Re: Indo-European question

Dan Seriff sikayal:

> I have heard this thesis before. My German teacher last fall (who was a
> Germanic studies grad student) said that the German nominal inflection
> system (which had already been largely lost) was "re-invented" in the
> 15th century by monks who wanted it to look more Latinate. If the German
> and English inflectional systems started to deteriorate around the same
> time (I don't know this for a fact, although, from what I've read, I
> think it is true), then I can certainly see where this thesis is coming from.
Eh, this might work to explain oddities in the formal language, but it
certainly can't explain how the inflection system used in speech came
about.  I don't think most German speakers use exactly the inflections
that are formally "proper," but they certainly do still inflect their
nouns.

More Linguistic Urban Legends: I had a Spanish teacher who insisted that
the [T] in Castilian Spanish arose because of a king that had a lisp, and
insisted that everyone around him talk the same way.  This is absurd
enough that it falls apart right away--there are still plenty of [s]'s in
Castilian Spanish, and so that king must have had an awfully selective
lisp.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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