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Daniel Tammet invents his own Siwu ideophone
I loved Daniel Tammet’s second book Embracing The Wide Sky (2009). In his own words, Embracing The Wide Sky is “a personal and scientific exploration of how the brain works and the differences and similarities between savant and non-savant minds”. It surveys work from psychology and linguistics and even indirectly (okay, very indirectly) features my work […]
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Bingo! Refinding the oldest specimen of Siwu
The oldest written fragments of Siwu found so far come from Rudolph Plehn (1898).1 Besides some words and phrases (edited and published in 1899 by his friend Seidel), Plehn took down two lines of songs. To one of them I devoted a post some time ago. Now I’ve found a full transcription of the other, […]
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Three misconceptions about ideophones
In a previous post I have outlined the history of the term ideophone. This post takes on three common misunderstandings about the nature of ideophones. As an added bonus, if you read all three, you get one for free. The working definition I adopt for ‘ideophones’ is the following: Marked words that depict sensory imagery. […]
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Do you know this feeling?
What better way to compensate for the overload of text in the previous posts than with some excellent illustrations of Japanese gitaigo? I have recently been looking at Taro Gomi’s delightful Illustrated Dictionary of Japanese Onomatopoeic Expressions, featuring cartoon-like depictions of almost 200 Japanese sound-symbolic words used to evoke certain sensations, feelings, and sensory perceptions.