Re: CHAT: weird names,was Re: conlanging,the ultimate feminist

alypius wrote:

> >>   Afterall, Latin made practicly
> >> >> no inroads in the more developed eastern end of the Empire.
> >>
> >> Well, don't forget about Roman-ia, "land of the Romans," and cradle of
> one
> >> of the 6 modern Romance languages.  (Can anyone name all 6?)  ~alypius
> >
> >There are a great many more than six; 46 by the Ethnologue's count.
>
> 46!?  Is Latin unusually prone to linguistic schism?
No, I wouldn't say so.  The Ethnologue says there are 37 in Germanic, and
219 derived from Sanskrit.  You also have to understand that many of those
varieties have varying levels of intelligibility with neighboring speech forms, and
a few are also exstinct, like Dalmatian or Gothic.

>  Since the fall of Rome
> in 476, that's one new Romance language born every 33 years! Come to think
> of it, I'll bet we're due another one right about now.  ~alypius
Well, languages don't develop in discrete units like that.  Languages evolve slowly,
and adjacent regions (say, from Munich to Frankfurt or from Frankfurt to Cologne)
may be entirely intelligble, but the languages at either end of a spectrum may not be
(I'm considering the original spoken dialects here, not the standard speech of those
communities).


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
AIM: Deuterotom ICQ: 4315704
<http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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