Re: Age of langs (was Tempus)
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, March 11, 2001, 2:15 |
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David Peterson wrote:
> And, of course, classifications such as "older" and "younger" do
> apply. Things like "more or less conservative" are total judgment
> calls
What? If you're talking about synchronically, then "older" and
"younger" ARE judgment calls, even more so than "more" or "less"
conservative, which simply means "exhibiting fewer or more changes". To
say that a language is older than another, you have to decide what point
counts as the "beginning" of that language. When did "English" start?
Old English is traditionally dated from the Anglo-Saxon Invasion in AD
450, but it's not like they suddenly stopped speaking a dialect of West
Germanic and began to speak Old English at that point!
--
Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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