Thomas Olander
@sproghistorie.dk
Historical linguist. Associate professor of Indo-European Studies at the University of Copenhagen. – Telefon: 60 70 56 89.
Pinned
Thomas Olander
@sproghistorie.dk
· Nov 15
Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Folk-etymological speculations aside, I would like to (once again) draw attention that in δεινόσαυρος the compound member δεινός often glossed as 'terrible' has semantics of 'fearful; awe-inspiring, awesome', so δεινόσαυροι are, in fact, etymologically 'awesome lizards'.
November 14, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Folk-etymological speculations aside, I would like to (once again) draw attention that in δεινόσαυρος the compound member δεινός often glossed as 'terrible' has semantics of 'fearful; awe-inspiring, awesome', so δεινόσαυροι are, in fact, etymologically 'awesome lizards'.
Reposted by Thomas Olander
New Open Access Publication from my colleagues at UCPH!
Power, Gender and Mobility: Aspects of Indo-European Society. Edited by Riccardo Ginevra, Stefan Höfler, and Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Volume 10).
Power, Gender and Mobility: Aspects of Indo-European Society. Edited by Riccardo Ginevra, Stefan Höfler, and Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Volume 10).
Museum Tusculanums Forlag - Power, Gender, and Mobility
www.mtp.dk
September 29, 2025 at 11:16 AM
New Open Access Publication from my colleagues at UCPH!
Power, Gender and Mobility: Aspects of Indo-European Society. Edited by Riccardo Ginevra, Stefan Höfler, and Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Volume 10).
Power, Gender and Mobility: Aspects of Indo-European Society. Edited by Riccardo Ginevra, Stefan Höfler, and Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Volume 10).
Reposted by Thomas Olander
📘Hvordan følger man det danske sprog 6000 år tilbage i tiden? Det forsøger sprogforsker Thomas Olander bla at besvare i sin nye bog ’Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen’ om det danske sprogs udvikling 👉 bit.ly/4gDmYcj #dkforsk @sproghistorie.dk
September 24, 2025 at 6:13 PM
📘Hvordan følger man det danske sprog 6000 år tilbage i tiden? Det forsøger sprogforsker Thomas Olander bla at besvare i sin nye bog ’Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen’ om det danske sprogs udvikling 👉 bit.ly/4gDmYcj #dkforsk @sproghistorie.dk
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Just about ten years now in the making: The IE-CoR database paper has finally been published.
C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.
C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.
The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset
www.nature.com
September 2, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Just about ten years now in the making: The IE-CoR database paper has finally been published.
C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.
C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.
Reposted by Thomas Olander
A new book from Stockholm University Press, 'Indo-European Ecologies', is now available to read and download for free, completely #OpenAccess, here: www.stockholmuniversitypress.se/books/e/10.1...
@sproghistorie.dk olander.bsky.social
@sproghistorie.dk olander.bsky.social
August 11, 2025 at 11:18 AM
A new book from Stockholm University Press, 'Indo-European Ecologies', is now available to read and download for free, completely #OpenAccess, here: www.stockholmuniversitypress.se/books/e/10.1...
@sproghistorie.dk olander.bsky.social
@sproghistorie.dk olander.bsky.social
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Upcoming project conference: New Perspectives on the Early History of Ancient Greek (Copenhagen, 4.–5. August 2025). Link to the programme in the alt-text.
Graphic design is not really my passion (but I think this turned out alright).
May 17, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Upcoming project conference: New Perspectives on the Early History of Ancient Greek (Copenhagen, 4.–5. August 2025). Link to the programme in the alt-text.
Do you like real books? Is an open-access PDF on your hard drive not committing enough?
Is a hardback too inflexible (and too expensive: £88 😬)?
Very good news: the paperback version of “The Indo-European language family” is here!
You even get a discount with the code in the flyer 💸
Is a hardback too inflexible (and too expensive: £88 😬)?
Very good news: the paperback version of “The Indo-European language family” is here!
You even get a discount with the code in the flyer 💸
May 13, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Do you like real books? Is an open-access PDF on your hard drive not committing enough?
Is a hardback too inflexible (and too expensive: £88 😬)?
Very good news: the paperback version of “The Indo-European language family” is here!
You even get a discount with the code in the flyer 💸
Is a hardback too inflexible (and too expensive: £88 😬)?
Very good news: the paperback version of “The Indo-European language family” is here!
You even get a discount with the code in the flyer 💸
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Our Jenny Larsson reports: "Finally out: the book about Proto-Indo-European by science journalist Laura Spinney. She's been following our work with combining languages, archaeology, and aDNA for a few years now. Very exciting to see the result!" #indoeuropean #humanpast @cschlebu.bsky.social
April 24, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Our Jenny Larsson reports: "Finally out: the book about Proto-Indo-European by science journalist Laura Spinney. She's been following our work with combining languages, archaeology, and aDNA for a few years now. Very exciting to see the result!" #indoeuropean #humanpast @cschlebu.bsky.social
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Thanks to everyone who's read and engaged with my paper (🐐🪓 doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12308) 💙 I've summarised the comments, and there's now a little squib with the harvest of those fruitful discussions on philsoc.org.uk/transactions and doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Transactions | The Philological Society
Transactions of the Philological Society
philsoc.org.uk
March 26, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Thanks to everyone who's read and engaged with my paper (🐐🪓 doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12308) 💙 I've summarised the comments, and there's now a little squib with the harvest of those fruitful discussions on philsoc.org.uk/transactions and doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Following a post by @linguisticdiscovery.com which claimed that "alligator pear" was specifically a british word for avocado, contrasting with what I had previously heard, namely that it was a US southern term - I started doing some digging.
What I found was surprising and very interesting:
What I found was surprising and very interesting:
March 24, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Following a post by @linguisticdiscovery.com which claimed that "alligator pear" was specifically a british word for avocado, contrasting with what I had previously heard, namely that it was a US southern term - I started doing some digging.
What I found was surprising and very interesting:
What I found was surprising and very interesting:
Reposted by Thomas Olander
I wanna find those guys.
Rest Of Party Thanks Fucking God 2 Guys Who Like Etymology Found Each Other
theonion.com/rest-of-part...
theonion.com/rest-of-part...
March 7, 2025 at 10:38 PM
I wanna find those guys.
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Italian is a bit of an outlier among the major Romance languages.
Spanish has 'escuela', Portuguese has 'escola', French has 'école' - all starting with a vowel - but in Italian it's 'scuola'.
Did it never get a vowel?
It sure did: Old Italian had 'iscuola'!
Here's the story of this little vowel:
Spanish has 'escuela', Portuguese has 'escola', French has 'école' - all starting with a vowel - but in Italian it's 'scuola'.
Did it never get a vowel?
It sure did: Old Italian had 'iscuola'!
Here's the story of this little vowel:
March 1, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Italian is a bit of an outlier among the major Romance languages.
Spanish has 'escuela', Portuguese has 'escola', French has 'école' - all starting with a vowel - but in Italian it's 'scuola'.
Did it never get a vowel?
It sure did: Old Italian had 'iscuola'!
Here's the story of this little vowel:
Spanish has 'escuela', Portuguese has 'escola', French has 'école' - all starting with a vowel - but in Italian it's 'scuola'.
Did it never get a vowel?
It sure did: Old Italian had 'iscuola'!
Here's the story of this little vowel:
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Recently I was a guest on the Aegean Connections podcast hosted by Ester Salgarella. I had a chance to talk about my past research and also what I've been up to with my current MCSA project on non-IE substrata in Ancient Greek.
Episode 9 (Matthew Scarborough) - Greek & Pre-Greek: in search of loanwords (nearly) lost to time
Aegean Connections · Episode
open.spotify.com
February 7, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Recently I was a guest on the Aegean Connections podcast hosted by Ester Salgarella. I had a chance to talk about my past research and also what I've been up to with my current MCSA project on non-IE substrata in Ancient Greek.
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Our papers, out today in @nature.com, show how ancient DNA from the Eneolithic and Bronze Age steppe points to a North Pontic origin of the Indo-European language family and a Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) origin of Indo-Anatolian (inclusive of the now extinct Anatolian languages). 1/
February 5, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Our papers, out today in @nature.com, show how ancient DNA from the Eneolithic and Bronze Age steppe points to a North Pontic origin of the Indo-European language family and a Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) origin of Indo-Anatolian (inclusive of the now extinct Anatolian languages). 1/
Reposted by Thomas Olander
It's me, I'm the colleague, and I am now on Bluesky 🐐🪓💙
Now available in Open Access: My colleague Simon Poulsen has a new article in Transactions of the Philological Society "Loanwords and Linguistic Phylogenetics" with discussion of the problematic cases of IE *pelek̑u- ‘axe’ and *(H)a(i̯)g̑- ‘goat’ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Loanwords and Linguistic Phylogenetics: *pelek̑u‐ ‘axe’ and *(H)a(i̯)g̑‐ ‘goat’1
This paper assesses the role of borrowings in two different approaches to linguistic phylogenetics: Traditional qualitative analyses of lexemes, and quantitative computational analysis of cognacy. It...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 27, 2025 at 5:07 PM
It's me, I'm the colleague, and I am now on Bluesky 🐐🪓💙
Reposted by Thomas Olander
Thomas Olander @olander.bsky.social asks:
"Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?"
Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with Danish will answer "Yes". As far as I can tell, the Danes looked at English historical change and said, "Hold my beer."
"Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?"
Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with Danish will answer "Yes". As far as I can tell, the Danes looked at English historical change and said, "Hold my beer."
January 9, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Thomas Olander @olander.bsky.social asks:
"Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?"
Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with Danish will answer "Yes". As far as I can tell, the Danes looked at English historical change and said, "Hold my beer."
"Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?"
Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with Danish will answer "Yes". As far as I can tell, the Danes looked at English historical change and said, "Hold my beer."
Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
November 15, 2024 at 10:32 AM
Was the Danish language invented by Big Language History to sell more sound change?
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
That’s very hard to know. But now you can see for yourself¹ in my
⭐️⭐️⭐️ new book ⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Dansk fra nutiden til stenalderen [Danish from the present to the Stone Age]
upress.dk/vare/dansk-f...
Reposted by Thomas Olander
I imagine the people who read my blog (blog? lmao what is this 2007?) know about the paper and the database etc. already but I've finally put out my own little public comment:
A new paper in Science… and introducing the IE-CoR database
It feels like it has been a very long time since I first met Paul Heggarty at the McDonald Institute in Cambridge during the summer of 2015 to chat about joining what was supposed to be a simple one-y...
consultingphilologist.wordpress.com
August 21, 2023 at 11:18 AM
I imagine the people who read my blog (blog? lmao what is this 2007?) know about the paper and the database etc. already but I've finally put out my own little public comment:
Big news!
Nearly eight years in the making, our paper "Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages" has finally been published today in Science https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg0818
Just a moment...
www.science.org
July 27, 2023 at 7:52 PM
Big news!