Alex wrote:
>Let me tell you there is no reason for someone
>who live in a group which is strong enough to shift to a new
language.
>They will use a second language of the society they are living
within,
>but they will preserve their own language speaking together. Of
course
>the both languages will get "condimented" and somehow changed due the
>influence of each other. But a shift? A shift has little chances to
>happen.
You are fully right, Alex. Inside the Same Community of a Language
their is no Possible Shift to Another Language.
"The Shift" happens when that Community dissapeared. There is
no "real shift".
During the last year from when I started to count Proto-Albanian
and Balkan Latin(Proto-Romanian) words I have done this only to try
to understand what the "Romanization" means in fact.
From where we can say that the old language disaapeared and the
new one replaced the previous one in a community. How many words we
need to learn and to use from where the "shift" became irreversible.
What is "the hard kernel" of a Language, that if affected than the
language lost his identity?
But viewing the huge numbers of common words (more than 50% of the
vocabulary) between the Proto-Albanian and Proto-Romanian first I
understood that both communities "have spoken" the language of the
other Community too.
The "Proto-Albanians" that learned the Latin word "desiderare"
for sure could count well until 10, in Latin, and also could speak
other one hundred more basic Latin words : like 'sun, moon, stars,
rivers'=>basic words that were never borrowed in Proto-Albanian.
Similar things with the Balkan Latin Speakers ...90% of them
weren't Latins. They knew in fact their own language too ...on their
great majority they where local habitants knowing their own Local
Balkan Language and talking in the evenings this language together
with their family and friends...
When I saw this, next I understood that None of this Communities
Change their language, so that there is no "physical shift" in this
process.
The process was in fact the following:
One Community was talking a Daco-Moesian (Albanoid) Language
Another Community was talking Latin.
From time to time a member of the first Community left that
community and decided that is better for him to live in the Latin
community.
Maybe because is was more easy to live on the other side or maybe
because he was obliged to do so (army duty etc...).
At that moment that Community has had one member less. This was
the Romanization process : one member less in the other community, 2
members less ,...100 members less,...10,000 members less, 100,000
less...and so on...
At the end only few members have remained in that Community
because all the others decided(or was obliged) to leave that
Community, in the last several hundred years, and to integrate in the
Roman World.
Among these few members, one day a single one have remained. It
was the last one that spoke for the last time the Dacian Language.
Now I understood what 'Romanization' means:
'Romanization' means 'Disparition of a Community' ....
From an historical point of view when several centuries are taken
into account 'at a single glance' it appears like "a shift" made by a
local population, from one language to another one, in several
hundreds years (and from this historical point of view is somehow
true)....
But inside this process the reality was the following:
A Linguistic Community have lost their members 'one by
one' ...until the 'whole' Community dissapeared.
Now in the Balkans (and not only there) the situation wasn't
exactly the above described one: ONE linguistic community survived:
it was the Proto-Albanian one.
Remain to see who they are...
Best Regards,
Marius
P.S. If somebody will ask me: what about 'koine' Languages?
A 'koine' language represents a new 'Community' (an etherogenous
one related to the Common Language to be used by his memebers
especially at his beginning) but a 'new' Community.
So the procress is the same...