Re: Age of langs (was Tempus)

David Peterson wrote:
>     That was sort of my point.  But anyway, I also think there's some
> confusion about "older".  I don't mean existed for a longer period of
> time, but existed synchronically at an earlier period of time.  So,
> take modern English as it exists in America today and you won't find
> it in the early days of the Roman Empire.  Thus, the earliest form of
> Latin, taken all at once, is older than this slice of Modern English
> just because it existed earlier.
Well, that's true.  But that's diachronic.  My point was that from a
synchronic perspective (that is, only looking at languages spoken at the
same time), it doesn't make much sense to talk about "older" and
"younger".

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A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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