The Suda - The Byzantine Encyclopedia Written in the Year 1100

The Suda, the massive tome written by a Byzantine scholar around the year 1100, was one of the world’s first encyclopedias and lexicons.

Created as both a syllabary of the Greek language and an overview of events in the known world up until that time, it is a benchmark in scholarship of the Medieval period.

The Suda, or Souda (Σοῦδα,) was formerly attributed to an author called Soudas or Souidas.

It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with a staggering 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The derivation of the word “Suda” is from the Byzantine Greek word souda, meaning “fortress” or “stronghold,” with the alternate name, Suidas, stemming from an error made by Eustathius, who mistook the title for the author’s name.

read more here @ the Greek Reporter

New Additions to the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary

Thousands of lost Yorkshire words dating as far back as medieval times and unearthed by a local historian have been published in a new volume of an ancient dictionary.

While everyone may be familiar with slang phrases such as "ey up", "'ow do" and "chuffed", pages of words not used in the region for centuries have remained lost in historical archives – until now.

Academics at the University of York's Borthwick Institute this Yorkshire Day have released a new volume of the the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary, which revives hundreds of words and idioms used in the region as far back as 1100 AD.

The new volume published more than 4,000 terms, dating from between 1100 and 1750, thanks to the life's work of local historian, Dr George Redmonds who died in 2018.

The new volume of the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is released today, as August 1 marks Yorkshire Day when towns and cities across the region fly the white rose flag.

read more @ the Yorkshire Post

It All Depends on 31 Syllables: A study of the power of Japan's medieval waka

From Obermann Center for Advanced Studies:

Imagine if your social stature and your livelihood were dependent on your ability to write poetry and refer to the work of other poets. If there were poetry competitions among the elite that decided one’s worthiness. Or if the entire direction of a nation could be changed via 31 syllables.

Japanese waka, a 31-syllable precursor to haiku, held just this kind of sway for several centuries. Its role in a power play between two imperial factions is at the heart of Kendra Strand’s current book project, An Unfamiliar Place: Poetry, Landscape, and Power in Medieval Japanese Travel Writing. Strand (Asian & Slavic Languages & Literatures, CLAS) is an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence this fall who is focused on three men who were writing between 1350 and 1375 in the Nanbokuchō era: Sōkyū, Nijō Yoshimoto, and Ashikaga Yoshiakira. A Buddhist priest, a statesman, and a shōgun, respectively, these men knew each other and alluded to one another in their writing.

read more here @ Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

Edo Nyland - Linguistic Archaeology

Author Edo Nyland explores the possible basics of many modern languages in his new book, "Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction" (published by Trafford Publishing). He lets readers take part in his adventures of recovering stone-age and medieval history by analysis of language.

This book is about the invention of ancient names and words. Virtually everyone's name hides an agglutinated shorthand sentence which can in most cases be recovered, as is explained with hundreds of examples. It explains the technique of decoding and translating many Ogam inscriptions found in Ireland and Scotland. It also discusses in detail the invented languages, showing their relationship with the universal language of the Neolithics.

read more here @ Broadway World - Books