Update from Victor Friedman

“I just got back from giving a keynote address on Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia as linguistic areas at the meeting of the International Congress of Slavists’ Balkan Commission in Iasi.  While I was in the Balkans, I also stopped in Lerin (Greek Florina) to participate in the book launch of the first Modern Macedonian-Modern Greek dictionary to be published in Greece.  The neo-nazis from Hrisi Avgi (the ones that assaulted me in 2009) were there, along with riot police and plainclothesmen.  Greece is still a dangerous place for linguists who work on Macedonian, alas, but there were lots of local Macedonians from Lerin and the nearby villages at the launch anyway.  A collection of my articles on Lak was published in Russian under the title Ocherki lakskogo jazyka (Maxachkala, 2011) by the Daghestanian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.”  –Victor