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--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@y...> wrote: > --- 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've concocted Cunwy to replace Welsh on the assumption that the reast of Europe has developed languages from Greek. This includes Kwan (French), Kena (Italian), etc. > > 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? Oscan/Umbrian has /p/ from /kw/. > > 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 <snip>