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Re: Just a Little Taste of Judean (Part 2)

From:Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
Date:Sunday, April 11, 1999, 19:04
On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> > What you'd have to do if you insist on the final -m is to explain why > Judeans who aren't, as you say, native Latin speakers, have restored a > sound long lost to the spoken language.
Why not for the same reason we (English speakers) do? We don't say "sanctu sanctoru", we say "sanctum sanctorum"; "quorum" not "quoro". Perhaps the Protojudeans could pick it up from written Latin?
> If you want the -m then it can only come about if we imagine that for some > reason a group of Aramaic (or Aramaic & Greek) speaking Judeans decide to > learn Classical Latin from written form only and then, for some strange > reason, they or their descendants actually start speaking it. I'm finding > that a difficult scenario to envisage.
Well, if they eventually end up with a "standard form", I see no reason why it couldn't be applied at least to the spelling. So that makes for two possibilities: they pick it up from written (Classical) Latin and end up pronouncing it (perhaps only in elevated registers?); they pick it up from written Latin, spelling it but leaving it silent always. Padraic.
> > Ray. >