Re: another language reconstruction question

Mat McVeagh scripsit:

> - it seems that you think there were language families or branches that
> flourished millennia ago, and were replaced wholesale by other ones because
> they were the official languages of powerful groups who were overthrown by
> other groups who, becoming powerful themselves, created new 'dominant
> languages' which other peoples learnt in order to get in with them. Would
> that be a fair inference?
Yes, but there would be other reasons for language death, like genocide,
virgin-field disease epidemics, etc. etc.

> A related question: do you really think ancient peoples started speaking the
> languages of more powerful peoples, replacing their own as mother tongue, in
> order to get access to culture and technology? (Even when they weren't being
> ruled by them?)
Why not?  If the people who know how to do iron-smithing are all Hittites,
and you aim to become an iron-smith, you naturally have to learn Hittite.
Same story with English and computer programming.  :-)

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
        --Brian K. Reid