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| via wikipedia |
I knew about exctinct languages - nobody speaks Latin anymore - and endangered languages? Any small ethnic population deals with that problem - but endangered extinct languages are a new thing to me. I was blogging around the blogs, looking for interesting Byzantine stuff and I came across Romaiika. It's classical, Byzantine-style Greek....and you find it on the coast on the Black sea near Trabzon, Turkey. (Empire of Trebizond on the map at right. Do you see New Armenia? That's the Cilicia of my MS.)
Originally a Byzantine successor state, Trebizond was eventually cut off from the rest of the Greek speaking world. Somehow a small muslim population in the mountains, exempted from Turkish/Greek population exchanges, has preserved the centuries old dialect of Romaiika. So Byzantine Greek is extinct, but it's not...it's endangered. This video explains the unique situation of Romaiika best:
Isn't that amazing? Did any of you think that Turkey could be so green? Did you know that Trabzon was probably part of the story of Jason and the Argonauts?
And hey! I'm joining a blog platform building Crusade over at Rach Writes. (You know I love Crusades, right?) There are tons of great bloggers out there, and some you have my back, but thought I'd add a few more to my little circle of commiserators, ya know...maybe learn a little more about my craft and the publishing world, etc.
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