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Padraic Brown skrev: > --- Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@hidden.email> wrote: > >> I incidentally found this interesting article on a >> different subject while searching for an online version >> of the reichenau Glosses. >> >> P.S. I subscribed CONLANG from two addresses only to be >> able to crosspost this... I promise not to abuse >> this. >> >> <http://tinyurl.com/ysjdyz>-- > > Interesting article, indeed. Though I don't understand the > melodrama over "last words" that philologists are supposed > to have. The change from "Latin" to "Romance" to "Italian" > or "French" is just a change of names. If languages form > dialect continua through space, they certainly form > analagous continua through time. In stead of being able to > walk from village to village from Lisbon to Paris > experiencing numerous changes along the way, if we could > have lived _in_ Lugdunum from the time the Romans took > possession until now, we'd experience a different kind of > continuum. As quoted in one of the course notes I linked to earlier today: #> St Jerome (348-420 AD) observed that Latin changes #> continuously 'et regionibus... et tempore' ['by region #> and by time']. <http://www.qmul.ac.uk/~mlw058/romlangs/romlangslatin.pdf> Also one Swedish writer of the 17th century observed that if you travelled from North Botnia down to Switzerland you would hear but one language that changed gradually. Alas it probably isn't like that anymore. Neither is it in writing, since writing standards change abruptly along with social and cultural changes rather than keep up with the changes of speech. Cf. the file I just uploaded to <http://tinyurl.com/25jrrw>. /Bendetx