Alexarchus the Conlanger(?)
From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
Date: | Monday, December 11, 2006, 0:15 |
I came across a piece about a certain Hellenistic aristocrat named Alexarchus in
Peter Green's "Alexander to Actium". This apparently excentric gentleman, a
brother of Cassander, is supposed to have have founded an utopianist city
called Ouranopolis ("City of Heaven") on the Athos peninsula, for which he is
said to have made a language; Green writes that "he was a linguist, who
invented a language for his foundation: a specimen perserved by Athenaeus looks
like the Greek equivalent of Anthony Burgess's Nadsat in _A Clockwork Orange_,
foreign loanwords oddly compounded. It would be interesting to know if he
actually got people to talk that way."
Anyone here know more about this intriguing project?
Andreas
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