"And I Knew Twelve Languages": A Tribute to Massimo Poetto on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday

The renowned sentence pronounced by Yariris, regent (tarwani) of Karkemiš, in the Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription KARKEMIŠ A 15b l. 4 §§19-20 (here in David Hawkins’ translation, CHLI: 131), emphasizing his extraordinary ability to master different scripts and languages, which inspired the title of the present volume, seems well apt to introduce the scientific personality of the honoree, characterized – since the years of his educational formation – by a marked interest and deep versatility in different linguistic fields, ancient and modern.Graduated in “Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne” at the University of Milan with a thesis on the Indian lexicon in English based on the works of Rudyard Kipling, Massimo Poetto has shown, since the beginning, a natural inclination for Historical / Comparative Linguistics and Philology. His first fields of study were English and Russian (as reflected by the articles at the start of his production), though this did not prevent him from cultivating at the same time his growing interests in the domain of the ancient Indo-European languages, in which he thus entered as an “outsider” – as he himself likes to say –, however, with serious commitment and high enthusiasm.