Ling Lore

The #history and #geography of #languages, #alphabets, and #writing systems;

#Indigenous and minority languages;
#language families;
#linguistics;
#toponyms

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 6th of November is the birthday of Serbian linguist and language reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.

His birthplace village of Tršić, which was destroyed by Ottoman soldiers during the Serbian Revolution, has been rebuilt and made into a museum to Karadžić and his work.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

Some antique maps label the #KaraSea the '#Scythian Ocean', owing to #Greek accounts placing the #Scythians near the northern edge of the world.

Some also use '#TabinSea' based on a reference by the #Roman author #Pliny the Elder in book VI of his 'Natural History'.

1606 map:

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 10th of October is #FinnishLiteratureDay and the birthday of author Aleksis Kivi (1834 – 1872) who wrote the first significant #novel in the #Finnish #language, Seitsemän veljestä ('Seven Brothers'). To this day #Kivi is considered one of 🇫🇮#Finland's greatest authors.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 9th of October is celebrated as #LeifEriksonDay in the 🇺🇸#US, 🇮🇸#Iceland, and parts of 🇨🇦#Canada.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

🇰🇷#SouthKorea celebrates the 9th of October as #HangeulDay, aka #KoreanAlphabetDay, marking the day in 1446 when King #Sejong the Great of #Korea published the (#Chinese-language) #Hunminjeongeum, describing his newly invented script for the #Korean #language.

#HangulDay

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 30th of September is #InternationalTranslationDay and the Christian feast day of #Jerome, the patron saint of #translators.

Born in #Dalmatia (present-day #Slovenia), he worked in #Palestine where completed his #translation of the #Bible from #Hebrew to #Latin around 405 CE.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

In 972 #Byzantine Emperor John I #Tzimiskes captured and burned #Bulgaria's capital, #Preslav, destroying the #literary school and its trove of early #Slavic #literature, including all of the original works of #ConstantineOfPreslav. (Reproductions kept elsewhere survived.)

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The Council Of Europe (@coe) and the #EuropeanUnion celebrate the 26th of September as the #European Day of #Languages (#EDLangs) to promote #Europe's rich #linguistic #diversity and to encourage #LanguageLearning.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 23rd of September is celebrated in 🇰🇬#Kyrgyzstan as #KyrgyzLanguageDay, commemorating the day in 1989 when the #Kyrgyz #Soviet Socialist Republic recognised Kyrgyz as the state #language.

Kyrgyz is a #Kipchak #Turkic language with ~4.3m speakers in #CentralAsia.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 22nd of September is the birthday of the slavist linguist Yuriy Ivanovich Venelin. He was born in 1802 in the village of Velka Tibava in Sub-Carpathian Rus', in the Kingdom of Hungary. (It's now the village of Tybava in Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine.)

[Ling Lore @linglore]

#Okinawa Prefecture in 🇯🇵#Japan recognises the 18th of September as #しまくとぅばの日 #IslandLanguageDay in celebration of #Okinawan and other #indigenous #Ryukyuan #languages of the #Ryukyu Islands.

The languages are in steep decline as the population shifts to #Japanese.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The government of 🇮🇳#India celebrates the 14th of September as #HindiDivas, marking the day in 1949 when the country adopted #Hindi written in the #Devanagari script as its official #language.

(#English is an additional official language for government work.)

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The #KaraSea is part of the #ArcticOcean east of the #BarentsSea. It's named for the #KaraRiver, which flows from #Russia's Pay-Khoy Ridge into #Baydaratskaya Bay.

'#Kara' derives from a word meaning 'hummocked / mounded ice' in the #Nenets branch of the #Uralic #languages.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

Written in #Cyrillic, the #CodexSuprasliensis is the largest known canon manuscript in #OldChurchSlavonic. Its #language follows the norm of the #Preslav #Literary School, where it might have been created in the 10th century, probably based in part on earlier #Glagolitic sources.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The #AustroHungarian #NorthPole expedition (1872–74) named the #AustrianStrait and #FranzJosefLand after #Austria and its emperor.

They named #MarkhamSound after #British explorer #AlbertHastingsMarkham (the designer of #NewZealand's flag 🇳🇿).

[Image: https://t.co/uYvlpVzxVq]

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The 8th of September is @UNESCO International #LiteracyDay.

The global adult #literacy rate is ~86.3%.

🇨🇺#Cuba has the highest adult literacy rate (99.7%) in the Americas.

🇬🇶#EquatorialGuinea (95.3%) has #Africa's highest rate.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

Like the #ValunTablet from #Cres, the #PlominTablet in #Istria also shows the confluence of Romance and #Slavic cultures in #mediaeval #Croatia. An 11th-century #OldChurchSlavonic inscription in #Glagolitic was added to an existing relief of #Silvanus, a #Roman god of the forest.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The Jackson-Harmsworth expedition (1894–97) was based on the misconception that #FranzJosefLand extended to the #NorthPole. The discovery of the #QueenVictoriaSea to the north dashed their hopes of reaching the Pole by sledge.

The expedition also discovered the #BritishChannel.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

🇲🇩#Moldova celebrates the 31st of August as #LimbaNoastră (Our Language), marking the day in 1989 when mass demonstrations compelled the Moldavian #Soviet Socialist Republic to make #Moldovan (a variety of #Romanian) written in the #Latin script the republic's official #language.

[Ling Lore @linglore]

The #ValunTablet is an 11th-century gravestone found on the island of #Cres in #Croatia. The inscription bears two #languages: #OldChurchSlavonic written in the #Glagolitic script, and #Latin written in the Latin script.

It marked the grave of three generations of a family.