>>[Romanian's] almost total isolation from the rest of the
> > Romance-speaking world from as early as the 3rd century.
> well Peter, I am afraid Piotr won't agree with that.
That's up to Piotr.
>Which isolation? Where?
See Bàrtoli "Archivio glottologico italiano" 21 (1927!) pp 79ff and
Puscariu "Die Tatwelt" (1937)pp7ff and the same author in "Etudes de
linguistique roumaine" (1973) , 60 years later, and there has been no
evidence to change his opinion. See also Bonfante "TheOrigin of the
Romance Languages" (1999) p127:
"As for Dacia, we may take it for granted that after the third century
it was almost completely cut off from the rest of the Roman world; no
further linguistic wave was to reach it."
This is, of course, due to the withdrawal of the Romans in AD 271.
Peter