Via the Log I learn of the existence of “a comprehensive, reliable grammar of Sogdian, which is cause for celebration”:
Yoshida Yutaka 吉田豊 2022. Sogudogo bunpō kōgi ソグド語文法講義
[Lectures on Sogdian Grammar]. Kyoto: Rinsen. iv, 500 pp.
ISBN: 978-4-653-04188-7.
Happily, Adam Alvah Catt has written a three-page review at Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae; a few paragraphs are quoted at the Log, but I recommend reading the whole thing. Here’s the conclusion:
Yoshida Yutaka’s new publication is an invaluable contribution in that it combines step-by-step instruction, exercises, a reference grammar, a dictionary, a reader, and a bibliography of research into a single volume. One can only hope for an English version of this book so that it can reach a wider audience.
I join Catt in his hope! Incidentally, Martin Schwartz says in the Log comment thread that the Sogdic component of Yaghnobi “is VERY conservative, much more than the Sogdian varieties of Turfan-Dunhuang, Mt. Mugh, etc.,” and adds that “Ossetic is WAY different from Sogdian (and Yaghnobi), and bears the baggage of Caucasic influence, at least phonologically and lexically.”
I was glad that it is NOT in English:)
I just thought: “maybe, I’ll learn Japanese this way”.
Sodgian always reminds me of the character Roy Calvert (a Sogdian expert) from C P Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, who was apparently based on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Allberry
The identifiable portrayal does not seem to have gone down well with Allberry’s family; Calvert is represented as manic-depressive (at a particularly low point, he freaks out about not being able to remember the Sogdian for “fish.”) Allberry apparently wasn’t.
Not sure what to say about Snow’s novel sequence. It has its moments (but the last volume was so bad I couldn’t finish it, despite the investment of having read all the rest.) I suppose the fact that I remember Roy Calvert despite it being decades since I read The Light and the Dark must mean something, though.
Well, a close friend of mine once wrote a script for a historical (adventure?) movie set in Sogdiana….