Re: Volcae and Volsci

At 7:29:19 PM on Monday, April 7, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

[...]

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans

[...]

> Quote from the above article:

> 'There are many different theories about how Afrikaans
> came to be. The Afrikaans School has long seen Afrikaans
> as a natural development from the South-Hollandic Dutch
> dialect,
> [TP: That's Brian's viewpoint]
> but has also only considered the Afrikaans as spoken by
> the Whites. Others believe that Afrikaans was originally
> spoken by the Khoisan people after using words they heard
> from the Dutch.[citation needed]

> Though this "theory" would imply the improbability of a
> language systematically developing out of a grammatology.
> [TP: I wonder what that means?]

So do I, since for me 'grammatology' is the study of writing
systems.

> Furthermore, this theory would fail to explain the
> systematic process of simplification from dialectical 17th
> century Dutch to Afrikaans, its geographically widespread
> and cohesive nature and also the persistent structural
> similarities between Afrikaans and other regional
> Franconic dialects including Flemish and Frisian.'

> Please go ahead and explain, Brian.

What's to explain? I quite agree with that last paragraph:
the 'theory' that Afrikaans was a 'Khoisan' creation indeed
fails to explain 'the systematic process ... Frisian'.

Brian