of their human caretakers. Their moos have a strong West Country "-r" (the coastal region's accent is thought to be the origin of stereotyped pirate talk "Arr!"). The cows sound like "oo-arr!"

I wonder if Cockney cows use Cockney back-slang: "oom."

One of Japan's English newspapers, the Mainichi* Daily News, has manga (cartoons) in the original Japanese with English translation via mouse-over. They call it Manglish [dead link]. That's "manga English," not the mixture of Malay and English called Manglish (nor "mangled English").

(*Mainichi Daily News means "'Daily' Daily News." The original Japanese version of the newspaper is the 毎日新聞 Mainichi Shimbun [just "Daily Newspaper"].)

Back in the 1990s, there was a monthly American magazine called Mangajin (a combination of manga and jin ["person"], based on magajin ["magazine"]). It had Japanese manga with English translations, and it had English comics (including Calvin and Hobbes) translated into Japanese. There were also articles about Japanese pop culture.

I bought a few issues myself back in the day. They were good for learning colloquialisms, slang, and the extensive collection (in the thousands) of Japanese onomatopoeia/"sound words" (擬音語 giongo), mimesis/"action words" (擬態語 gitaigo), and "emotion words" (擬情語 gijougo). English has a fair amount of onomatopoeia (whoosh, bang) and some mimesis (fluttering sounds like its quick, hurried motions), but English doesn't have anything like a large inventory of emotion "sounds." English uses different verbs or adjectives (to fume, irritated); Japanese uses the same verbs with these words as adverbs (kakka suru, iraira suru; する suru is literally "do" but has no real meaning in such uses). English has snicker, cackle, and chuckle; Japanese has kusukusu warau, kerakera warau, and ufufu warau (笑う warau means "to laugh" and sometimes "to smile").

By the way, whatever Simon and Garfunkel meant in their song "The Sound of Silence," the sound of silence in Japanese is シーンshiin (like an elongated English "sheen").

Back to Mangajin: unfortunately, the magazine went out of business after less than a decade. I can't imagine that happening today. The manga and anime boom in America and elsewhere is huge now. They should bring the magazine back.

You can see some old articles or order back issues at Mangajin e-Zine. They also published two books of just the "learn Japanese through comics" parts of the magazines.

Researchers at Cornell University have found that people use the sounds of nouns and verbs to process them in sentences. The researchers also graphed the 3,158 words from the study and found that about 65 percent of the nouns have similar sound features to the other nouns, and likewise the verbs to the other verbs.

Another article reports:

In one experiment, the researchers asked Cornell undergraduate volunteers to read sentences [on computer screens] with noun-verb homonyms — word-forms that can be used both as a noun and as a verb. For example, "hunts" can be used as a plural noun ("the bear hunts were terrible") or as a verb ("the bear hunts for food"). In two other experiments, words that normally only occur either as a noun or as a verb were used. For example, "marble" and "insect" are almost always used as nouns, while "await" and "bury" are almost always used as verbs.

Perhaps there is a lot more to their research, but what I take from this quote is two well-established things:

1. Words that can be ambiguous (noun hunt vs. verb hunt) take a little longer to process.
2. Two-syllable English nouns of the typical pattern (STRESSED-unstressed, like MARble) and two-syllable English verbs of the typical pattern (unstressed-STRESSED, like aMUSE) are processed faster than atypical ones.

From the fourteen-year-old book P. Avery and S. Ehrlich, Teaching American English Pronunciation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 67:

More than 90 per cent of all English nouns of two syllables are stressed on the first syllable, and more than 60 per cent of all English verbs are stressed on the second syllable.

English distinguishes many noun-verb pairs like REcord and reCORD (this distinction is getting trickier with the verbing of nouns, creating noun ACcess and verb ACcess). Similarly, American Sign Language has many noun-verb pairs like SIT-DOWN (one long movement) and CHAIR (two quick movements).

The study was published in America's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [summary], so I'd like to think it is indeed significant.