Re: Hellenic Romance? (was [CONLANG] Re: Babel text in Spanzhol)

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 02:13 AM, Paul Bennett wrote:
> > What if Latin hadn't risen as the language of the Roman Empire, and
> > Greek
> > had been the status-lect and the ordinary-lect up until the end of
> > Latin-as-a-living-language?
>
> Not so far fetched a notion as some might think...(snips)... The Republic
> was tearing itself apart with civil wars that century and
> clearly heading for extinction. It was brought to an end, as we know, by
> Octavian - soon to be named as Augustus, the first Emperor... (snips)...
> If, however, Mark Antony had prevailed, the eastern influence is likely to
> have been greater and it is not by any means unlikely that Greek, the
> language of Cleopatra and the Levant generally, would have prevailed and
> Latin become regarded as provincially mid-Italian. Also long-standing
> Greek colonies in southern Gaul & Spain could well have further enhanced
> the spread of Greek.
>
> > How would the Romance languages have turned
> > out, assuming similar phonetic and semantic drift took place as "here"?
Ray-- you seem to have assumed (unless I mis-read) that W.Europe would still
have used Latin, but with Graecified sound changes....?  My interpretation
of Paul's question was: That the languages of present day W.Eur. would be
descended from Greek rather than Latin (though maybe some Latin-derived
vernaculars might have survived in dark corners, like Dacia, Rhaetia).
Consequently we might not be talking about _lenguas románicas/langues
romaines...etc._ but _glossa rumaika_  (I'm making up endings here, as I
know poco Greek)-- or however those two words might have developed in
various areas ("glosa rumiega, glosse roumèche"??.)

I guess what would have happened is: Greek with Celto-Germano sound changes
in Gaul, Vasco-Ibero changes in Hispania, Britannic changes etc etc.

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