It seems like only yesterday that I was posting about six months of Languagehat; time flies when you’re having fun. I’d like to thank the same people I thanked then, as well as all the people who’ve commented or written since. I’ve had something like 43,000 unique visitors, more or less evenly divided between the old Blogspot site and the shiny new MT one; they come from 64 different countries (plus the Old Style Arpanet), including Mauritius, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, New Caledonia, and Brunei Darussalam (the top three foreign sources are Canada, Australia, and France). It’s a cliche, but the internet really is bringing the world closer together.
One thing I’d like to emphasize. People occasionally apologize for intruding on my time or say they don’t know enough to comment; I want to make it clear that I welcome everyone with an interest in the things I write about, whether they have any prior knowledge or not, and I love answering questions I get in e-mails—if your message comes at a busy time, I may take a while to get around to it, but I will answer it. And, of course, if you have an interesting link to pass along or a subject you’d like to hear about, let me know; I’m always on the lookout for new topics!
And we sit here…
there in the arena…
By the way, I’m posting a picture of my language bookshelves (or most of them; you can’t see the bottom row, with the especially tall and heavy books, and the Russian and Greek books are in another bookcase) on my Languages page; if it’s not there when you visit, keep checking back. And I’m hoping to put pictures of my hats on the Hats page before too long, as has more than once been requested. Here at Languagehat, we aim to please!
[Lament. I waited till 12:02 by the computer clock to save this entry so that it would be under July 31 (the anniversary date), but somehow MT thought it was five minutes earlier, so it’s still under July 30. Time is the evil…]
All is well. I did not realize that you could edit the time of posting. Thanks, Dan and Songdog!
You could edit the time of the post so that it falls on the right day. It is merely an amendment to reflect the true situation, not a falsification of records.
Happy blogday!
Congrats on the anniversary! Its been about a month since I discovered Language Hat through a link on some other blog and I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Its given me endless hours of distraction from working on my dissertation …
Congratulations on a spectacular first year, with happy anticipation of more to come!
Hurray. This is become mine favourite blog
Happy first blogging anniversary. Yours is a blog chock-full of worthy linguistic tidbits.
Congratulations and thanks–your blog is at the top of my list and has given me and mine many happy hours.
Happy happy blogday! And congratulations on creating a wonderful, much beloved, and badly needed weblog. I’m a fan!
Happy blogday to you, and many happy blogturns (is it really only a year? seems a lifetime!)
..er… in a GOOD way, of course
Happy blogday and thank you for teaching, nudging, pointing, encouraging…
Ta ever so and may you babel on for ever.
Yes, a very happy blogday to you. I’m sure there will be many more to come.
Now if only you could figure out how to get paid to do this …
Congratulations, LH. Goes by fast, doesn’t it…
Congratulations! I’ve enjoyed your blog a great deal and hope to be around for your second anniversary.
And let me just add not only is Steve a great blogger who somehow finds treasures in the (sometimes-seeming) big trash pit of the Internet, he obviously relishes human contact and is a true and generous friend. Email him about a language issue, do! It’ll make his day — and he will make yours. And check him out on MetaFilter.
Aw, shucks… thanks!
Somewhat late congratulations!
Those bulging shelves full of language books are a heart-warming sight! Congrats on a year, and here’s to many more. 🙂
Thanks! I should point out, by the way, for the sake of anyone who recognizes the four-volume red-backed Soviet edition of Vasmer (М. Фасмер, Этимологический словарь русского языка, 1964-1973) on the third shelf down and wonders why it’s not with the other Russian books, that I’ve had it since my early years of grad school and it’s always been with the main language collection and I’m not about to tear it away from its buddies and move it to new surroundings. I will also mention, for those curious about such things, that the books are basically arranged by language family (top 3 1/2 shelves IE, followed by Semitic, Turkic, Malayo-Polynesian, &c.), except that big fat unabridged dictionaries get put on the ends of shelves where they won’t wreck them any faster than need be.
“a year in the desert of ether” stumbling on your oassis of wonderful insights has been for this lost in food gathering occupation do thank you for stretching my neurons. Keep the well from drying up, so that other weary non linqua experts can be exposed to the expanse of Knowledge that can pass ones highly filtered eyes: Thanks
As I own the C. Winter Verlag edition of Vasmer, I was wondering if this Soviet edition is a simple translation of the former or an augmentation? Three volumes into four. I must agree with you on old bookshelf books becoming good buddies and resisting catalogization-ordered relocation.
It is an augmentation; there are lots of references, hypotheses, and even new entries added in square brackets. Being a Soviet edition, however, it is also bowdlerized, so I’ve had to Xerox and insert the German entries for words like pizda. I’m pretty sure it’s available online, but at the moment I can’t find it (I think Avva has linked to it). But I just found an interesting page about Russian reference books.
I just found the Soviet Vasmer and Pokorny online at the University of Leiden. Just got finished with an entry on this.