From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 14731
Date: 2002-08-29
----- Original Message -----From: jpisc98357@...Cc: subas@...Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:54 AMSubject: [tied] Check out Origin of Ancient Languages> Somehow I just don't think that Latvian and the other Baltic languages which probably split with with German in the early 1st Millenium BC could be either ancestral or sister languages with Hittite, Pharonic Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Indus Valley or any other ancient language.They possibly branched off from Slavic about 1000 BC, give or take a few centuries, but their genetic relationship to Germanic is more distant -- a common ancestor in the fourth millennium BC or so, more likely. Still, the characteristic features of Baltic (let alone Latvian in particular) developed fairly late. It's funny that Kaulins uses Latvian to represent "Indo-European" in his comparisons (Latvian vs. Sumerian, etc.). Haven't we got a pretty good PIE reconstruction? (If you compare _that_ with Latvian, you'll see how highly derived Latvian really is, despite retaining some unquestionably archaic elements.) But then Kaulins probably doesn't understand a thing about PIE, judging from his ramblings. A little learning ... etc.Piotr