Monthly Archives: March 2026

The Armenian Who Learned Greek in Ancient Egypt

Or: Why my (probably) favourite historical document is a unique Armenian text without a word of Armenian. Centuries before the translation apps and pocketable phrasebooks of today, people who found themselves far from home made do with ink and papyrus. For reasons of pure linguistico-historical nerdery and joy, I’d like to introduce you to aContinue reading “The Armenian Who Learned Greek in Ancient Egypt”

Fatal Pronunciation: The Shibboleth Story

The Bible can make for a gruesome read. An effortless observation (which has led to much reasonable criticism) is that, for a collection of texts which many people take as foundational for life, it contains a lot of violent death. This can be of a single named individual or of an uncountable number of namelessContinue reading “Fatal Pronunciation: The Shibboleth Story”

Vltava, Sázava, Mumlava: A Mumble of Voices Almost Lost

Local rivers, specifically just one bit of them, have had me reflecting on lost language and the flow of time again. No one will be surprised by this. I recently descended from the heights of an enjoyable weekend in Krkonoše, a very hilly national park in the Czech Republic. Tucked up between two angles ofContinue reading “Vltava, Sázava, Mumlava: A Mumble of Voices Almost Lost”