From: Marco Moretti

To: nostratic@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:02 AM

Subject: [nostratic] Re: Is anybody here?

--- In nostratic@yahoogroups.com, "Geraldine Reinhardt" <waluk@......>
wrote:
>
> My dear Marco.  I think you are exaggerating.  Never in my long
life have I ever met anyone from such a barren family.   Surely a few
of you could have saught medical treatment.    Yours is an ill
attempted try at showing that a few languages will always remain as
isolates.  That is an impossibility.
>
> Gerry

Hello, Gerry!

I don't exaggerate, this is all the truth about me and my family.
In many districts of Northern Italy similar "barren families" are
quite common. Demographic decadence is a reality. Few kilometers from
my house, there is a coutry named Albiate. It is one of the contries
with the highest percent of people more than 60 in all Europe,
perhaps in the whole world. Only in Spain and in Japan there is
something like this (I remember a terrible documentary about a
village of whalers in Japan inhabited only by very mature people).
In Albiate the most part of youngsters died of AIDS in the '80. There
was a plenty of addicts to heroine. Due also to the bigot climate,
there was a terrible social disease among young people. So they used
to go to Milan to puncture. Of about 350 born in 1966 only a dozen
are still alive. It's in these districts that LAS was first studied.
Interesting, isn't it?
I painted a picture with an ironical title: "Figli per la Padania"
(Sons for Padania), in which skeletons walk and their children are
decrepit moribunds.
You can say I'm ill-minded, but even if my language is often crude,
what I say is essentially true.
Many and many ancient noble families died out living no trace at all.
Languages are exactly the same as human beings.
When Cherokee will be an extinct language, probably its less distant
relatives will be some remnants of Iroquoian languages. When the
entire Iroquoian family will be expired, there will be nothing
sufficiently similar to be recognizable on the entire world. It's
only an example. If all this is ill, you can say it, but things don't
change. Extinction is a cosmic force, much more powerful than life.

Best wishes

Marco