Language diversity in one person

This morning, Languagehat links to an all-too-infrequently updated blog called Nephelokokkygia which deals with Greek and Latin philology.

What caught SC's eye was the first post, which starts off:

A few days ago I bought Vaiko Väänänen's Introduccion al latín vulgar which has proved quite an instructive little book. Already I've found a number of etymologies which were previously tricky. French “manger”, and by extension Esperanto “manĝi” comes from Vulg. Latin “manducare”

So it's a book written by a Finnish guy, in Spanish, about Latin. Not knowing anything about the author, he might just have been the child of immigrants to a Spanish-speaking country. Regardless, SC always finds it fascinating to imagine the life stories that could have happened to bring such unlikely groupings together.

Comments

[Christopher Culver]

"So it's a book written by a Finnish guy, in Spanish, about Latin. Not knowing anything about the author, he might just have been the child of immigrants to a Spanish-speaking country."

I grew up in the US and served in the Navy, but then travelled about Europe for a few years, and finally came to Spain to begin undergraduate studies in classics. I don't think I'm too exotic. I do read in several languages, but that's a necessary activity for any one who studies something like philology, which study is spread out over so many countries and languages.

Nepehelokokkygia will be updated nearly every day. It only looks like it is sparingly updated because some posts are from my old blog and I moved them over. In fact, the weblog has just be launched, so you won't waste your time keeping track of it in the future.