FAQs About My Linguistic Skills - Dr. Milena Anfosso

French is my Heritage language. My mother is a native French speaker, so she would only speak to me in French throughout my childhood, which helped me naturally assimilate the language. Even today, we only speak French with each other. Sharing a language with a special person is a beautiful way to seal a bond. To take full advantage of my nearnative proficiency in French, I studied at an Italian-based international high school (Liceo Classico 'General Govone,' Alba, Italy) in which certain subjects (such as Geography, History, French Language, and Literature) were taught exclusively in French by French teachers, with annual visits to Côte d’Azur. Continuing my love for France and the French language, I moved to Paris in 2011, where I lived until 2016. Not only did I pursue my graduate studies in France, but I even wrote my Ph.D. dissertation of more than 400 pages entirely in French!

As far as Spanish is concerned, in my early twenties, I spent two years at a Spanish Catholic boarding school for young women in Paris (Foyer de la Jeune Fille – Hogar de la Joven, Congregación de María Inmaculada). Most nuns came from Spain or Latin America, meaning I needed to learn Spanish to communicate with them or suffer in silence. My Mexican and Colombian friends here in LA have helped me dramatically reach a quasi-native proficiency in Standard Latin American Spanish. I have also learned a lot of dialect intricacies by being a massive fan of Latin American telenovelas and music! The varieties of Spanish I am most familiar with are Mexican, Colombian, and Puerto Rican (thank you, Bad Bunny!). I must admit that deepening my knowledge of Spanish literally opened a new world to me. Considering that approximately 38% of Los Angeles County's population—around three million people—speak Spanish as their first language, and that the majority of residents are Hispanic (making white individuals a minority), learning Spanish felt deeply important to me. This language is woven into LA’s historical roots and cultural identity, making it essential for truly connecting with the community.

As I have already mentioned, Ancient Greek (and Greek civilization) is my specialty, as I have studied this language since I was fourteen. Ancient Greek was not only the language of the classical era of Greece but also served as the lingua franca across Alexander the Great's vast empire, effectively spreading Hellenic culture and facilitating the fusion of Eastern and Western civilizations. This rich linguistic heritage continued to influence regions well beyond Greece itself, making its mark on the subsequent Roman Empire and laying the foundation for much of Western philosophy, science, and arts. Throughout my B.A., my M.A., and my Ph.D. I have learned about Mycenaean Greek; Ancient Greek Dialects; Homeric Greek; Classical Greek, Language, and Literature; Koine Greek, Language and Literature; Medieval Greek, Language and Literature; Greek Epigraphy; Greek Papyrology; Greek Paleography; and Greek Historiography. Since my undergraduate studies, my research pursuits have focused on language contact phenomena involving Ancient Greek and other languages (Gothic, Latin, Phrygian, etc.). In this respect, my research work has been inherently coherent throughout the years as I have explored this topic from different synchronic and diachronic angles.

The third ancient language I studied was Gothic, which was also the subject of my B.A. thesis at the University of Turin. Gothic is the earliest Germanic language attested in any sizable texts, but it is extinct, i.e., it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest Gothic document we have is Ulfila’s translation of the Greek Bible, which dates back to the 4th century CE and was crafted in the Balkans.

At the beginning of my Ph.D. at Sorbonne University, I got interested in a fragmentary language spoken in Anatolia, Phrygian. Ancient Greek and Phrygian are genetically connected, having shared a common prehistory in the Balkans (so-called “Balkan-Indo-European”) before the Phrygian populations started their migratory flows to Central Anatolia around the 12th century BCE. After many centuries of independent development, as evidenced by the Paleo-Phrygian corpus written in the Phrygian epichoric alphabet (9/8th–4th centuries BCE), the Macedonian invasion of Anatolia (334–333 BCE) intensified the interactions between Greek and Phrygian to the extent that Phrygians abandoned their epichoric alphabet and started using the Greek one to write in Phrygian (4th century BCE). In the Roman Era, after many centuries of “silence,” a new set of inscriptions exhibits the final attested phase of the language, known as Neo-Phrygian (1st–3rd centuries CE). We do not have any records of the Phrygian language after the 3rd century CE.

To answer this question, I report a passage from an interview of mine (you can read the integral version here).
"Honestly, I pursue this field because it fascinates me. It combines two inseparable aspects, much like the interplay of the right and left brain or the balance of science and the Humanities in society. On one side, there's the scientific challenge—the thrill of discovering something new and building on the work of predecessors. It might mean uncovering a new etymology, decoding an ancient inscription, or even cracking an undeciphered writing system. On the other side lies what I call the poetry of the field: the realization that, across time and space, we are fundamentally the same. We laugh and cry over the same things; we love and suffer in similar ways. Nothing frightened Egyptian pharaohs more than oblivion. By studying ancient languages and texts, we give voice to long-dead civilizations, rescuing them from being forgotten.”