Athenians, Amazons, and Solecisms: Language Contact in Herodotus

Abstract:This article examines the relationship between Herodotus' observations about languages that change through contact with each other and modern understandings of these phenomena. Concepts invoked include imperfect learning, diglossia, linguistic convergence, mixed languages, borrowing, and language death. Not only does Herodotus appear to describe (if sometimes vaguely) real phenomena, but there is frequently external evidence for language contact in the geographic and cultural areas that he describes. Herodotus emerges as an author capable of treating language in sophisticated ways, both as a tool and as a subject of study in its own right.