Re: OT: Diacricital marks [Re: Question about "do"]
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 23:30 |
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Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:
> 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.
As well as they could, indeed. Gregory of Tours makes a special
digression to excuse his poor command of Latin. This was no
exaggeration: the guy has, like, four nominative-case forms
for four separate arguments sometimes.
=========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
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Chicago, IL 60637