Peter P wrote:
> I do find that the most informative messages are from members who
> also have a good grasp of Latin. Perhaps it's a good corner stone to
> build on, with respect to Romanian and other Romance languages.
>
> Peter P
>
that won't be a bad idea. After all the list became so intoxicated with
Rom. because of the "crazy" idea Rom. won't be Romance but a language
which is related to the languages of the Italic tribes before they left
the Valey of Danube for the Italian space. The true Latin loans and the
Slavic influence make it very difficult to establish what to which
belongs. The very old layer which is common with Albanian put more salt
in the soup.
The question is, discussing just about Latin & Romance, what has one to
do with the other "components", Slavic and Albanian?
As you see Greek appears very few here in this ecuation, even if they
have been the language of the "culture" before Romans and the language
of the culture & Imperium Romanus begining with VII century.It seems it
did not helped to much for spreading their language. Neither in Rom. nor
in Alb., in both languages the Greek elements being very few
represented, more of them entering trough Slavs & Church the Rom. and
Alb. languages; they are even less as the Turkish loans in the time of
Osman Empire.
The very reduced lexical data of Rom. with other Romance, special with
Dalmatian makes the things even more weierd. There is a statistic made
by John Fisher in his studium on Dalmatian language which shows
following corespondence:
Pan-Romanic words: 208
Lexical corespondance between Romance languages:
Dalmatian-Italian :427
Dalmatian-French :380
Dalmatian-Spanish :365
Dalmatian-Portuguese:344
Dalmatian-Romanian :298
the another fact that Rom. has not properly Latin derivatives but just
the root with its own intern derivatives opens big questions regarding
this relationship which is between Rom and Latin. Grosso modo , you got
already an overview on this list about discussed problem:-))
Alex