Re: Old Languages

Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Hmm. It's always been my understanding that the various surviving
> monuments of _literary Old English_ are written in various dialects, none of
> which can be called the direct ancestor of ModE.-- whereas the dialect of the
> London area, which has little if any early literary history, is believed to be
> the ancestor.  I could be wrong.
No, that's my understanding of it as well.  IIRC, West Saxon
was the main OE literary dialect, which did not primarily
contribute to ModE.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III