Geordie Mysteries—And the Mysteries of the Geordie Dialect

May 14, 2015 by

Geordie Mysteries—And the Mysteries of the Geordie Dialect

In my earlier post on the geography of detective fiction, I noted a trend for mystery novels and TV shows, especially in Britain, to be set in peaceful locations where in actuality relatively few murders occur. Instead, writers and...

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Disentangling “The Tangled Roots of English”

Feb 28, 2015 by

Disentangling “The Tangled Roots of English”

[I am deeply grateful to Martin W. Lewis for the inspiring discussions of, and extensive collaboration on, the issues examined here.] Several articles, written by historical linguists, geneticists and archeologists, have been...

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Is “massive migration from the steppe … a source for Indo-European lan...

Feb 18, 2015 by

Is “massive migration from the steppe … a source for Indo-European languages in Europe”?

[I am deeply grateful to Martin W. Lewis for the inspiring discussions of, and extensive collaboration on, the issues examined here, as well as for editing the draft of this post.] The Biorxiv online has recently published an article...

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Gagauz, the Turkic-Speaking Minority of Moldova

Dec 14, 2014 by

Gagauz, the Turkic-Speaking Minority of Moldova

The recent parliamentary election that took place in Moldova on 30 November 2014 has drawn my attention to an often-overlooked ethno-linguistic group: the Gagauz. As can be seen from the ElectoralGeography.com map reproduced on the...

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“The Game” Is On—And They Get Russian (Mostly) Right!

Dec 1, 2014 by

“The Game” Is On—And They Get Russian (Mostly) Right!

Long-time readers of my blog know that I tend to kvetch about the ways that Russian is represented in books and films. But I have finally found a show that I not only like, but can also praise for their remarkably well-done Russian...

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Does Basque Descend from Dogon?

Nov 28, 2014 by

I was recently asked to comment on media reports about the work of Basque linguist Jaime Martín Martín that purports to show that Basque descended from a West African language, Dogon. The Ethnologue classifies Dogon as 19 distinct...

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