----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Diacricital marks [Re: Question about "do"]
> Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
> > > Well, no. We're talking about writing here, and the Romance languages
> > > were already pretty differentiated before anybody thought to write
them
> > > down.
> >
> > That seems odd to me, since Latin already had a written form long before
> > the differentiation? Or did people simply not equate writing and
speech?
>
> For a long time literate people spoke their local vernacular and wrote
> Latin as well as they could. Only in very special cases did they attempt
> to write the vernacular as well.
Or, in some cases, they failed to write perfect Latin...
> --
> De plichten van een docent zijn divers, John Cowan
> die van het gehoor ook. jcowan@reutershealth.com
> --Edsger Dijkstra
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>