Re: Slovanik, Enamyn, and Slavic slaves

 --- Peter Clark wrote about the Byzantine Empire:

>         All true...but the common language was Greek, not Latin, despite the
> continued "official" use of Latin. My fault, however; I should have made it
> clear that I was refering to the possibility of a Slavic-Romance language
> developing, as Jan initially imagined. Now a Slavic-Hellenic language is most
> certainly not out of the question, in fact much more likely. (But probably
> much harder to do, since there are far fewer languages stemming from Greek;
> in fact, other than modern Greek, I do not know of any--comments?)
It is particularly difficult to distinguish here between languages and
dialects. For some reason all versions of Greek, both ancient and modern, have
always been known simply as "Greek". The only two possible sister languages I
can think of are Tsakonian and Pontic Greek.
A possible reason could be that the Greek language has almost completely been
wiped off the globe except for Greece. A pity, because Koine could have been
the ancestor language of a lot of offshoots in the same way Vulgar Latin
generated the Romance languages.
It's a pity that Ray is not around; he could have told us a lot of interesting
stuff on the subject.

As a matter of fact, Greek provides a wonderful playground for conlangers.
Especially since so many people know the language. But somehow it doesn't work
like that. Perhaps because it just doesn't feel right?

> Of course, if we want to reduce things to the absurd, we could call Russia
> "Roman" since Moscow is the Third Rome. Or at least it was, until Stalin
> decided to tear down most of the nice old buildings and build his concrete
> monstrosities. Thank goodness he disliked Leningrad and never bestowed his
> architectual "vision" upon the old city. The Soviet-block apartments are bad
> enough as it is. But I digress...
Right! Ever been to Bucharest, once known as the "Paris of the East"?



=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com

Reply