Greece’s labyrinth of language: A study in the early modern discovery of dialect diversity

Reviews

• Review in Histoire Epistémologie Langage 43 (1) by Rhéa Delveroudi published October 29, 2021
  ... Faisant preuve d’érudition, [Raf Van Rooy] nous offre à la fois le panorama des études sur les dialectes grecs de l’époque moderne et un précieux ouvrage de référence pour qui veut s’informer sur l’histoire de la dialectologie grecque. En adoptant une approche critique et comparative de ses sources, non exempte parfois d’un brin d’humour, agréablement inattendu, il présente des données pour une large part difficilement accessibles, non seulement par la rareté des exemplaires, mais aussi par le nombre des langues de son corpus et de la bibliographie secondaire, difficilement maîtrisable par une seule personne ...

• Review in Language & History by Anneli K. Luhtala published August 28, 2022
  [...] Greece’s Labyrinth of language is an impressive volume, full of detail and based on the study of a huge number of primary sources (p. 161–191), many of which are poorly known. It is a rich sourcebook for those who are interested in the early developments of dialectology and the history of Greek poetry. The subject is notoriously difficult, and it is easy to agree with the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492 /1493–1540), who wrote that ‘in the Greek language, there are great labyrinths’. The lack of historicity was often a major source of confusion, another being the absence of adequate technical terms relating to the linguistic phenomena which are today understood as dialects, sociolects, register, style, and genre. Raf Van Rooy entered the labyrinth of Greek dialects and brought back an excellent piece of work, contributing to our understanding of early modern linguistic thought and intellectual history. [...]