[tied] Re: Celts & Cimmerians

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" wrote:

> m_iacomi wrote:
>
>>> You are partly right. I cannot bring any proove for what was
>>> spooken 2000 year ago. But the proof for the year 1521 is there.
>>
>> It is, but you fail to interpret it correctly. The language of
>> Neacsu's letter is not identical with modern Romanian, it's just
>> not too far from it, and one can understand it without pain. But
>> were a modern Romanian due to write the same informative letter,
>> he'd never use exactly the same 1. words, 2. formulas, 3. grammar
>> (morphology) and 4. phrase turns.
>
> The objections regarding the formulas are not entire correct.

Of course they are. I was not referring to CS [!] introduction nor
to any other genuinely Slavic formulas, but to Romanian text.

> The both formulation are in OCS;

Actually not OCS but (a variant of) CS.

> But the Rom. text does not show any phonetical changes

Oh, really?! As far as in your quoted text (a part of the whole
letter) one can see "den" instead of "din", "se-au" instead of
"s-au", "pre" instead of "pe"; the document contains also other
spellings which might be related to some minor phonetical changes.

On another hand, major phonetical changes were not to be expected
since dialectal split of Common Romanian: languages do not change
at a constant rate over the centuries, and linguistic data are
rather consistent with minor phonetical evolution of Daco-Romanian
after the creation of the new (Romance) diasystem. Intermediate
steps are few so one cannot expect an important variation rate.

> as it was the case with English in the same period.

Old English, as even the guys from which you took your wav file
precise in their pages, "is generally taken to cover the period
c600-1100 AD". It is not the same period with Neacsu's letter
(1521 AD). By a simple coincidence, OE period overlaps with the
final centuries of faster PBR evolution towards Common Romanian;
it overlaps also with the 2-3 centuries existence of the latter.
Of course, faster variation rates are not universally dictated
by some big world clock, they are related for each people with
the subsequent historic events.
The thing you should keep in mind from the OE example is that
normal languages' behaviour is to modify themselves in time.

>> Of course, the differences aren't tremendous (nor they are
>> between Dante's and modern Italian, for example) so one can
>> say the language is _almost_ the same. Still, one cannot make
>> a generalization over the time (as well as over space) of the
>> assertion; that is: if language A1 is almost the same with
>> language A2 which is at its' turn almost identical with a
>> language A3 not too far from the language A4 and so on, then
>> language A1 is practically the same also with A3, A4, ... This
>> is simply false and contradicted diachronically by objective
>> facts as language evolution, and diatopically by existence of
>> smooth transitions between various modern Romance (and not
>> only) areas.
>
> The mathematical principle here doesn't apply very correct
> since there is no"=" but "~";

Yes, but _you_ were the one still speaking about that: "Today
JohnNormalPerson speaks exactly as in the letter of Neacsu if
not in even in the same way as he spoke 2000 years ago.". In
this phrase, you claim there is a reasonable probability that
2000 years ago, some people spoke the same way as modern
Romanians do. Then you bring the fallacious argument: "but the
proof for the year 1521 is there.".
For AD 1521 there is a proof that Romanians spoke _almost_ the
same language as nowdays (nobody contesting that).
For AD 3, there is not only "no proof" but also no valid argument
to support it AND no realistic probability to have some people
speaking almost the same language as nowdays Romanian.

> Any Rom. will understand some Italian words, less Spanish, Portugese
> and very few words from French. But they will understand the

Aromanian

> even if the first feeling is to hear a "strange " Rom.

I'm not so sure you're able to.

>>> And is high debatable if the year 1312 is correct for the
>>> documents of Iehud.
>>
>> It is "Ieud" and I already pointed out its' language is specific
>> for 16th century and Northern Daco-Romanian (see r-hist). I don't
>> know any valid reason to debate on a.D. 1312 with respect to this
>> document.
>
> I see, you think at same analysis of Rosetti. I was now not thinking
> at the texts from teh book, but I was thinking at the texts which
> are on the walls of the church.

... for which you have undoubtedly a very precise method of datation.

> And the argument here is that the church was never renowed; at least
> the archives speaks just about a single renovation of a damaged part
> of a turm due a big fire but no renovation at the walls.

Are the archives regularry updated up to your AD 1312?! Are you sure
there was no other guest painter after that moment, simply not written
down in the archives?!

> The texts there are readable even today and when one reads

"paraschevie

> au taet capu" then one has already the image of the language.

Well, the image one gets from one single cunningly selected phrase
can
be _very_ misleading. Is that all you got from there?!

> Well, I repeated the words of my wife. "It sounds like skandinavian

".

> She is nither musical nor interested in linguistic.

"sounds like" might prove somehow correct, but I'd rather let that
task
to native English or Northern Germanic people. Anyway, see above about
the OE issue.

Marius Iacomi