The ten coolest cephalopods

The sea’s full of saints and it’s been full of saints for years. Since longer than anything. Saints were there before there were even gods. They were waiting for them, and they’re still there now. 

Saints eat fish and shellfish. Some of them catch jellyfish and some of them eat rubbish. Some saints eat anything they can find. They hide under rocks; they turn themselves inside out; they spit up spirals. There’s nothing saints don’t do.
...
The gods don't owe us anything. That's not why we worship. We worship because they're gods. This is their universe, not ours.

- China Miéville, Kraken


Metasepia pfefferi (flamboyant cuttlefish)

It walks along the sea floor like it ain't a thing! Dressed like that!

(It can afford to walk around like that; it's really poisonous.)


Note how it's using its mantle as hind legs!


Sepioloidea lineolata (striped pajama squid)

Closely related to cuttlefish but it has no cuttlebone. It buries itself in the sand, presumably because it is too cute for the rest of the ocean.



Abdopus aculeatus

Enjoy these beautiful high-quality images of this octopus mating.

Abdopus aculeatus walks on two arms on the sea floor while mimicking a twig.
Watch it!
Or mimicking... I'm not sure what:



Octopus briareus (Caribbean reef octopus)


If you get the chance to go night diving or night snorkeling in the Caribbean, there is a good chance you'll see this octopus. It's very small with iridescent markings and it seems to ooze from place to place.




Argonauta sp.


The argonaut is a kind of octopus, the female of which secretes a beautiful transparent shell, which it uses to store eggs in. It resembles a nautilus, but the shells are not homologous.



The shells contain trapped air, which is apparently used for buoyancy.




Tremoctopus violaceus (common or violet blanket octopus)

Tremoctopus has beautiful webbing between some of its arms. The webbing is extended as a threat display.

Tremoctopus belongs to the same clade as Argonauta. The males of both are tiny, with detachable hectocotyluses (this is the arm that delivers sperm to the female). In the case of Tremoctopus, the male dies after the hectocotylus detaches, but the hectocotylus autonomously fertilizes the female. Three-fifths of the cephalopod brain is located in the arms.

So in other words, Tremoctopus's penis literally has a mind of its own. (OK it's not a penis, but it had to be said.)

Tremoctopus is immune to the poison of the Portuguese man o'war. The males tear off man o'war tentacles and use them for defense.




Grimpoteuthis sp.

Grimpoteuthis hippocrepium

Species in this genus are deep sea cirrate octopuses. Grimpoteuthis, along with Cirroteuthidae, are nicknamed “dumbo octopuses” because they have large fins that resemble ears.

Many of them live on the sea floor or swim gracefully just above it.

Grimpoteuthis sp.

They are quite beautiful; a slowly flying octopus.

Grimpoteuthis bathynectes


This is either Grimpoteuthis or Cirroteuthidae


Some sources say this little guy is Grimpoteuthis, but I think it is the closely related Opisthoteuthis, the flapjack octopus, or awww so cute octopus. It has a more flattened body than Grimpoteuthis and is found in shallower waters. It seems to be the inspiration for the octopus in Finding Nemo - except that Opisthoteuthis has no ink sac. In fact all cirrate octopuses lack ink sacs.


Opisthoteuthis sp.


Magnapinna sp.


These weird-looking squids have been found in four oceans over 2000 metres down. They are thought to be Magnapinnidae. More importantly, they seem to be the inspiration for the Martians in Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.





The alienness of this animal is partly an artifact of the position; seen from another angle, it looks much more traditionally squid-like:




Architeuthis sp.


This is the longest known living invertebrate with reported lengths of 18 m and weights of 500 kg. (But it's not the heaviest invertebrate; that would be Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni.) This is the squid that leaves sucker scars on sperm whales. Each sucker is lined with a row of sharp serrated chitin, all the better to wound its prey.


This squid is the inspiration for China Miéville’s novel Kraken. "Centuries of dissident cephalopod gnosis."


Melbourne Museum scientists dissect Architeuthis sp.


Ommastrephidae
 
probably Ommastrephes bartramii

Squids in the Ommastrephidae family are some of the most important squids to the fishing industry. But I say don't eat them, watch them. Because they fly. Or glide tens of metres through the air, anyway. Ommastrephes bartramii, Todarodes pacificus, Sthenoteuthis pteropus and Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis all fly but these photos are Ommastrephes bartramii I think.

The ten coolest languages

Austronesian languages of Vanuatu
The languages of Vanuatu, like Vao, Tangoa, and V'enen Taut (Big Nambas), are I think the only languages in the world to use linguo-labial consonants. These consonants are made by touching the tip of the tongue to the upper lip. Listen.

Salishan languages
Here are some words in Klallam. (ƛ̕ is a lateral ejective /tɬʼ/, c is /ts/)

sƛ̕íƛ̕aʔƛ̕qɬ "child"
ɬq̕čšɬnát "Friday"
sk̕ʷc̕ŋíyɬč "cherry tree"

The orthography is an accurate representation of the pronunciation. There are no epenthetic vowels; the word for "Friday" really does begin with 6 consonants. (Have a listen.)

Here's a recording of a Klallam speaker reciting the myth of the flood.

The related language Nuxalk (Bella Coola) is famous for its consonant clusters. There are a lot of short utterances, like k'xct "they see you", sc'qc tx "that's my fat over there", that have no vowels. (Listen.)

This Nuxalk utterance is famous:

[xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]
'he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.'

Really? An utterance that long has no vowels, not even epenthetic vowels? In these recordings I can hear plenty of vowels (plenty of consonant clusters too). In particular a word like mts has a syllabic nasal, and scwm "to burn" sounds like [sxʷɘm] to me.


Mazatec
This Otomanguean language contrasts creaky and breathy voice vowels. Creaky voice, also called vocal fry, is used quite a lot in English and has been in the news recently.


ǃXóõ (Taa)
ǃXóõ has five basic click consonants, each of which can be modified in various ways, for a total of over 80 click sounds. Listen to clicks in the related language Zhuǀhõasi.


Dhivehi (Maldivian)
It’s an Indo-European language spoken in the Maldives, the furthest away from the geographical area I think about when I think Indo-European. It's written in Thaana, which looks a bit like Perso-Arabic script but is only partly derived from it.



Agul (Aghul)
The epiglottis is the flap of tissue that closes off the trachea when we swallow. And it also plays a role in speech: the Caucasian language of Agul is one of the only languages that has epiglottal consonants. Listen.


Hindi
Hindi uses the passive to express incapacity or unwillingness. And the passive can be used this way with intransitive verbs!

मुझसे नहीं बैठा गया।
mujhase nahīṃ baiṭhā gayā
literally "was not sat by me"
"I couldn't sit down"

उससे वहाँ नहीं जाया गया।
usase vahāṃ nahīṃ jāyā gayā
literally "there was not gone by him"
"He couldn't (bring himself to) go there."

इतनी गरमी में किसी से नहीं सोया जाता।
itanī garamī meṃ kisī se nahīṃ soyā jātā
literally "in so much heat is not slept by anyone"
"Nobody can sleep in so much heat."


Sanskrit
Sanskrit has a cool compounding system that can get pretty complex (I've probably spelled these wrong):

मृगप्रचारसूचितश्वापदमरण्यम्
mṛga-pracāra-sūcita-śvāpadam araṇyam
literally, "the forest (is) one-in-which-the-beasts-are-indicated-by-the-movements-of-the-deer"
"the game in the forest has been tracked by the movements of the deer"

प्रत्यापन्नचेतनोवयस्यः
pratyāpanna-cetano vayasyaḥ
literally "(my) friend (is) one-by-whom-consciousness-is-regained"
"my friend has regained consciousness"


Telugu
Because it has such a beautiful script.



An interesting feature of this script is how some consonants are conjoined. The word "ayurvēdik" is written అయుర్వేదిక్ where the character for v is a conjunct. It's the one that drops below the baseline. The character immediately to the left of that is the non-conjunct character for r. And the vowel diacritic (ē) is added to the non-conjunct consonant (the r) instead of the consonant whose syllable it belongs to (the v).

Welsh
Like many Celtic languages, Welsh has a system of initial mutation where the first consonant in the word changes depending on its grammar or the preceding word. Welsh has three kinds of mutation: soft, nasal and aspirate.

So pen is "head":

fy mhen "my head" (nasal mutation, the initial /p/ has changed to a voiceless nasal)
dau ben "two heads" (soft mutation, the initial /p/ has changed to /b/)
ei phen "her head" (aspirate mutation, the initial /p/ has changed to /f/)


And those are my favourite languages. Feel free to add to the list!

Easter and aurora

Spotted on facebook:

Really? The name of the Akkadian deity Ishtar sounds a bit like Easter, so they're related? What about the German word for the holiday, Ostern? How is that related to Ishtar? Why do most other European languages use a completely different word for the holiday? (Italian Pasqua, Swedish påsk, Welsh Pasg, Greek Πάσχα, etc, all borrowed from Hebrew פֶּסַח pesakh)

The truth is that Easter is related to east. It's from Old English Ēastran, probably from Proto-Germanic *austrōn- "dawn", whence German Ostern, Old Dutch ōstermānōth "Easter-month", Old Saxon ōstarfrisking "paschal lamb".

east is from Proto-Germanic *aust-. Both *aust- and *austrōn- are from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eus- "to shine" (the form is written a few different ways; this is how it's cited in Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture).

Austria is related; it seems to be a Latinized form of German Österreich "Eastern Kingdom".

*h₂eus- also became Latin aurōra, Vedic uṣas, Avestan ušah-, Greek ἠώς (ēōs), Irish Gaelic fàir, Welsh gwawr, Lithuanian aušrà, all meaning "dawn". In Germanic languages it came to mean "east", since that's where the dawn is.

Another idea that gets circulated about Easter is that there was a deity named Eostre who was worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons at the vernal equinox. This comes from Bede:

a735   Bede De Temporum Ratione xv,   Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit, a cujus nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes.

"Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.  Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance." (translation)

Says the OED: "This explanation is not confirmed by any other source, and the goddess has been suspected by some scholars to be an invention of Bede's. However, it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival in order to account for a Christian one."

The Vedic, Greek and Latin derivatives (Uṣā́s, Ēṓs and Aurōra respectively) were used to refer to a goddess of the dawn, according to Fortson. So the idea that there was a Germanic equivalent doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Further: There is also talk of a Germanic goddess Ostara, from Old High German ōstara which is cognate with Easter. But as far as I can tell, we have no direct evidence of a deity named Ostara. Everything we know about her is from speculation by Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie.

Calvert Watkins dies at 80

One of the foremost names in IE linguistics has died.

Watkins' introduction to the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is a great introduction to IE linguistics and the comparative method.

ൠഭോഷന്‍

Out of all the alphabets, this is my favourite letter.

Isn't it cute?

It's the Malayalam long vocalic R (U+0D60), the equivalent of Devanagari ॠ.

I assume it's only used for writing Sanskrit. It is pretty much ignored in Learn Malayalam in 30 Days through English, the only book for learning the language that I can find. This alphabet book covers the short vocalic R (in ഋഷി ṛṣi "wise man" and ഋഷഭം ṛṣabhaṃ "bull"), but skips the long vocalic R altogether.

There is one Malayalam word that uses this letter: ൠഭോഷന്‍ ṝbhōṣan "contemptible fool". It's apparently used in alphabet songs, so when children in Kerala sing the alphabet, the word they use for the coolest-looking letter ever is "contemptible fool".

National Grammar Day

OMG yesterday was National Grammar Day! I've been sick, so I have an excuse for missing it. Anyway, here's a fantastic post from Painting the Grey Area on literacy privilege. Literacy is not tied to intelligence, and "bad" English is not the result of laziness: "the idea that there is only one right way of doing English – and everyone else is doing it wrong – is inherently flawed. And by 'flawed' I mean illogical, elitist and even oppressive."

dachshund and tissue

Proto-Indo-European *teḱs- "to weave, fabricate" possibly became Proto-Germanic *þahsuz "badger" ("the animal that builds") and German Dachs "badger". Dachshund means "badger-dog", probably because it was bred for hunting badgers.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots suggests that *þahsuz is more likely from the same source as Gaulish Tazgo-, Gaelic Tadhg, originally meaning "badger".

In Greek, *teḱs-na- became τέχνη "art, craft, skill" as in technical. 

In Latin, *teḱs- became texere "to weave", becoming Old French tistre past participle tissu, which was originally used for a kind of rich cloth.