This chapter discusses the history of the Nile Delta during the periods of Persian and Macedonian rule, as demarcated by the journey of Herodotus in the middle of the fifth century BCE and Strabo’s stay in the wake of the prefect Cornelius Gallus. The four centuries separating the two journeys were marked by a major event: the foundation and emergence of Alexandria. While Herodotus provides the description of a polycentric Delta, composed of a dozen large cities, Strabo’s description is dominated by the presence of Alexandria. Yet, however momentous, the Alexandrian history does not summarise that of the whole Delta. The development of the Eastern Delta is marked both by increased militarisation and by the strengthening of trade and economic relations between Egypt, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. Located far from the eastern military rampart but also away from the western capitals, the role of the Memphis area was gradually reduced by the development of east–west transversal routes converging on the Canopic branch, where the political nucleus of Egypt was located. Finally, the Western Delta was a political centre long before Alexandria, with ongoing connections to the history of the Libyan desert.

The chapter discusses the position of Greek within the Indo-European family. Special attention is paid to innovations shared by all Greek dialects, which allows us to reconstruct Proto-Greek, and to the internal subgrouping of Greek. As for external subgrouping, the similarities of Greek with Macedonian, Phrygian and Armenian are evaluated, and the (unfortunately meagre) evidence for the exact place of Greek within the Indo-European family is discussed.

This chapter considers the social, political and historical circumstances that impact on literary translation into a minor language, with specific reference to the case of the Macedonian language spoken in the Republic of North Macedonia. An overview of the history of translation is first provided, beginning with the codification of the Macedonian language with the emergence of the Republic of Macedonia as a sovereign state within the Yugoslav federation. The chapter further discusses how the country gaining independence from Yugoslavia upon its breakup affected translation trends, and thus the quality of translated literary works. Finally, the chapter provides insight into how a recent authoritarian government abused political issues regarding identity to launch and realize a gargantuan government project involving the translation of hundreds of books within an extremely short period of time, thereby forever altering the literary landscape of the culture and setting harmful precedents regarding translation policies.

Language contact studies and historical linguistics, i.e. the study of language change, are subfields of linguistics that have long been recognized as being mutually relevant. This chapter explores this relationship along two dimensions: first, with regard to the fields of study themselves, and second, and perhaps more importantly, with regard to those aspects of language contact and of influence external to a given linguistic system that are particularly relevant to understanding the basic subject matter of historical linguistics, i.e. what happens to languages as they pass through time. In terms of the fields of study, an overview of the historiography of the distinction between internally motivated and externally motivated change is offered. This survey is followed by a discussion of several case studies, in which language contact serves as an actuator of change as well as some in which it is an inhibitor of change. Finally, the interaction of language contact with another key issue in historical linguistics, namely language genealogy, is discussed, along with a consideration of the naturalness and pervasiveness of language contact.

The Balkans were the first sprachbund (linguistic league, area, etc.) identified as a locus of contact-induced change owing to multi-lateral, multi-directional, mutual multilingualism to be identified as such. In this model, multilingualism is shared by speakers of the various languages, it is stable across generations, and it involves varied social groups. While no linguistic situation is unchanging, the combination of the factors mentioned here differentiates the sprachbund from other contact situations such as a diaspora, a colony, or that of endangered indigenous languages. Owing to the complexity of a sprachbund, the directionality of contact-induced change is not always discernible, nor is such directionality necessarily relevant, the point being the fact of convergence itself. This chapter defines the basic linguistic features relevant to the study of the Balkans as a linguistic area and also gives an overview of the linguistic study of the region. An important conclusion is the fact that the Balkan sprachbund continues to be a relevant lens through which language contact – both historical and ongoing – can be viewed.