Another post for the “better late than never” category – the project received a partner project visitor when Professor James Clackson (University of Cambridge, Classics and Comparative Philology) came to Helsinki to give a lecture (April 21st 2016). Prof. Clackson is famous and well known for many, many things (see better here), but for our project, the main interest lies in his study of language contacts, and especially the long-term effect of these.

James runs a project called Greek in Italy at the University of Cambridge. The project studies the contact effects between Greek and languages of Ancient Italy, among others the Sabellian language group. You can read more about the project and the other participants here.

In the project James concentrates on the early history of Latin and the treatment of Greek loanwords in it, compared with how they were treated in other Italic languages. The title of his presentation was Greek Loans in Italy, and it gave us a fascinating glimpse into e.g. some very interesting new etymologies in Etruscan, as well as an introduction to the situation and amount of Greek loanwords in other Italic languages compared with Latin. Afterwards, there was dinner and drinks. Good times!