The closest we have that I know of (and it’s really not very close at all) are the Pseudo-Dosithean Hermeneumata. They’re a third century AD Berlitz phrasebook of Greek and Latin. Nothing about language teaching methodology, and of course not much of a language teaching methodology is on display anyway. I did find the following […]
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 […]
Remember: language always has a social context. Always. Why do languages borrow words and phrases? Sometimes: consciously, to fill in a gap in the language, by bilinguals who care about the target language. That takes work. Rather more often: as a transferral of prestige and connotations from the source language, by bilinguals who want to […]
Do you want practicality, or do you want historical accuracy? Historical accuracy first. I’ve check Philomena Probert’s Ancient Greek Accentuation, and Vox Graeca. We know that the switch to stress accent must have happened by Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century): his poetry uses stress and not pitch accent as a base. We suspect that the […]
Ethnologue lists 113 languages for Vanuatu, two extinct: Vanuatu Vanuatu has the highest language density of any country on the planet: one language per 2,000 people. When last I checked, Vanuatu was also the last frontier for a large number of undocumented or underdocumented languages. Ethnologue is compiled by SIL International, which coordinates missionary linguists. […]
Eutychius Kaimakkamis’ is the most complete answer; I’ll only add: The status of Standard Greek vs Cypriot Greek is a diglossia, and it’s a much more clear-cut instance of diglossia than what was going on in Greece in the 20th century. Cypriot Turkish (Cypriot Turkish, Kıbrıslıca) has some clear typological affinities with Cypriot Greek. For […]
I understood the words and the phrases, but I had to be edified by some online links, and I’ve got an advantage in that I know why Jakobson said it the way he did. Roman Jakobson Metaphor Project Jacobson – Metaphor and Metonomy Exec summary: there is one takeaway message for poets: FORM MATTERS The […]
Politeness theory I’m sure I’ve answered this here already. Positive politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve doing good things for them. They concentrate on eliminating distance between people. Negative politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve not doing bad things to them. […]
Greek is all about the formulaic expressions. If you’re the guest in a Greek wedding, you must say: Να ζήσετε “may you live [long]” to the bride and groom. Να σας ζήσουν “may they live [long] for you” to the bride and groom’s families. Πάντα άξιος “[may you] always [be] worthy” to the best man. […]
There are four major groups of ancient Greek dialects: Ionic, of which Attic is a subbranch North-Western, of which Doric and Achaean are subbranches Aeolic Arcado-Cypriot I’ve ranked them in impressionistic order of archaicness. The easiest explanation for the spread of the North-Western group is as a wave of settlement, that you might as well […]