Greenberg is a staunch advocate for foreign language learning in the United States,founding the University of Kansas's School of Languages,Literatures and Cultures in 2016 to promote that effort. He has established two academic journals and chaired the executive board of the Slavic Linguistics Society,during which he championed and promoted open access publication. In 2019,he was elected the first non-Slovene to be Ambassador of Science and Scholarship of the Republic of Slovenia. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics since 2021.
Greenberg's linguistic interest has focused largely on the Prekmurje region of Slovenia.
Greenberg has been a professor at the University of Kansas's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures since 1990,serving as its chair from 2000 until 2011.[3][8] Following an expansion and revision,his dissertation was published as a book in 2000 as A Historical Phonology of the Slovene Language.[3][9] The book was recognized as the "Best Book in Slavic Linguistics" by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) in 2002 and a Slovene translation was published the same year.[3][6] Greenberg later joked that he was glad the award had been given,as it justified "the seven-year-long torture" of producing it.[2] He attained full professorship in 2001.[10] Greenberg mainly teaches historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.[10][5]
Aside from his regular linguistic work,Greenberg has established two scientific journals,Slovenski jezik/Slovene Linguistic Studies(sl) and Slavia Centralis(Wikidata),and chaired the executive board of the Slavic Linguistics Society.[10][8] His leadership in both his journals and chairmanship has focused largely on the accessibility of science by promoting the use of open access among publications.[10][8] Greenberg was a founder of the School of Languages,Literatures and Cultures at the University of Kansas in 2016 and serves as its director. The school promotes the instruction of foreign languages across the United States,for which Greenberg has long been a vocal advocate.[10][9] Greenberg has been the editor-in-chief of Brill's Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics since 2021.[6][11] Feeling that his later career has been "preoccupied by administrative duties",he has opined that the encyclopedia has allowed him to reengage with modern scholarship.[12]
In 2021,Greenberg published a translation and expansion of Avgust Pavel's Hungarian-language book Vend nyelvtan,a 1942 grammar of the Prekmurje dialect of Slovene.[13] Though the manuscript was more-or-less complete by 2005,it remained unpublished and a Slovene translation was published in 2013. Greenberg remarked that the Slovene translation "came in very handy" because he was working off of a shoddy photocopy and the Slovene language helped him to adjust linguistic nuance he had been uncertain about.[13] In an interview for the Slovene magazine Porabje,Greenberg expressed that he considers Prekmurje to be both a language and a dialect of Slovene,arguing that it is a Slovene language rather than a part of the Slovene language.[13] He calls this unique,remarking that it is "a phenomenon of its own".[13]
Recognition
In 2017,Greenberg was elected a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.[5][6] For his contributions,he was honored with a Festschrift entitled V zeleni drželi zeleni breg ('In a Green Country,A Green Hill'),a pun on his surname,[a] in 2018.[14][6] The following year,he was made the ambassador of science and scholarship of the Republic of Slovenia,its first non-Slovene member ever elected to the position.[5]
Personal life
Greenberg has a wife,Marta (néePirnat),who teaches Slovene at the University of Kansas.[7] The two met in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.[3] Though they originally communicated in Czech,she sent him a Slovene–English dictionary after they were engaged and began writing him letters in Slovene;he remarked of the change:"If I wanted to figure out how much she loved me,I had to figure out what was written in her letters."[2] Greenberg has two children,both of whom speak Slovene fluently.[15][2]
In addition to Slovene,Greenberg speaks Croatian,Czech,and Russian,all of which he learned before he learned Slovene.[6][2] He is also able to read and engage in limited conversation in Albanian,German,French,Italian,Turkish,and Yiddish.[6] Aside from his linguistic endeavors,Greenberg is an accomplished multi-instrumental musician,playing classical guitar,Russian guitar,and the lute in shows across the United States and Europe.[7]
References
Notes
↑Zeleni breg is a rough Slovene translation of Greenberg.[6]
"Dr. Marc L. Greenberg". Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies. n.d. Retrieved December 21, 2025.
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