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Re: Age of langs (was Tempus)

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Saturday, March 10, 2001, 10:51
Cian Ross wrote:
>On 03/08/2001 at 3:45 PM Andreas Johansson wrote: > > > >But when dealing with contemporary languages, there's little meaning >saying > >that one is older than another. > >Would it be reasonable to speak of languages (at least in the same family) >as being more-derived versus less-derived?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "more-derived" and "less-derived". If you're refering to how much langs have changed from their common ancestor, I think the answer is still no. Modern Icelandic is more CONSERVATIVE than modern Norwegian (either variant), but that doesn't make Icelandic OLDER than Norwegian. Andreas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.