From: jpisc98357@...
Message: 8373
Date: 2001-08-07
he tendency for people to "ape their
betters" would encourage the lower classes to imitate the language of the
upper classes. In the same sort of way, a probably quite small superimposed
upperclass of Romans imposed a sort of Latin on the Gauls and made them
into French-speakers
Reply to MCLSSA@,
I would prefer to direct my responses to a name.
Let me get this straight. 200 IE speaking warriors arrive in Western
Europe and after a quick and decisive battle conquer the ruling class of an
indigenous tribe. They intermarry with the survivors of the elite, women, and
within a few generations the 10,000 tribal members stop calling their parents
Mom and Dad and start calling them Mother and Father, and stop calling their
girl girl and start calling her Daughter. Water is substitued for wet and
the wetflow is now a river. Simple in an area that has such poor
communications that they don't learn that they have been conquered for a
generation after the event.
From my historical perspective, there are pockets of alien language
speakers within the larger homogeneous national language areas everywhere.
Sorbian in Germany, German in Russia, Basque in Spain and France, Gailic in
Scotland, Khmer in Vietnam, Korean in China, Ainu in Japan, etc. The USA has
everything within the dominant American English.
Nations like the Congo, Nigeria and India have never had their languages
coalesce into a dominant national tongue, it is easier for everyone to learn
English and communicate in an alien tongue than learning the languages of
their five closest neighbors. This is more likely the reason for the
Romanization of the languages in the Empire. It was much easier for a
tribal leader of the Belgae to learn Latin and travel through Gaul than to
try to learn all the Gaulic languages, or cross the Channel and speak with
other Celts in Wales. Latin became a Lingua Franca understood by everyone,
and everyone's second language. The elites were thoroughly Romanize after
400 years or so and set the standards within their own urban areas where
everyone spoke Latin.
If an unsophisticated language is to change due to an alien overlordship,
I would expect terminology of a new technology to be the first adoptions. If
PIE speaking horsemen arrived in present day France, dominating the native
late Neolithic tribesmen, the first adaptations to the Neolithic language
would be words for horses and the techniques of breeding and equipping, or
the technology of metal working. It would be much easier for the tribe to
adopt the invader's words for smelt, ore, copper, forge, hammer, slag, kiln,
charcoal, tongs, anvil, bellows, ingot, hammerwelded, cast, pour, pure,
contaminated, flux, scrap metal, bronze, tin, lead, silver, gold, polished
and on and on. Much easier than saying I will start calling my girl child
Daughter and my man child Son on Tuesday.
Is there an error in my reasoning?
Best regards, John Piscopo
http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com
PO Box 137
Western Springs, IL 60558-0137
(708)246-7111