A. J. West

@ajwphilologist.bsky.social

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Used to be a philologist. Interested in the Columbian exchange. Indonesia and the Middle Ages. #Indonesia #OldSundanese #TupianLanguages Old site: https://indomedieval.medium.com/

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I saw the ring at the Vyne a few years ago, just before the pandemic. I'm not sure why it took me so long to see it — the Vyne is only about half an hour from where I grew up — but I suppose the fact that I'm not a huge Tolkien fan had something to do with it. Anyway, an interesting object

Every few yrs, the alleged story of the "One Ring" & its possible relationship to a Roman ring is brought up Ca. 1786, a farmer near Silchester (England) found a 4thC CE gold ring reading "Seniciane, vivas iin (!) de." (Senicianus, may you live in God) romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions...

I'm starting a new blog for non-Indonesia-related things. I started one on WordPress a while ago but wasn't super keen on what was happening over there and so abandoned it. The new one will be on Medium, like the Medieval Indonesia blog.

Portugal really is lovely.

Portugal is one of the most beautiful places I've been to

Okay, look, I'm not patriotic at all but the British way of declining Latin nouns is so much better than the American way. NOM VOC ACC GEN DAT ABL LOC It just makes so much sense! Don't care about tradition!

Roud 164

[wheat haters club] PERSON ABOUT TO INVENT FLOUR: i'm gonna grind it to dust PERSON ABOUT TO INVENT BREAD: then i'm gonna throw it in an oven PERSON ABOUT TO INVENT SLICED BREAD: then i'm gonna cut it into little pieces PERSON ABOUT TO INVENT TOAST: then i'm gonna burn it again

It's interesting to see Americans talking about their country as if it *isn't* a violent place. 7 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in the USA. (None are in Europe or Asia.) The US intentional homicide rate, at 6.4 murders per 100,000, is above the global average of 5.8.

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Very pleased to receive my author's copy of the latest double issue of Wacana: the Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, with my article on the print afterlives of Carl Bock's 1879 expedition to Borneo. Also available online in open access! scholarhub.ui.ac.id/wacana/vol25...

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#openaccessmiddleages Alessandro Bausi, Michael Friedrich (eds.): Tied and Bound: A Comparative View on Manuscript Binding (2023). Link: www.degruyter.com/do...#openaccessmiddleages Alessandro Bausi, Michael Friedrich (eds.): Tied and Bound: A Comparative View on Manuscript Binding (2023). Link: www.degruyter.com/do... #medieval

I think there's only one domesticated plant with a broader pre-Columbian distribution than taro: the bottle gourd (*Lagenaria siceraria*), which was domesticated somewhere in Asia or Africa (or both at different times) and which was known across Afro-Eurasia and the Americas before Columbus.

Asian yams in the genus Dioscorea had similar distributions, but, before Columbus, few domesticated plants were distributed over quite as much of Earth's surface as taro. So an interesting plant to look at.

A while ago I wrote this thing about taro, a very interesting plant and certainly among the most widely distributed of all food crops before the Columbian exchange. indomedieval.medium.com/taro-bfc0edc...

Taroindomedieval.medium.com This piece appeared on my Patreon account way back in 2022. I thought I’d move it here so that it would be more accessible.

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Info on a super cool workshop was posted to PMJS today! It's about a 1593 Latin treatise on philosophy, theology, and astronomy translated into Japanese in 1595, a complete translation of which was discovered in 2019! 😮Happening 9/6! www.lhlt.mpg.de/events/38404...

Jesuit Knowledge, Cultural Translations, and the Rules of Japanese Christianity (16th-17th centuries)www.lhlt.mpg.de

A lot of the people who work on Tupi, the language spoken almost all the way along the Brazilian coast when Europeans arrived in 1500, call it "Tupinambá", which is the name of one of the ethnic groups or nations who spoke it.

The horned screamer, whose name in Tupi was neither "anhuma" nor "anhima" but something in between: "anhyma" /aˈɲɨma/

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Tang Shunmin 湯舜民 (mid-14th c.) “Unburdening Myself to a Friend” 書懷示友人

The horned screamer, whose name in Tupi was neither "anhuma" nor "anhima" but something in between: "anhyma" /aˈɲɨma/

🇧🇷Anhuma 🌎Anhima cornuta A anhuma é uma ave anseriforme da família Anhimidae 📷 Henrique Junior

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🇧🇷Inhambu-galinha 🌎Tinamus guttatus O inhambu-galinha é um tinamiforme da família Tinamidae 📷 Clezio Kleske

It's nice when someone really gets it.

I haven’t learned a lot about the culture since moving to England, but if I know anything, it’s this: If a posh British man says “fine,” he is the least fine he has ever been in his whole entire life

Just finished watching Oliver Stone's mammoth ALEXANDER (2004), the supposed final cut of the picture. I saw it shortly after it came out but hadn't seen it in almost twenty years. It is fascinatingly bizarre.

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Looking at President Higgins differently after reading that the Irish surname Ó hUigínn is etymologically 'descendant of a Viking'

I think we're in a worst-of-all-possible worlds situation with 'medieval' terminology these days. 'Global Middle Ages' is still a popular term even though the world before c.1500 wasn't global in any meaningful sense — that's practically its defining characteristic!

I'll take it

I bought a bottle of brandy today to celebrate the election results. It cost about 5x more than the usual rubbish I buy at the supermarket, and I regret to say that it really is that much better.

When did the term 'Brit' go from pejorative to neutral? This might be the Irishness of my family speaking but I find it odd that Britons now seem comfortable referring to themselves as 'Brits' ('BritBox' etc.).

Portuguese tradies run on beer. I'm sure beer has plenty of electrolytes in it but a few hours of physical activity in 30-degree weather without air conditioning on a single beer *probably* isn't healthy.

Because of boundary changes I'm registered to vote in the parliamentary constituency of Eastleigh, a grotty place best known for the death of its MP, Conservative Stephen Milligan, by autoerotic asphyxiation back in the 1990s.

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I’m generally not that into telling people how to vote. It’s up to you. Plus anyone’s decision should be informed by their constituency and their candidates: situations vary a lot. But by god I hope people vote against the Tories. This record is a disgrace. They need to be sent a clear verdict.

So, I think when my editor asked me to do a long list of Tory policy screw ups since 2010, he was expecting something funny? The reality was... not particularly funny.

An (incomplete) list of every terrible policy the Conservatives have inflicted on Britain since 2010 | Jonn Elledgewww.theguardian.com Readers, brace yourselves, says the writer Jonn Elledge

Some thoughts on the depiction of Java in the Catalan Atlas (~1375) medium.com/@indomedieva...

Java on the Catalan Atlas (1375)medium.com This piece appeared on my Patreon account way back in 2022. I thought I’d move it here so that it would be more accessible.

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One of the most exciting things about writing a trade book has been the advance copies I sometimes get offered, and I am absolutely honoured to get a preview of ‘By The Fire We Carry’ by Rebecca Nagle, whose work I have long admired. It’s out in September and looks brilliant! 💙📚 🗃️

My wife's gone on a short trip abroad so I've been alone in the house for the last couple of days and it's... dreadful. Life seems less meaningful.

FYI: I'm not writing much about Indonesia these days and I've closed down the Medieval Indonesia blog. I've moved on to some different topics. I expect I'll come back to the Indonesia stuff in a few years, but that's it from me for now. indomedieval.medium.com/the-end-of-m...

The End of ‘Medieval Indonesia’indomedieval.medium.com You may have noticed that I’ve uploaded a couple of dozen articles on this blog this month. They were all Patreon exclusive pieces —…

I think Americans of all kinds should be allowed to move to the EU visa-free for as long as they like *provided that* they can refrain from complaining about the (relative) lack of: - straws & ice in drinks - same-day Amazon delivery - Mexican food (MX is a 12-hour flight away!)

Something that's unsurprising I guess is that there's a specific sort of largely middle-class white American who assumes that you can just Move to Europe. Because if your experience with travel is vacation and study abroad, you don't really know the intricacies of getting a visa/permanent residency.