I’ve read several reviews of The Most Secret Memory of Men, the recent English translation (by Lara Vergnaud) of La plus secrète mémoire des hommes, by the Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and they’ve all made me want to read the book. But Ursula Lindsey’s NYRB review (archived) does so even more effectively by quoting a longish extract that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. The protagonist, Diégane Latyr Faye, wants to be a great (French) writer, and he is inspired by discovering the long-buried work of T.C. Elimane: “The few known facts about Elimane are that he was from Senegal; that in 1938 in Paris, at age twenty-three, he published an acclaimed novel, The Labyrinth of Inhumanity; that the novel was embroiled in a scandal of some sort; and that he disappeared, never to be heard from again.” Lindsey says:

Sarr makes Diégane well aware of how ridiculous and even pathetic it is to care this much about writing—to want, more than anything in the world, to write a great book. But he also makes him a true believer, a man who, high on an unspecified drug one night on a Paris bench, receives a visitation from literature itself “in the guise of a woman of terrifying beauty,” only to be reminded by an inner voice

that desire isn’t enough, that talent isn’t enough, that ambition isn’t enough, that being a good writer isn’t enough, that being well-read isn’t enough, that being famous isn’t enough, that being highly cultured isn’t enough, that being wise isn’t enough, that commitment isn’t enough, that patience isn’t enough, that getting drunk off pure life isn’t enough, that retreating from life isn’t enough, that believing in your dreams isn’t enough, that dissecting reality isn’t enough, that intelligence isn’t enough, that stirring hearts isn’t enough, that strategy isn’t enough, that communication isn’t enough, that even having something to say isn’t enough, nor is working tirelessly enough; and the voice also says that all of that might be and often is a condition, an advantage, an attribute, a strength, of course, but then the voice adds that in essence none of those qualities are ever enough when it’s a question of literature, because writing always demands something else, something else, something else.

Now, I’m not one of those people who salivate when they see a long list in a novel; I generally like prose to keep moving, not stand still and sparkle. So the fact that this passage made me read it out loud and then go find the French and read that out loud made me realize I very much want to read the whole thing. In French.

Here’s the original:
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Laudator Temporis Acti presents a quote from Josephus’ Jewish Wars (5.272, tr. H. St. J. Thackeray):

Watchmen were accordingly posted by them on the towers, who gave warning whenever the engine was fired and the stone in transit, by shouting in their native tongue, “Sonny’s coming”; whereupon those in the line of fire promptly made way and lay down, owing to which precautions the stone passed harmlessly through and fell in their rear.

σκοποὶ οὖν αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν πύργων καθεζόμενοι προεμήνυον, ὁπότε σχασθείη τὸ ὄργανον καὶ ἡ πέτρα φέροιτο, τῇ πατρίῳ γλώσσῃ βοῶντες “ὁ υἱὸς ἔρχεται.” διίσταντο δὲ καθ’ οὓς ᾔει καὶ προκατεκλίνοντο, καὶ συνέβαινε φυλαττομένων ἄπρακτον διεκπίπτειν τὴν πέτραν.

He also provides Thackeray’s note on “Sonny’s coming”:

Probably, as Reland suggests, ha-eben (“the stone”) was corrupted to habben (“the son”); compare similar jocose terms, such as “Black Maria,” “Jack Johnson,” used in the Great War.

That’s wonderful, and I really hope it’s true.

This is very cool and brand new: Heindio Uesugi’s Old Avestan Dictionary is available as a free pdf from this page (in Japanese; just click the download button immediately below the image of the book cover). It looks very well done; here’s the beginning of the Preface, which explains its history:

The Old Avestan Dictionary (OAD) is an attempt at a lexicographic synthesis of Old Avestan studies since the Altiranisches Wörterbuch (1904) by Christian Bartholomae (1855-1925) with a particular focus on aiding the elucidation of the Gāthās based on the line of analysis laid down by Helmut Humbach (1921-2017). The dictionary is accompanied by a new annotated translation of the Gāthās to further facilitate the general reader in discerning the sense behind the respective terms and passages when reading, reciting, or studying the original Avestan texts.

This dictionary is the fruit of a seed planted by Karl Hoffmann (1915-1996). In the years following the war, Hoffmann resumed his research on Vedic texts, which had been interrupted by his military service, and in particular on the Vedic injunctive verbal mood, which would later produce his habilitation thesis Der Injunktiv im Veda (1951, but not published until 1967). He had the idea of completing this work by citing the Avestan parallels.

While he worked on the Vedas, he asked his mother to collect all the Avestan verbal forms along with their translations from Bartholomae’s dictionary into a card file so that he could analyze them. In going through the Avestan lexicon based on what he had discovered in Vedic, he noticed that Bartholomae (along with other scholars of his time) seemed to lack a clear idea of the single forms and of the verbal system of the Avesta, and in particular of the Gāthās.

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Marcin Wichary featured here a decade ago in a post on the pilcrow; now I’m happy to present his The hardest working font in Manhattan. It begins:

In 2007, on my first trip to New York City, I grabbed a brand-new DSLR camera and photographed all the fonts I was supposed to love. I admired American Typewriter in all of the I <3 NYC logos, watched Akzidenz Grotesk and Helvetica fighting over the subway signs, and even caught an occasional appearance of the flawlessly-named Gotham, still a year before it skyrocketed in popularity via Barack Obama’s first campaign.

But there was one font I didn’t even notice, even though it was everywhere around me.

Last year in New York, I walked over 100 miles and took thousands of photos of one and one font only.

The font’s name is Gorton.

If you care anything about fonts, urban history, or, hell, good writing, I urge you to devour the whole thing and enjoy the splendid collection of images. I really should read him more often…

Y sent me a link to Cid Swanenvleugel’s The pre‑Roman elements of the Sardinian lexicon (LOT, 2025; free pdf download), saying “It looks ambitious, and if not all true or even verifiable, at least interesting,” and I agree. Here’s the Summary (pp. 535-36):

One of the questions addressed in this study is whether the assumption of a single pre-Roman language, besides Punic, can account for all of the non-inherited lexical material. I have found that there is no geographical patterning in the phonological features found in words of pre-Roman origin. We can, however, discern a near-complementary geographical distribution in the pre-Roman prefixes *k(V)- and *θ(i)-, which have been argued in § 9.1.3 to be variants of one and the same pre-Roman morpheme (cf. also Swanenvleugel 2024). This prefix and other accepted pre-Roman morphemes exhibit an island-wide distribution. Pre-Roman Sardinian words, excluding punicisms with accepted cognates in other languages also occur across Sardinia. All of these findings constitute evidence supporting the hypothesis of a single language, or at least closely related language varieties, having existed all across Sardinia at the time of its romanization. This language coexisted with Punic. The coexistence of other languages with a smaller distribution cannot be ruled out.

The reality of many of the previously proposed phonological and morphological features attributed to a pre-Roman language in Sardinia cannot be confirmed based on the lexical material investigated in this study. This includes the pre-Roman vowel harmony proposed by Serra (1960; cf. § 8.4.2). The same goes for a number of putative pre-Roman suffixes (§ 9.2). What can be maintained is the pre-Roman phoneme *θ, the existence of word-final consonants, and various morphemes, such as *k(V)-/*θ(i)-, *-́Vr, and *-(V)s-.

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Kim Willsher writes for the Guardian:

The French government has been accused of making some of its new language tests for foreigners seeking to stay in the country so hard even its own citizens would fail them.

An impact report on a new immigration law expected to come into force before the end of the year suggested the stricter requirements could lead to 60,000 people being refused permission to remain in France.

The tests, which cost around €100 (£83.20), are part of bill passed a year ago, that includes tighter border controls and tougher measures to expel foreign migrants. Ministers argue its primary aim is to promote greater integration of foreigners. […]

An investigation by FranceInfo suggested the levels required would challenge even native speakers. It sent 10 French volunteers, including a literature student with five years of post-baccalauréat higher education, to sit the tests those seeking French nationality will face. Five failed the written test but passed the oral, while two failed to reach a level necessary to obtain their own nationality.

Félix Guyon, of the Thot school that helps refugees and asylum seekers learn French, said: “The level is far too high for most foreigners who are seeking nationality or papers to stay for a long period in France.”

Bathrobe, who sent me the link, complained about similar tests in English; this kind of thing (Wikipedia) is a convenient and superficially reasonable way for bigots to keep out those they consider riffraff — ou bien, si vouz voulez, racaille.

I was reading Nick Paumgarten’s fascinating New Yorker article “The Long Flight to Teach an Endangered Ibis Species to Migrate” (archived) when I had to pause to look up a word: “On the other side of the chapel was the swimming pool, surrounded by fig and plum trees and a wire fence vined with grapes, and a kind of galilee that looked out over the foothills of the Pyrenees.” (Emphasis added.) What was this “galilee”? Well, according to Wikipedia, it’s “a chapel or porch at the north end of some churches. Its historical purpose is unclear.” (The article is just a stub, but there’s a nice photo of the galilee porch at Lincoln Cathedral.) The OED (entry from 1898) begs to differ:

A porch or chapel at the entrance of a church.

According to some authorities, the Latin word was also applied to the western extremity of the nave, as being a part regarded as less sacred than the rest.

The etymology:

< Old French galilee, < medieval Latin galilæa (Du Cange), a use of the proper name (see Galilean adj.¹). Possibly the allusion is to Galilee as an outlying portion of the Holy Land, or to the phrase ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ (Matthew iv. 15).

It’s certainly an obscure word, and it’s a bit cheeky to use it casually as though every New Yorker reader was familiar with the terminology of ecclesiastical architecture, but on the other hand it’s resonant and works well in the sentence, and I enjoy learning new words, so good for Paumgarten.

Later on he uses an excellent word from an entirely different register:

Schnapsi was the flock’s schlimazel. “In the beginning, you could always tell Schnapsi from the others, a white bird covered in shit,” Babsi said.

If you’re unfamiliar with schlimazel, here you go. (I learned it, along with so much else, from Leo Rosten.) The OED (entry revised 2019) has a good selection of citations:
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Over at Wordorigins, in a thread on the term mind meld, Syntinen Laulu commented:

Surely meld in the card-game sense (it’s used in the game of tarot, too) is an entirely unrelated word, cognate with Dutch and German melden, to report. (Comparable to declare in bridge or bezique.)

To anyone in the Central European side of my family, the word is unshakeably associated with the Good Soldier Svejk, who routinely prefixes anything he says to anyone in authority with ‘Ich melde gehorsamst’ – ‘I report most respectfully’. (I have often wondered if he says it in German in the original – did Czech soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army have to use German phrases such as this? And if not, what dies he say in Czech? Anyone here know?)

I responded:

The full novel in Czech is here; turns out he uses both the German expression (“Ich melde gehorsamst, Herr Feldwebel…”) and the Czech equivalent, Poslušně hlásím (“‘Poslušně hlásím, pane feldkurát,’ řekl Švejk”). I’m glad you asked — what an interesting situation!

I report it here both for the bilingualism and for the fact that the text is online — I no longer have to (very faintly) regret having given away my Czech copy of the novel.

Addendum. Googling turned up this splended occurrence in a (Habsburg) Hungarian context, from Péter Hajdu’s “Hungarian Writers on the Military Mission of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans: Viceroy Kállay and Good Soldier Tömörkény” (Hungarian Studies 21 [2007]: 297-314):
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Bathrobe sent me a link to Joshua Hammer’s Smithsonian article about the decipherment of cuneiform (archived), calling it “not new, but thrillingly written,” and he’s right — I thought I knew the basics of the story, but I now have a much clearer picture (and a burning dislike of the egregious Henry Rawlinson). It starts:

On a late-summer day in 1856, a letter carrier stepped from a mail coach in front of a three-story townhouse in Mayfair, in central London. Crossing the threshold, the courier handed a wax-sealed envelope to a clerk. The missive was addressed to Edwin Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, one of Europe’s leading research institutions.

The postman had no way of knowing that the envelope would help rewrite the story of civilization’s origins and ignite a contest for international renown. At stake: the immortality conferred on those who make a once-in-a-century intellectual breakthrough. Three men—driven by bound-less curiosity, a love of risk, and the distinctive demons of aspiration and ambition—were most responsible for making the contest possible.

And here’s a bit from the middle to whet your appetite:

Talbot dispatched a letter—the letter that would change everything—to London’s Royal Asiatic Society, offering to send in his own translation and have a panel of judges compare his work with Rawlinson’s. If the versions turned out to be identical—or even close—“it must indicate that they have Truth for their basis,” he wrote. After a negotiation with Rawlinson and the British Museum, Talbot received a lithograph copy of the inscriptions in January 1857 and got to work.

On March 21, two dozen members of the society converged on 5 New Burlington Street for their regular Saturday conclave, filing through the spacious interior, checking their topcoats and hats, and making their way to a ground-floor gallery.

Go ahead and read it (though you may skim over the background info on Middle Eastern history, as I did, if you’re familiar with it), and remember the name of the brilliant Hincks, cheated out of his rightful glory!

Laudator Temporis Acti sent me to Tom Keeline and Tyler Kirby, “Auceps syllabarum: A Digital Analysis of Latin Prose Rhythm” (Journal of Roman Studies 109 [2019]:161-204), which looks like a useful and well-done study; the abstract:

In this article we describe a series of computer algorithms that generate prose rhythm data for any digitised corpus of Latin texts. Using these algorithms, we present prose rhythm data for most major extant Latin prose authors from Cato the Elder through the second century ᴀ.ᴅ. Next we offer a new approach to determining the statistical significance of such data. We show that, while only some Latin authors adhere to the Ciceronian rhythmic canon, every Latin author is ‘rhythmical’ — they just choose different rhythms. Then we give answers to some particular questions based on our data and statistical approach, focusing on Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger. In addition to providing comprehensive new data on Latin prose rhythm, presenting new results based on that data and confirming certain long-standing beliefs, we hope to make a contribution to a discussion of digital and statistical methodology in the study of Latin prose rhythm and in Classics more generally. The Supplementary Material available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075435819000881) contains an appendix with tables, data and code. This appendix constitutes a static ‘version of record’ for the data presented in this article, but we expect to continue to update our code and data; updates can be found in the repository of the Classical Language Toolkit (https://github.com/cltk/cltk).

But what clinched the decision to post about it was the title; I am not Latinist enough to recognize it, but Prof. Google tells me that auceps syllabarum, literally ‘bird-catcher of syllables,’ has the transferred sense “a person who quibbles over words, argues over semantics or other technicalities; a pettifogger.” Cicero, in de Oratore 1, 55, 236 (about a third of the way down the left-hand page here), calls a lawyer “leguleius quidam cautus et acutus, praeco actionum, cantor formularum, auceps syllabarum” (J.S. Watson: “a sort of wary and acute legalist, an instructor in actions, a repeater of formulae, a catcher at syllables”), and the phrase seems to have appealed to lawyers and others, as you will see from the many uses found in a Google Books search (e.g., from Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Vol. 1 (1825), p. 235: “a study in which more than the mere ‘auceps syllabarum’ might delight”). I will try to remember to add it to my stock of learnèd insults.

For those interested in the article by Keeline and Kirby, here is the start:
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