willemvermeer wrote:
>
> People easily shift to another language if that language happens to
> be present.
well, the DacoRomanians in Timoc Valley, after 1400 years Slavic
cohabitance, stil speak their languages. The same as the DacoRomanian from
North of Maramuresh who never belonged to any Rom. state, they belonged to
Hungarians, Czech, Polen and Ukraine, they still speak their language.More,
the Aromanians in Albania did not shifted to Albanian as well, even if there
is too an important lexica common to both folks. And these are little pieces
which disturb a theoreticaly scenario.
> Language shift takes place almost automatically if
> circumstances favour it (especially if you are not hampered by
> schools dealing in militant national ideologies and preparing the
> next generation for yet another round of ethnic cleansing under the
> guise of transmitting national values). A bilingual area where, say,
> the peasants speak Serbian and the pastoralists Rumanian or Albanian
> can easily become monolingual over time depending on which language
> is more prominent. Both Rumanian and Hungarian are shot through with
> Slavic elements, testifying to non-trivial bilingual periods. After
> all, you don't borrow the word for 'snow' (let alone the vocative
> ending) from another lanuage unless it is in some sense your own
> language.
>
>
>
> Willem
I guess that is a mistake with the vocative from Slavic for feminine; the
reasons was said long time before. The vocative is a kind of imperative.
Since we have the imperative in "-e", "-�" and "-o" one will wonder if the
vocative won't have the same desinences "-e", "-�", "-o". And the desinences
are indeed the same as they are in imperative, having the 3 desinences there
in vocative as the imperative has.
So far I can recognise from what you say, historicaly we get stucked on a
path which does not help along more with Orchid or Transilvania. So,
apparently jsut the linguistic data will say more, if one will be able to
get more out of them.
Alex
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