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--- Paul Bennett skrzypszy: > What if Latin hadn't risen as the language of the Roman Empire, and > Greek had been the status-lect and the ordinary-lect up until the > end of Latin-as-a-living-language? How would the Romance languages > have turned out, assuming similar phonetic and semantic drift took > place as "here"? That certainly sounds like an interesting project! For the rest, I have little to add to Ray Brown's elaborate reply on Conlang. I know that at least two conlangers have experimented with the idea of Greek combined with Spanish sound changes: Jesse Bangs with Costanici, and a conlanger whose name escapes me at the moment with Mesegoika. I have had similar thoughts at many occasions: what if not Latin, but Greek or Oscan/Umbrian had become the language of the Roman Empire? And also: what if Greek had been a Romance language? The latter would be the complete opposite of the process you describe. Take the changes from Classical to Modern Greek and apply them to Vulgar Latin, and then let's see what happens. Honestly, I'm surprised that no one has ever tried that. I mean, people did it with Welsh, Icelandic, Polish, Persian, Arabic... but not Greek, while it seems to obvious! If I wouldn't have been the proud father of two romlangs already (not to mention an early childhood thing) I would certainly go for it myself... Jan ===== "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito." ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html