Egas Moniz Bandeira ᠡᡤᠠᠰ ᠮᠣᠨᠢᠰ ᠪᠠᠨᡩ᠋ᠠᠶᠢᠷᠠ

Hokkien/Taiwanese doesn‘t have /f/ sounds, they become /h(u)/. That‘s how 出發 (to depart) ends up sounding like 出花 (to bloom) in heavy Taiwan-accented Mandarin 😁

Merz besucht Israel: Freundschaft trotz Streits – DW – 05.12.2025 Friedrich Merz reist erstmals als Bundeskanzler nach Israel. Es ist ein Besuch in schwierigen Zeiten. Das Miteinander verändert sich.

Any article (like this @deutschewelle.dw.com one) that speaks of this visit but doesn't mention that Chancellor Merz is visiting a man wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity is a contribution to disinformation.
And genocide in Gaza is still ongoing

www.dw.com/de/merz-besu...

Hokkien doesn‘t have /f/ sounds, they become /h/; that’s also how 出發 (to depart) ends up sounding like 出花 (to bloom) in heavy Taiwan-accented Mandarin 😁

YouTube video by zaruemon channel 02 1999年頃のCM クロネコヤマト 往復宅急便

reminds me of this Japanese pun from the kuroneko (black cat) shipping company: going home = kaeru = frog, is easy = raku da = camel www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeCU...

Hui-siông 非常 ('extraordinarily') may not be the most common intensifier in Taiwanese/Hokkien, but since it sounds like the Mandarin word for 'grizzly bear' 灰熊, it's great for cute puns: 'Many thanks' (hui-siông kám-siā) sounds like 'grizzly bear and shrimp' 灰熊甘蝦😂🤩

The Dutch did not leave many loanwords in Taiwan, but those they did leave are super interesting. You'd think that the word for cabbage, gaolicai 高麗菜, means 'Korean vegetable'? Nah. Say it in Hokkien: Ko-lê(-tshài), from Dutch 'kool' (Ger. Kohl, engl. cole) XD 😁

O Ano Vermelho - Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira

Here‘s a better pic of the Mongol text, h/t @tedzu.bsky.social , from journals.openedition.org/emscat/6855

For reading on the Treaty, see Nikolay Tsyrempilov, "The 1913 Tibet-Mongolia Treaty of Friendship and Alliance: New Sources Uncovering the History of its Drafting," Lungta 17 (2013), 35-43.

The Mongol version pic is from here:
mongoltoli.mn/history/h/704

Mongolia and Tibet concluded a bilateral treaty in January 1913, after having declared independence from the Daqing Empire and the ROC. The left pic is the Tibetan version; the right pic seems to be the Mongol version, which I am seeing for the first time (alas, in very low unreadable resolution)

My amazing colleagues Lena Foljanty and Zülâl Muslu have launched a new blog on global legal history, "Areas, norms, time entangled" (ant-e). I have had the honour of coordinating the first colloquy with posts about the Balkans, Thailand, and Ethiopia. Have fun reading!

ante-blog.univie.ac.at

However, 女 could also be read as an adjective, so 非常 would be an adverb again: "extraordinarily feminine"...

I was thinking of examples in modern Sinitic langs of 非常 being used as an adjective ('extraordinary)' rather than adverb ('very'), and one example that came to my mind is a Taiwanese song, hui-siông lú 非常女 ('extraordinary woman'), which is also the name of a character in puppet theatre 😍

This is a fascinating chapter in a fascinating book, downloadable for free! Highly recommended 🤩! And now I know why @chiaweilin.bsky.social produces such interesting stuff that crosses several disciplines - there are several Chia-Wei Lins after all! XD

Connected Philology Even though the similarities of philological methods and traditions across various cultures have been the subject of scholarly research, the reasons for these occurrences usually remain obscure. The p...

Today I stumbled upon an open-access article in the new edited volume "Connected Philology" by someone who has the exact same name as me and also works at the Université de Lausanne. Very suspicious 👀
#shamelessselfpromotion

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Fascinating, thanks for sharing!

passport in 1920

From the series ‘historical Chinese passports’ 護照: Here’s an exit passport (!) issued by Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, president of Academia Sinica, to a German scholar in 1932 🤯🤯

I always love these little orthographic variations you encounter when reading Ming/Qing novels. ‘Haipa’ (to be scared) is now mostly written 害怕 (harm - scared), but there’s also 駭怕 (scare - scared). Still a valid variant today, though more common in the past 😁

The CfP of next year's International Society for Intellectual History Conference in Istanbul is out, please apply! 🥰 (deadline: 15 February 2026)

fass.sabanciuniv.edu/en/ISIH

Just came across this republican-era "passport" 護照 from 1925 - fascinatingly, it's the same format as the late Qing "passports". But while the Qing laissez-passer was for a German guy to travel to China, the ROC passport was for a Yunnanese guy to travel to Burma😀

Oh very cool, let me know about your research results! :D

圖畫周刊 no. 4 (1925).

Mais um detalhe interessante: "Rio de Janeiro", no texto seguinte, ainda é traduzido literalmente ao chinês, 正月河. Hoje em dia, é só usada a tradução fonética Liyue(reneilu) 里約（熱内盧）

Festa, em mandarim, está como "bai wuhui" 白舞會. Superficialmente, parece "baile branco (白)", mas não é uma expressão comum - estou suspeitando que bai 白 aqui seja um empréstimo fonético para "baile".

Por acaso, encontrei esta foto interessantíssima de uma festa na embaixada da China* no Rio de Janeiro em 1925, nas vésperas do Dia da Independência (06 de setembro)

*Mais precisamente, a legação da República da China

Image source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DL81TRP4c/?mibextid=wwXIfr

In Taiwan, the Mandarin term 嗆聲 qiàng shēng or simply 嗆 means “to loudly provoke or confront”

TIL 嗆聲 is actually derived from the Taiwanese term 唱聲 chhiàng-siaⁿ which means “to threaten”

In Hokkien, chhiàng (唱) means “to call out with a loud voice”

It's River Thames of course!