Re: Proto-Romance

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
>
>> This all can very well be understood if we look at a
>> geographic map of Norway. Until recently, valleys were
>> very isolated from each other, and often the best way
>> to get from one region to another was by sea. (Now
>> they made tunnels everywhere like worms in a piece of
>> cheese, and you have to pay a fee every 15 km).
>
>
> Actually, geography is not necessary to have a multitude of dialects.
> You don't even need distance! Look at the Netherlands: probably the
> flatest country of the world, and a small one at that, and yet such a
> multitude of dialects that it's common on TV to *subtitle* Dutch
> people just like people speaking a foreign language! And the
> differences between dialects can be lexical, syntactic and
> morphological (for example my friend's dialect still uses "gij" for
> "jij": "you (sg)" (in other dialects, "gij" is like "thou" in English:
> it's limited to talking to God).

Of course, 'thou' still exists in English(as 'tha') in the North.  I was
under the impression that 'gij' was mostly found in Flemish.

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