Re: [tied] Re: Creole Romance? [was: Thracian , summing up]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 13:47:40 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> In every encounter between Scandinavians you have a pidgin
>situation: speakers of languages that are not easily mutually
>comprehensible. The result is that each speaker (based on his
>inclination do so) bends his native language a little towards that of
>the other speaker; but in this case the grammar are so similar that
>most of the forms survive this transformation. With progressively
>dissimilar languages you have to bend your language more. But the
>situation within the Latin-speaking part of the empire was that the
>subdued peoples spoke related IE languages

Not in Mediterranean Spain or North Africa (or Tuscany, for that matter).

>, thus the "loss of grammar" was relatively small.

I don't think the differences between Latin and, say, the various Celtic
languages were as small as those between the modern Scandinavian languages.
Moreover, the Romans didn't need to nor were they inclined to bend their
native language one little bit towards those of the subdued peoples.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...