In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" wrote:
>>> 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).
>
> Except that, in this case, I think there is a lot in a name!
The same holds for Romanian and Rheto-Romance. I fail to see any
peculiar implication of language label with respect to a supposed
special connection with Latin.
> Are there any witty rules for chopping languages up diachronically?
> Synchronically, we have, 'A language is a dialect with an army and
> a navy.'.
That's a famous phrase about distinction between idioms. It's far
from being perfect (synchronically) but I won't elaborate on that.
AFAIK, there is no simple criterion to decide whether a language
has evolved enough over the time to be considered really different
from its direct ancestor. The structure defining it doesn't change
over the night, major changes are the result of slow progressive
mutations. Reciprocal comprehensibility can't usually be taken into
account since between speakers of diachronically different idioms
there is an abyss of several centuries. In the case of Latin we're
somehow fortunate, the ancestor being decently preserved by Church
while spoken language drifted away, so the fracture was obvious in
"real time" for people of that time.
Normally, the overall analysis of idioms' structures tells us if
they're to be considered one same language, two different languages
or they are in the grey transitional zone. :-)
Regards,
Marius Iacomi