>The argument is that Romanian is based on the actual
>spoken Latin of the 2nd century AD. The logic is that
>other Romance languages are developments out of spoken
>Latin from a time both before and after that period,
>since they show reflexes of characteristics of Latin
>not found in the 2nd century, but found earlier or later.
>
>So nobody "left out" an archaism in Romania. They never
>had it.
I understand what's said and what's meant. What I don't
quite understand is how Latin speakers could have passed
on a series of archaisms to those regions that'd turn
French, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese &
Rhaeto-Roman, say, betw. AD 1-AD 300, while the same
Latin speakers or other *but contemporary* ones were
not able to convey the same linguistic elements to
Eastern "Romania".
This is why I'd imagine that either Romanians forgot
chunks of Latin vocabulary because the tremendous
impact of their linguistic environment (and there exists
*written* evidence that such oblivions/losses indeed
occurred, e.g. 15th cent. texts show that Romanians
had the word "aua" [au&] < uva, completely replaced
by the substrate synonym "strugure") -- or their...
"teachers" had taught them sort of a simple Latin. :-)
>Peter
George