[rollei_list] Re: Happy New Year!
- From: Marc James Small <msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2006 17:45:08 -0500
At 03:23 PM 1/1/06 -0600, Robert Meier wrote:
>
>I'm not disagreeing with you, but you are missing the point I was making.
>All of the European provinces of Rome, from Portugal and Spain, to France,
>Italy and Romania, adopted the spoken version of Latin, EXCEPT Britain.
>Your statement that I quoted might lead one to think that Welsh was like
>Portuguese, Spanish, French, Provencal, Italian, and Romanian, a descendant
>of Latin.
Robert
With all respect, this is bullshit. The common language in Gaul was
Celtic, the common language in Greece was Greek, the common language in
Asia Minor was either Anatolian, Armenian, or some Semitic tongue. Und so
weiter. Latin was only the administrative tongue in the Western arm of the
Empire and never even reached that status in the East, where Greek remained
in use. (We have Roman Imperial administrative documents from the days
immediately before the advent of Islam, and those from immediately
afterwards, and both are in Greek.) Still, the peasant in Gaul spoke
Gaulish, the peasant in Gallacia spoke Gallacian, and so forth. None of
these guys spoke Latin as a first language. Even Hispania is questionable,
as the substarte probably continued to speak Celtic over Latin, though the
epigraphy gives us cause to pause before jumping to conclusions.
There is no question that in, say, 300 AD, Latin was widely understood
within the Roman Empire. It was the language of administration in the
West, if nothing else. But the common tongue of those guys driving the
oxen around the square was NOT Latin.
(There is a mass of knowledge held in common among Classical scholars which
has simply been passed on from generation to generation without
attribution. One such contention is that the language of the Byzantine
Court remained Latin until its end and I have recently been challenged on
that point. We do know that Justinian was more able in Latin than in Greek
but I cannot speak for his successors from any sort of direct knowledge.)
The issue becomes quite complicated by the Volkerwänderung and all of that.
In the end, Latin roots prevailed in Spain, France, southern Belgium,
Italy, Roumania, and some portions of Switzerland, but no where else, and
for good reason.
Romance languages are rather dull and incapable of proper expression, as it
is. <he grins broadly> Why learn French when you can learn Latin or Greek
or Russian or, even better, Scots Gaelic? Let us go for those languages
most capable of pithy, decent, and humorous statement? None of this is
posible in French or Italian or Spanish, but Scots Gaelic, Russian, and
even Finnish are certainly capable of doing this and doing it well. Go
with Finnish: they say that success comes from conquering a unique are
unknown to others, so a knowledge of Finnish should make us all wealthy.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
NEW FAX NUMBER: +540-343-8505
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