Mildred Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 1934. A very good book. Early on in the history of French, every instance of /u/ changed to /y/; and very soon after, every instance of closed /o/ changed to /u/, as a pull-chain (of the kind that happens a lot with vowels). It’s not as early on […]
It has been de rigeur in Greece to take your shoes off when entering a house, as owner or guest. Indeed, Greek has borrowed the Turkish proverbial expression about it: to “hand someone their shoes” is to invite them to get the hell out of your house. (του ’δωσα τα παπούτσια στο χέρι/pabuçu eline vermek). […]
It’s a tough one. I know Klingon and not Elvish, like Brian Collins. I think I disagree with him: Tolkien gives slightly more opportunity. Elvish is a more complicated set of languages than the agglutinative Klingon. Elvish is much less well documented by Tolkien than Klingon is. That’s why people are very reluctant to use […]
Probably, but not necessarily. As the astute Joachim Pense put it (answering this question, rather than the OP’s question): Joachim Pense’s answer to Linguists believe Proto indo European is the root of all those European languages. Does this mean that at one time everyone spoke the same language? No. Proto-Indo-European is a reconstruction that has […]
I echo other respondents in expressing frustration at the vagueness of the question. In English, there are two diacritics that can be applied to <e> to change its pronunciation. <è> is occasionally used to ensure that the <e> is pronounced and not silent. Grave accent The grave accent, though rare in English words, sometimes appears […]
To my amusement, when I googled for this in Australia, I found that I know the researchers that came up with the latest research on this. The latest research I found was 10 years ago, though (which is why I know them); and I don’t think the numbers will have stayed the same. http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/… As […]
Originally Answered: Which languages were spoken in Anatolia and modern Turkey when Turkic arrived? I’m touched by Anon’s A2A’ing assumption of my omniscience, but I’m going to Wikipedia here, to confirm my vague hunch that the Anatolian languages of yore were long, long gone by the time the Seljuks came to town. Anatolian languages and […]
I’d like to thank my wife for arranging access for me to the State Library of Victoria (for free!) Inter alia, this gets me access to the OED. OED? First attested use: 1651, in a trial transcript: Att. Gen. Was Mr. Love present when this letter was read? Far. Yes sure, he was present. First […]
As I pointed out in commenting Niko Vasileas’ answer, the Morea was reconquered by the Venetians after close to two centuries of Ottoman rule, whereas Tinos was under continuous Venetian rule right through to 1715. Add to this the odd situation of the Ionian Islands. They remained under Venice until 1797. Then they fell under […]
I don’t know the full answer, and I’m not seeing enough of an answer in Wikipedia. Let me put together what I know. There have been Roma in Greece for the better part of a millennium; we know linguistically that they went through Anatolia and Greece on the way to Europe, there is Greek in […]