Re: Imperialism as the source of new geographical knowledge

From: t0lgsoo1
Message: 67608
Date: 2011-05-25

>I am beginning to suspect, namely that Proto-Romanian, starting
>as a Latin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin
>then Latin
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
>at the head of the Adriatic, esp. in
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauportus
>cf. the presence of a Romanian language, the
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanian_language ,
>in (H)istria.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map-balkans-vlachs.png

It'll lead you to false conclusions, since your "suspicion" is
wrong. (Bist auf'm Holzweg.) Istro-Romanian is a quite recent
dialect because of many peculiarities. Istro-Romanians must've
wandered thither coming from a central area adjacent to the
Daco-Romanian dialect (chiefly today's Serbia). And the
timeframe must have been towards the middle of the 2nd millennium,
and not prior to the 1st millennium, CE.

Otherwise, of course, the entire Romanian language (with its 4
dialects - Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Meglenite Romanian and
Istro-Romanian) is the continuation of a South-East European
Latin vernacular spoken by populations having some kind of satem
IE substrate (it is *assumed* either to have been Dacian-Moesian
or Thracian).

To speak of the inception of that vernacular at the beginning of
the 1st century BCE isn't warranted. It is too early for the
entire area. The Romanization could start only after many decades,
actually after several *centuries* of the "SPQR" presence there as
a *state*, in the whole relevant area (i.e. Pannonia, Croatia,
Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Northern Greece, Bulgaria, Northern Dacia,
and Scythia Minor).

Because of the lack of documents, you cannot state anything of
any "Pidgin" Latin. Nobody knows how good or how bad was the Latin
spoken by the Romanized populations in the relevant provinces
from the 1st century CE until the Avar+Slavic conquests (and
territorial abandonments by the E-Roman Empire). The fact that
Romanian dialects and the extinct Dalmatian have a certain
substrate vocabulary (and various substrate locutions) does not
mean that *everything* of it was preserved from the times prior
to the Romanization until the timeframe when one can deem the
Romance vernaculars spoken there as Protoromanian and Protodalmatian.
(Despite of the big differences between Daco-Romanian (i.e. on
which is based standard Romanian) and the other three dialects,
spoken today by only 1-2 hundred thousand people scattered in
various Balkan Peninsula areas as well as in Romania, Western
Europe and Northern America, they are still too close; not as
big as between (1) English and Suebian+Bavarian or (2) Danish
and Suebian+Bavarian), but rather as the difference is between
Yiddish and Mittel- + Oberdeutsch dialects.

Your speculation on history events might have some "granum" of
reality in them, but it is quite impardonable for a linguist to
neglect linguistic realities, as well as some simple things: why
on earth should have some populations feel compelled or attracted
to give up their "barbarian" tongues in order to speak colloquial
Latin in times when they didn't live within the Roman Empire?
Only a Roman administration and a massive colonization of people
whose mother tongue was Latin could have provided the appropriate
conditions.

Note that, despite the fact that Romanian hasn't preserved many
features that survived in the western Romance languages, it hasn't
preserved virtually nothing stemming from the substrate culture,
religion, onomastics, vocabulary (except for a small vocabulary
with chiefly PIE origin, but of which nobody can tell from whose
idiom they have been preserved: Dacian-Moesian? Thracian? Illyrian?
Scythian/Sarmatian/Yazygian? Or else). Even most of the Latin
heritage is lost. But what's there is definitely of Latin origin
(the names of some Roman pagan holidays despite the thorough
Christianization, the name for the church, which has its roots
in the imperial era of Roman Christianity after Constantin I's
Milan edict & al. things, among which the fundamental Christian
notions, incl. Yahve's "title": dominus deus, as well as the
names of the days and of the months. The Romanization wrought
havoc in all those peoples as far as language and culture+religion
are concerned: any honest researcher has to face that. On top
of that, it is extremely difficult to separate the unknown
elements on which one keeps speculating that they are ancient
local substrate issues from those imported via the intermediaries
comming from the East: the numerous Germanic + Iranic-speaking +
Slavic-speaking + Turkic-speaking waves, in which the latter two
groups always had strong Iranic (Scythian-Sarmatian-Khwarizmian)
substrates (in most cases, linguistically, East-Iranian). The
tiny amount of Dacian and Thracian vocabulary relics show that
the dialects of languages must have stood in a very close position
to the big Iranic family within the satem "continuum" from the
Adriatic to the Altai mountains.).

> In that scenario that Latin creole, Proto-Romanian would have been the language of Burebista's proto-state,

This is nonsense. It is so as if you Danes would start in a generation
to speak, instead of Danish, some Pidgin-Turkish or Pidgin-Arab only
because in Denmark there are some immigrant groups (that keep
growing). And all that out of the blue, as a whim. Neither under
"Adi von Braunau" were Danes obliged to learn and to speak
"Bastarnian". :)

>used because the Dacian language, because of the political
>situation in Dacia with small warlords fighting each other for
>plunder and slaves would have been split into mutually
>unintelligible dialects.

This idea would imply the contrary: the adopting of Burebista's
and Decebal's dialect as sort of a standard language, prior to
the Romanization. (As happened in the Eastern Frankish empire,
where a certain German dialects group evolved as the standard
German called "Hochdeutsch", and which you assume is based on
the dialects spoken by them ol' Bastarnians.)

>That BTW, gives us another anchor on Burebista's rise, it would
>have occurred because of the almost unlimited funds pouring into
>the country (countries) when Roman slave procurement had to change >markets in 73-71 BCE.

This is an absurd idea. In order to abandon your language and
adopt the language of another nation there must be something...
compelling; it must be a... must, a need to you. Gimme one million
or 100 million euros, and I still won't learn Danish. :-)

(On the other hand, do not neglect the fact that the Dacian state
hadn't the possibilities of a strong, "unitarian" state. Burebista's
and Decebal's few decades were exceptions, when force, organization
and enforced discipline assured for the domination over various
other Dacian-Moesian-Thracian polities. Otherwise, the whole
relevant territory was highly divided (in a similar way as was
Germany for many centuries divided up in tens, and hundreds of
small states, duchies, state-cities & the like; a feature that
is reflected in the... Romanian realities: the state Romania was
founded in... 1859, and the unification of Moldavia and Walachia
was difficult, despite the fact that the inhabitants thereof were
and are one and the same people with lesser differences between
them as compared to provinces of Germany, where low German and
upper German regions are different "planets" :) That was the
fate of the ancient inhabitants of the Balkan, Carpathian and
Yugo-Alps regions in ancient times, that was the fate of the
Romance speaking populatio in the middle ages: numerous, but
virtually not capable of organizing themselves in such a way
as to become big regional political and military powers - unlike
those newcomers with Germanic and Iranic substrates, that were
extremely eager to found and defend kingdoms. An enormous corpus
of the Romance population again changed languages "melting" with
the "upper class" nations: Serbo-Croatians, Bulgarians, Hungarians,
Greek and Albanians. Perhaps this is due to the pre-Roman heritage).

>However, reading it as 'he was then leading an army against the
>barbarians (who lived beyond the isthmus as far as the Borysthenes
>and the Adrias)' it becomes a true statement even if Mithridates
>only made it part of the way. It might be interpreted in another
>interesting way, namely that the genesis of a Romanian ethnos

This is, mit Verlaub, a complete nonsense. How on earth could
that guy Mithridates and his ephemerous period contribute to
the Romanization of a vast quasi-Thracoid population?!? Was
his Pontus and his civilization a second... Latium? :-)

>at least defined linguistically as 'those who speak a Latin creole'

Even this hypothesis is not warranted: AFAIK, no true Romanist
has postulated that South-East Latin vernacular was Pidgin or
creole Latin. And noone gives up one's language in order to speak
a new language only out of a whim or a fad: you have to have
major conditions, such as a foreign occupation or a massive
emigration to an other territory. Neither Jews, who repeatedly
had to go through such terribly experiences, gave up Hebrew and
Aramaic. Neither did South-Eastern Slavs give up their Slavic
idiom in order to speak the Turkic-Iranic idioms of their Avar
and Protobulghar overlords. And, OTOH, the populations in Anatolia, in order to adopt the language of the invaders after AD 1000, Turkish, and forget their old idioms (Armenian, Greek et al.),
had to go through centuries of Seldjuk and Ottoman epochs; yet
still today, in the 21st c., there are populations there who
still speak the old languages (among them the most numerous the
Kurds, who speak an Iranic idiom).

And you speculate that various *free* nations there started
to be Romanized only because there were some merchants and some
slaves moved to and fro, and some cartloads of gold moved to
Sarmizegetusa! In time periods when Roman military legions still
had to consolidate power in Italy. (Zum Lachen sowas. :))

>living in the area between the Borysthenes and the Adrias (which
>incidentally is where there are found today), was underway already
>in 108 BCE.

Not even in 108 CE (when Decibalus had been dead for two years)
was there a Romanization of Northern Dacia, nor of Southern Dacia,
Thracia and much of what's today FYROM, Serbia, Croatia. Only
western parts of the latter along with what's today Albania and
Northern Greece (and along the Via Egnantia )got gradually Romanized.
And it took further 3-4-5 centuries (until the process was "shredded"
by the inroads made by Slavicization and Grecization, once that
the Roman Empire collapsed and the Eastern one replaced Latin
with Greek, the new Romance idiom being spoken after the 6th c.
virtually only by the later on so-called "Vlachos", a very low
social stratum, that during several centuries turned from a chiefly
urban population to a rural and pastoral mountain population,
living in regions that weren't attractive for the Turkic, Slavic
and "Byzantine" upper classes).

If the Romanization's onset was supposed to have been so early
and due to such pettitesses and nothingness, then how can you
imagine that Thracian was still attested as spoken by some people
even in the 6th-7th century? How can you imagine that a compact
population called Albanians could have preserved a separate idiom
that shows myriads of elements illustrating the "freezing" of
the Romanization process in an early phase (as compared with
its neighbor, Romanian)? If your assumption had something in it,
then Albanian must have sounded today almost as Romance as
Sicilianu as well as the Veneto and Furlan dialects! But of those
Arbäräsh Albanians who've been present in Southern Italy since
the 15th c. (Puglia, Calabria etc.) many are even *today* bilingual,
i.e. they haven't assimilated completely linguistically in 5-6
centuries.

>except, I repeat, Strabo's statement and numismatic evidence from
>the Greek cities on the northwestern Black Sea litoral.

Numismatic evidence in territories neighboring Greek colonies, but
outside Greek colonies, mean to you money only paid for slaves?!
If so, why do you thing all those Getae, Sarmatians etc. "barbarians"
wouldn't have accepted coins in other commercial exchanges or as
tribute paid by Greek colonies to local "Barbarian" princelings?
(Esp. if silver and golden or at least gilded coins. :))

>His mother endebted his kingdom (probably to the Romans)

Aren't you a bit too much influenced by the situation of
indebtedness by modern states, within the EU and beyond, as
well as by the troubles of certain states, esp. "PIIGS"? :-)

George