Hanibalo kaj la Glaciejoj

…de la Environmental Research Web:

...Amazingly, the Romans managed to create an empire that lasted 500 years without having a word for glacier. Amazing to me as a glaciologist, that is. I can see that there would not be much call for such a word in ancient Greek – all those sun-drenched islands – but the Romans needed to cross the Alps regularly, and on one vividly-recorded occasion to cope with Hannibal and his elephants.

A few articles ago, I was able to trace the word glacier back to 1332 on the strength of documentary evidence, and more conjecturally to some date in the post-Roman period when some unknown speaker of Franco-provencal first uttered a word from which our modern form could have descended…

…How could Polybius, who writes proudly of how he made the passage of the Alps so as to see for himself the terrain he was immortalizing, not have noticed the weird whitish things hanging from the ridges and creeping down the valleys? Surely the local inhabitants, if they had a word for them either in Latin or, more probably, a Celtic language akin to modern Breton and Welsh, would have given him the word?...

David Crystal kaj la Kimralingvo

…de CentralJersey.com:

David Crystal thinks a lot about words and how we use them. Mr. Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales.

He has written more than 100 books, but perhaps is best known for his Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

Don’t be put off, however, by the image of a stuffy academic. Mr. Crystal has also written several marvelous books that open minds to the power, complexity and delight of language…

….“Words, Words, Words” (Oxford, 2006) shares the author’s passion that developed early on as he discovered the beauty of his family’s native Welsh — which he initially did not speak.

He credits his Uncle Joe, who did speak Welsh, for turning him on to the study of language when, as a young child, he asked why an adult chaperone had called the children “plant.”

His Uncle Joe told him “that ‘plant’ meant ‘children’ — and then, perhaps sensing an interest, he went to tell me that my name was ‘Dafydd’ in Welsh. I took it in avidly.”

Mr. Crystal went on to learn “Welsh along side English, and Welsh English along side English English. And Irish English ... my mother’s side were Irish” which led to exposure to Irish (Gaelic) and — from the church — Latin...

Sankta Gallus kaj Pádraigín Ní hUalacháin

...de la blogo, From the Balcony, de Máirtín Ó Muilleoir:

The Irish manuscripts at St Gallen are the oldest in the world and among the most beautiful depicting in stylish script and with great ornamentation the story of the Gospels.

The Irish monks, who worked under a vow of silence did write small poems and notes in the glosses. One, said Frau Hufenus, wrote "rough parchment, thin ink", giving out about the quality of his tools while another, correcting a poorly finished page, wrote: "too much beer".

Sean-nós singer in residence at the Queen's Séamus Heaney Library, Pádraigín Ní hUalacháin, had put poems from the glosses into music and sang for the packed Cultúrlann audience last night — a courageous and generous act given that her son Macdara was in hospital in Italy being operated on for a broken back suffered during a climbing accident in the Alps. Reports from the hospital were good. Go raibh sé ar ais a sheanléim gan mhoill.