Re: Why did Proto-Germanic break up?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Rader" <jrader@...> wrote:

>
> > And the development of "efficient socio-political structures" in

general

> > leads to less diversity, not more (cf. the connection between

Celtic

> > factionalism and the diversity of Celtic languages), or the

multitude

> > of languages on the Balkan and the Balkanic politics (no value
> > judgement intended) of that area.
> >
>
> Are the Balkans more linguistically diverse than Western Europe? I
> don't think so. Certainly there is less dialect diversity in

Stokavski

> Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian

I note that you left out the other -kavskis.

> or in Daco-Romanian than in say,

Is that Romanian plus Aromanian etc? I got the impression they were
mutually unintelligible?

> France/Occitania, Germany, or Italy. What is (or was) distinctive

about

> the Balkans was the multilingual character of many areas, not

number

> of languages.
>

Torsten