Early American "Rosetta Stone"

A fascinating article in National Geographic reports on attempts to decipher a slate found at the 400-year old site in Virginia. Researchers speculate that it may be a kind of lexicon, of English and Algonquian. The article includes a link to the interactive site on colonial Jamestown, one of the best historical sites on the web (that's your editor speaking, not National Geographic). Check it out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100113-jamestown-tablet-slate-american-rosetta-stone/

New lexicon of Louisiana French

The Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities is an 892-page lexicon of Louisiana French that takes into account regional differences in the spoken language. The book has just been published by University Press of Mississippi; associate editor and Indiana University professor Kevin J. Rottet is a member of DSNA.

From the story in the Opelousas (Louisiana) Daily World: One of the side effects of the project was the affirmation of Louisiana French in its many forms to be a true and legitimate language, despite its deviations from modern standard French, assistant editor and University of Louisiana history professor Barry Ancelet said. "A very important thing to understand about this dictionary is that what many people frequently described or assumed were deformations, mispronunciations or misuses or slurring, when we start looking into them, very often it turned out to be a preservation of an old form," he said. "One of the things this process proved to us is that our French is very well-rooted and in some cases, has precise distinctions and precise meanings contemporary French has lost." You can read the whole story at http://tinyurl.com/yedjkup.

Languages on Life Support

"Last year, when 89-year-old Marie Smith Jones died, a language died with her. Jones was the last speaker of a south-central Alaskan language called Eyak..." For the rest of the story, visit the Chronicle of Higher Education's website at:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i38/38linguistics.htm

Violence at Greek-Macedonian Dictionary book launch

For more details about the incident, which occurred on 3 June 2009 at a promotional event for a 15,000-word dictionary prepared by Vasko Karadza, visit http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/6982/2/ .