Re: Dune Conlang

Nik Taylor wrote:

> And as for the Galach, even that seems far too close for the time span.
> The book takes place 10,000 years after the formation of the Spacing
> Guild, which seems to have been formed about 11,000 years in OUR future,
> so about 20 millennia (hmm, similar time frame to the Foundation series,
> in Foundation's Edge it was stated that the most commonly accepted
> estimate of the origin of space travel was 20,000 years before their
> time).  PIE is typically estimated to have been spoken around 5000 years
> ago, and look at how different English is from that!  Four times that
> time span, there should be no trace of English left.
More or less.  Though there are some linguists (for some reason
it seems they are almost entirely from the former USSR) who have
advocated a sort of "relativity" to language change, to wit, that the more
commonly uttered words like "mother", "father" etc would have some
sort of resistance to change which other words don't have.  I'm not
entirely sure on what empirical foundations they base this theory,
however.

In any event, even granting such people complete truth to their
theory, I would still say even 10000 years is a more or less total
solvent on what might have originally been the status of the
protolanguage from which English, or for that matter Galach,
come.  IMO there is simple too much assuming that's going on
and too little empiricism as one progresses backwards in history.

======================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Non cuicumque datum est habere nasum.
It is not given to just anyone to have a nose.
        -- Martial
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