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...

read more

Aspiration in New Julfa Armenian

Apr 19, 2012 by

Aspiration in New Julfa Armenian

A couple of days ago, I attended a very interesting talk by Sebouh Aslanian on New Julfa Armenians and their trade networks, stretching from Amsterdam to Manila in the Philippines. New Julfa is an Armenian settlement in Isfahan,...

read more

On H-dropping again

Feb 6, 2012 by

On H-dropping again

In an earlier post, I mentioned H-dropping as one of the characteristic features of Cockney, the lower class variety of English from the streets of London’s East End. Recall Professor Higgins’ complaints: “Hear them down in...

read more

Birch Bark Letters and the Second Slavic Palatalization, part 3

Sep 14, 2011 by

At the end of the previous posting, we’ve reached a conundrum: the Old Novgorod dialect must have diverged from the rest of the Slavic family early enough to avoid the application of the Second Slavic Palatalization, yet not...

read more

Birch Bark Letters and the Second Slavic Palatalization, part 2

Sep 13, 2011 by

At the end of the previous posting, I said that the Old Novgorod KѢLЪ, the Modern Russian CELYJ and the English whole are all cognates, but how are they related to each other? This is where the Second Slavic Palatalization comes in....

read more