Year in Philology 2014.

January 19, 2015 by 17 Comments

One of the things I love about the internet is the fact that people immersed in some specialized subject will share their knowledge of the good stuff in the field. I present the estimable Memiyawanzi’s This Year in Philology 2014; surely anyone who enjoys LH will find at least one item of interest. It ranges from Stephen Colvin’s A Brief History of Ancient Greek to Rupert J. E. Thompson’s “Orations for Honorary Degrees” (which “contains the texts of the Latin orations given for honorary degrees granted in Cambridge this last June”), with stops at “Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases,” “Two New Poems of Sappho” (“probably the highlight of the philological year”; seen at LH here), and other places. I’m already looking forward to next year’s roundup!

Comments

  1. MattF says
    January 20, 2015 at 10:45 am

    I’m so pleased to see that Mitsuko Uchida was awarded a degree. Yippee for her!

  2. Shelley says
    January 20, 2015 at 1:08 pm

    Thanks, I had missed the Sappho.

    Nothing like a good (and female) poet to undercut bloviation.

  3. Lars says
    January 20, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    There are some interesting non-parallelisms between the English and the Latin in the Cambrigde texts.

    I noticed in the bit about Ian McKellen that the phrases for activism (in rem publicam et in commoda consociorum incumbere) and for gay and lesbian rights got quite cumbersome, and as far as I could see the specific references to Stonewall and chapter 28 of the Local Government Act were quietly elided — no wonder, really, the Latin is already twice the length of the English.

    And for Mitsuko Uchida, “most virtuoso player of the piano” (plectrocymbali artificiosissima pulsatrix) comes out as just “pianist” in English. That’s not Latin’s fault.

  4. Bill W says
    January 21, 2015 at 7:49 pm

    “I’m so pleased to see that Mitsuko Uchida was awarded a degree.” Me too!.

  5. David Marjanović says
    January 21, 2015 at 9:04 pm

    From there:

    Although it was actually published for the first time in 2013, I only recently discovered that a new Gothic palimpsest was discovered in a codex of Augustine in Bologna. It’s always exciting to find new material for a language with a corpus as restricted as Gothic.

    Awesome!!! Does anyone know if it’s just another Bible passage or something original?

  6. languagehat says
    January 21, 2015 at 9:11 pm

    I too would like to know! I really enjoyed my Gothic class forty-plus years ago.

  7. John Cowan says
    January 21, 2015 at 9:37 pm

    Mr. Verb’s writeup with links. It is indeed biblical text, but it is textually independent of Argenteus, which means we now have a few parallel passages.

  8. David Marjanović says
    January 22, 2015 at 8:31 am

    Nice!!!

  9. languagehat says
    January 22, 2015 at 10:13 am

    Yes indeed! Don’t miss this nicely marked-up version.

  10. Y says
    January 22, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    Coming up in 2015, hopefully: more Herculaneum papyri. Hold on to your seats.

  11. languagehat says
    January 22, 2015 at 4:13 pm

    Yes, that’s quite exciting.

  12. David Marjanović says
    January 22, 2015 at 8:13 pm

    Yes indeed! Don’t miss this nicely marked-up version.

    Wow, there’s a þþ in there. That wasn’t known to exist at all, was it?

  13. languagehat says
    January 22, 2015 at 9:42 pm

    Oh, sure it was; aiþþau ‘oder’ is an old friend.

    Me, I like saying qiþiþ. Qiþiþ qiþiþ qiþiþ!

  14. John Cowan says
    January 23, 2015 at 4:36 pm

    O, O, qiþiþ þweitir þan wein…

  15. languagehat says
    January 23, 2015 at 5:31 pm

    A hit for the Webjans, as I recall.

  16. John Cowan says
    January 23, 2015 at 5:39 pm

    Palpably.

  17. mattitiahu says
    January 24, 2015 at 5:23 am

    Thanks for the share, Mr. Hat!

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