Moment (was: Re: Ah, look at all...)

In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" wrote:

>> OK, lemme rephrase it: before the spoken language of Romance
>> regions could no longer been caled Latin (extended "moment" from
>> which one can speak about Proto-Romance), it was still Latin.
>
> Probably a very extended moment! Couldn't one argue that Latin was
> spoken in Charlemagne's time until the Carolingian Renaissance
> forced the clerks to admit that the language they wrote was not
> Latin?

Obviously, Latin didn't ceased to exist in 812 a.D., one year
before the Tours informal meeting :-), that's why I said it was
an extended moment. The "extended moment" refers to a period in
which one cannot say precisely if the language belongs merely
to Latin or to Proto-Romance diasystems, so it's better not to
label it other than "transitional". Before that moment, the
language was Latin and after that moment it was Proto-Romance.
The transition from Latin to Proto-Romance is of course gradual
and 813 a.D. marks only the moment in which differences between
Church Latin and vulgar idioms are _aknowledged_ to be strong
enough to make them belong to different diasystems.

> Can't one argue that speakers of 'Ladin' still speak Latin? After
> all, we could say that the Anglo-Saxons spoke English, but Old
> English and Modern English are mutually incomprehensible.

The same can be said about every modern Romance Language. "Ladin"
is nothing else that a modern Romance belonging to the Alpine
group (with Rheto-Romance and Friulan).

Regards,
Marius Iacomi