Re: language shift ( it was Celts & Cimmerians)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:

> People, IMHO a language dies out and it does not became abandoned.

You

> can not abandon a thing which is within you, that is a fact. The

use of

> the word "abandon" here appears just as metaphor and nothing more.

But

> since here are such analysts which are comparing language with

trousers

> one has to take a closer view to their examples.

The principal method of abandoning a language is not to teach it to
one's children. Speakers don't have to give it up - they can just
die without replacement, allegedly the principal way scientific
orthodoxy changes.

> - it was showed here that English has it's progressive and very

massive

> influence on the actual languages.
> - trough analogy with the actual situation in the New World, there

is

> made up the explanation for the language shift of the old

population's

> language conquered by Roman Empire to the actually Romance.

One could also consider the spread of Spanish, Chinese (peaceful
spread my foot), Arabic, not to mention smaller scale displacements
such as Hungarian, Turkish or even, so it seems, English in much of
England.

> Is there the need to speak about "the job" of a language? I guess

there

> isn't. The job of any language -short said- is to make the

comunication

> posible.

And I suppose you'll tell me purpose of apes' grooming one another
is delousing.

> - any "new language" appeared in the geographical space where these
> aborigines are living?

You mean like Afrikaans? Do creoles like Sranam interest you? I
don't think Strine (= Australian English) counts as a new language.
(It does appear as a language choice in Microsoft Office, though.)
However, a godd Portuguese textbook will frequently have to refer to
differences between Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese. Listening
to some varieties of US English can be quite a strain for an
Englishman.

> - have been there traced morphological, phonological and structural
> changes which happened to the language of the aborigines due the
> influence by the language of the new comers?

I suppose the best test case would be Guarani. That's a vigorous
Amerindian language, whose speakers are bilingual in Spanish.

However, the flood of mere loanwords can induce phonological
changes. The range of Siamese final consonants is being extended by
loans from English - it probably helps that English is taught in the
schools. (Incidentally, starting as an isolating language, Siamese
has already acquired a bit of morphology from Sanskrit and Khmer.
Historically, the phonological impact of Mon or Khmer is quite
striking if you know where to look. The latter may just be an areal
or substrate phenomenon, and is probably off-topic.)

Richard.