Re: YACL: Thylean (alternate-history)

  Óskar ániyë:

I think this is by now enough of an introduction. As always, I'd love
comments; especially if any of you Latin-buffs out there could tell me
when -m fell out of declensions, and thus if I should retain it in Thylean
or not :)

 L.R. Palmer wrote in his book "The Latin Language" that final m was very
weakly pronounced even in Old Latin (around the 6th century BC) it had the
tendency to disappear. There are numerous exambles of this, one which I
really like is:

    foied vino pipafo cra carefo   =   classical:   hodie vinum bibam cras
carebo
    "Today I will drink wine and tomorrow I will lack it"

 (note that this is not the Old Latin Roman dialect, but the Falerian
dialect).
You can see that vino already shows the form that Italian would have,
far before the Romance Languages appeared. Another interesting thing
that you could include is the loss of final s which was also a characteristic
of
Old Latin (in some dialects at least). In the example, you can see that the s
has
been lost from "cras".

    Elliott