Greek Dialogues Online - "An uncommonly woundabout way of getting anywheah”: on investigating Greek language history, with an emphasis on Tsakonian

 

 

The GDO seminar for March, features Dr. Ioanna Manolessou (Academy of Athens) presenting entertaining and fascinating insights into Tsakonian, one of the oldest and most intriguing linguistic varieties of (Modern?) Greek.

Hailed by the majority of scholars as the only surviving trace of the ancient Doric dialect, and identified by an appellation of puzzling provenance (to which Greek, Arabic, Slavic, Saxon and even Sanskrit etymologies have been attributed, with little success,) Tsakonian still defies linguists and historians alike with the question of its origin, status and development.

This presentation offers an insight into the most recent research on the history of Tsakonian, based on new data. It leads us through tax records of the Ottoman Empire, travellers’ journals forgotten in the archives of the Vatican, the first edition of the Iliad, and a variety of other written and oral sources, in an effort to shed light on this unique facet of the Greek language. 

Event Access Details

Topic: Greek Dialogues Online - "An uncommonly woundabout way of getting anywheah”: on investigating Greek language history, with an emphasis on Tsakonian
Time: Tuesday, 15th March, 2022 at 06:30 PM GMT

Join Zoom Meeting
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/95022694020?pwd=TTQwc2NWNjBQTmlndzlLV0g0Smxidz09

Meeting ID: 950 2269 4020
Passcode: 744752

 

Livestreaming on:

: The Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies Channel

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Header image based on: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modern_Greek_dialects_en.svg by Fut.Perf. translated from Image:Griechenland_Dialekte.svg, by User:Pitichinaccio (GFDL). Linguistic data from Brian Newton: The Generative Interpretation of Dialect. A Study of Modern Greek Phonology, Cambridge 1972, ISBN 0521084970