Cant, slang, cryptolects, jargon and the like are the seedy underbelly of historical linguistics, populated as they are by actors and thieves and carnies and gypsies and merchants and various other undesirables — sometimes (Polari, e.g.) all at once.
But why, I wonder, is the Bron (or Burón) argot spoken only by “itinerant coppersmiths and fabric merchants in Miranda de Avilés, Fornela, and Auvergne”?
Classical Sanskrit was defined by the grammarian Pāṇini and exemplified by the language of the epic literature especially including the Mahabharata and the Rāmāyaṇa. But the theory was always tighter than the practice, and the language of the epics includes non-Paninian forms, usually influences from spoken language(s), which eventually became Hindi/Urdu and other north Indian languages.
But it’s a little bit of a problem: how do you handle these exceptions? Traditional scholarship calls these forms “ārṣa”, “of the ṛṣi”. As I understand it, it’s a case of “do as I say, not as I say.”
Eileen Hesseling writes:
There are thousands of wonderful, excellent books in Spanish for children and that every year more and more treasures are published. The problem is not lack of good books, but rather how to learn about what is being published in other countries and where to find them here in the US. Yes, there are tedious, didactic books in Spanish, but tedious, didactic books are published in every language, even English! I don’t know how buyers for Borders or Barnes & Noble, etc. learn about what is quality literature for children that is published worldwide, but after browsing through bookstores in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Santiago de Chile, my hunch is that they just buy whatever the US publishers deliver to them. NOT quality books. As a result, the public here thinks that that is all there is. Meanwhile the production is as rich and as varied as any in the world.
Below is a very short list of some of my favorite books followed by places to buy books and finally, sites that contain reviews of books.
The Green Knight is a character in a story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The Green Knight rides into their hall, in Jessie Weston’s translation:
Via the always-worth-reading Language Log, an article entitled “A genome-wide survey does not show the genetic distinctiveness of Basques,” and a link to a more-readable discussion entitled “The Basques may not be who we think they are.” The short summary is:
Our analysis showed that, when a genome-wide perspective is applied, Basques are not particularly differentiated from other Iberian populations.