Re: Imperialism as the source of new geographical knowledge

From: t0lgsoo1
Message: 67618
Date: 2011-05-25

>This is based on the assumption that closely related languages must
>have spread from a common region

This would be much the more your own assumption (based on your
slavery hypothesis: a Romanization without Romans for a long
time period :)).

>and since Istro-Romanian is the smaller community of the two
>claiming they were the emigrants makes the fact that there is
>no physical evidence for that becomes easier to ignore.

Nope. Because these languages, incl. Albanian, don't have their
own coastal, maritime vocabulary.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanian_language#Origin
>'Some loanwords suggest that before coming to Istria, Istro-
>Romanians lived for a period of time on the Dalmatian coast at the
>Cetina river, where names ending in "-ul" are observed from
>medieval times.

It should be made clear there was no overlapping with a further
Romanian group (extinct in the 20th century), the Maurovlachs
(Morlacs).

>In any case, it is linguistically evident[citation needed] that
>Istro-Romanian split from the widely spoken (Daco-)Romanian later
>than did the other Romanian (=Eastern Romance) languages, Aromanian
>language and Megleno-Romanian.'

That's right. And it seems even closer to Daco-Romanian than
Aromanian and Meglenite.

>In other words, Istro-Roanian belong with the Daco-Romanian part
>of the family.

Hm, this one is rather an exaggeration.

>>And the
>>timeframe must have been towards the middle of the 2nd
>>millennium, and not prior to the 1st millennium, CE.
>
> You provide no evidence for that claim, so I'll ignore it.

I give you a ... hint, so that you, the doctor in linguistix might
look things up in the library of scholar analyses and theories
that have been created for over 150 years on these subjects (esp.
in Romanistics). If you wanna deal scientifically with this stuff.
The timeframe of the evolution of neo-Romance languages and the
main peculiarities are taught to the students in the 1st and 2nd
semesters whenever studying the history of Romance languages
(incl. French, Italian etc.)

>>To speak of the inception of that vernacular at the beginning of
>>the 1st century BCE isn't warranted.
>
>Explain what you mean by that.

In the 1st century prior to the incarnationem of our Lord there
were Latin and some other Italian dialects as Romance languages,
otherwise nothing, zilch, nada. There was no "Pidgin" and no
"creole" Mundart based on Latin or Oscan or else. That what became
Italian, French, Spanish, Rumansch, Romanian etc. had to wait for
further 5-6-7-8 centuries in order to gradually develop (or for
Latin to be transformed).

You repeat the same thing with Romance languages as you do with
Hochdeutsch, which you postulate it existed already in 100 BCE.
Then to what avail all the theories and "laws" concerning the
sound shifts and the tremendous vocabulary transformations? To
you, they mean virtually nothing. :)

>>It is too early for the entire area.
>
>Because...?

Because the preconditions for the Romanization (that lasted for
a long time) weren't still there (no Roman state extension there,
no... coercion, nothing whatsoever more than the knowledge of
some... translators and interpretes).

>If you had backed that claim with evidence I would discuss it,
>but you haven't.

What do you expect? To gather for you hundreds of pages containing
the history of the Romance languages? THere is no need of your
discussing it, there is a need *for your* personally to learn
how neo-Romance languages came into existence (how and when).
There was no Romanian language in the 1st century BCE as there
was no Hochdeutsch in the same epoch.

> > Because of the lack of documents, you cannot state anything of
> > any "Pidgin" Latin.
>
> Because of lack of documentation all that can be stated about the situation are linguistic generalities which hold in such situation, and which are that when a native population adopts foreign language as a trade language or

Again you ignore the whole lotta stuff concerning the long periods
of transformations, described by the so-called sound shift laws,
the big vocabulary transformations (in the Romance world esp.
after the collapse of the Western Roman state, and after the
Eastern one lost most of the territories where the Romance
population lived).

>To any Roman, Proto-Romanian would be very bad Latin.

So was and is the neo-Romance language that replaced Latin in
its very Mamma land: Italian. Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese
are as "bad Latin" too. Why is Romanian "casa noastra are multe
ferestre si o curte cu iarba verde si arbori inaltzi" more
"creolized" than its equivalent in any western Romance language,
as compared with classical Latin?

>So would Proto-Spanish, Proto-French etc.

So would Italian as well.

>The relationship between those two languages would have been
>similar to the relationship between English and eg.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin

Still, I don't think that the neo-Romance languages can be deemed
as Pidgin Latin dialects, despite the enormous grammar simplifi-
cations and tremendous change in vocabularies (and "intake" of
Germanic and Slavic loanword groups).

>Here George, because of the limited number of sockpuppets in his
>head available for the Punch and Judy show he runs there, has,
>after giving up on the Fischkopp-puppet, identified me as a
>Dacian-continuity-Romanian-nationalist and therefore, wasting >everybody's time in the process, argues against the belief that
>the Romanians are a continuation of the Dacian people, a belief
>I have never expressed nor entertain.

Nobody identified you as a "Dacian-whatsoever": I was a bit
sarcastic after you showed me you take seriously the old Danish-
Dacian confusion (based on Iordanes's own mixing up things);
which you then enhanced by advancing a hypothetic mass migration
"out of Dacia" to Denmark.

I don't argue against the Dacian biological continuity in the
Romanian nation (as a component/substratum of it); I'm merely
not going to accept theses based on assumptions outside science
(and linguistics) uttered by (fanatical) "dacomaniacs". One
of the nonsense disseminated by dacomaniax is the assertion
Dacian's (unknown) language was a... proto-Latin language
(and Dacians were the ancestors of Romans/Latins; i.e.
Zalmoxis was der Uropa von Romulus and Remus :)).

As for "wasting everybody's time", look who's talking! (Be glad
that I ain't no moderator of this group; if I were, i'd show
you some "drill"! ;))

If you accept only reactions posted by 1-2-3 subscribers to
this group, then rather switch to private correspondence with
them. AFAIK, this is a mailing-list, and its topix aren't limited
to Odin, Bastarnae, Ariovist, Mithridates, Boerebist, Peuke and
slaves for precious metal coins. Host mi? ;o)

>What linguistic realities are you accusing me of neglecting?

Tons of them. To go through the main aspects, one would need to
write a book of at least 500 pages. But even in absence of
an analysis, it suffices to realize that you talk of Proto-
Romanian (or Proto-Italian, French etc.) for an epoch from
around 110-60 BCE, when even Latin hadn't gotten so far with
its simplifications and changes on the path to all these
neo-Romance languages. (By neglecting 500-1,000 years of
later evolution, you repeat the "Bastarnian"-Hochdeutsch story.)

>For the same reasons that the natives of New Guinea gave up their
>"barbarian" tongues in order to speak colloquial English in times
>when they didn't live within the British Empire. Read the article.

But none of those ancient nations gave up their languages and
cultures voluntarily! They did it only gradually when they
were subdued by the Romans, and after their territories were
included in the Roman empire and their structures were destroyed,
and significant segments of those populations were dislocated
and moved from their places, and other populations were colonized
amongst them, etc. Thracians and Moesians resisted linguistically
for a long period of time; historians say there are attestations
for the use of their vernacular at least until the 6th-7th c.,
which means: after at least 5-6 centuries of Romanization! On
top of that, there is one language, Albanian, that hasn't been
replaced by a neo-Romance language; the idiom of which Albanian
is the continuator shows that Latinization stopped somewhere in
its inception. If all those populations had been so eager to
speak Latin "at home", then the Romanization would have been
much thorougher, and the substrate elements even scarcer or
lacking altogether in Romanian and Dalmatian.

>Your knowledge of sociolinguistics is apparently deficient.

Yeah, sure.

>Here George is again soliloquizing to his Romanian nationalist
>sockpuppet on the evils of Romanian nationalism.

Not at all. You completely misunderstand what I'm talking about
and *why* I mention these things. You are not able to establish
the appropriate links in your mind, despite your being (allegedly)
a linguist and a doctor at that. You can't understand. And because
of the same causes pertaining to logic and putting features in
the appropriate time frames, you repeat the whole speculation
you've made on High German.

>Another irrelevant digression.

It is highly relevant. But if you don't see why you don't see &
basta.

>There are already areas in Copenhagen which are solidly
>Arab-speaking.

But how many of the genuine Danes switched languages, speaking
now Danish only on official occasions and in the rest of all
situations speaking Arab? Thousand years ago, in the vicinity
of al-Andalus, it could have been imaginable for learned
Vikings to be fond of learning good Arab and Hebrew for obvious
reasons, but modern Denmark will start speaking Arab only under
the menace by the curb sword of the Prophet. :)

>Of course, Denmark would not switch from being Danish-speaking as >long as there is a functioning admistration promoting it by daily >use.

Aha! Hehe. :)

>Under
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck
>the Danes of Schleswig were forced to speak German in public
>and to serve in the German army.

In order to understand orders and "links zwo-drei-vier, links!",
it was a pragmatic thing to learn some German, ne? :)

>Thousands of them perished on the Western front. Danish associations
>were harassed administratively.

Well, you know the Proto-Romanian saying: "vae victis!".

>>(As happened in the Eastern Frankish empire,
>>where a certain German dialects group evolved as the standard
>>German called "Hochdeutsch", and which you assume is based on
>>the dialects spoken by them ol' Bastarnians.)
>
>Yes.

Hehe, you liked it, didn't you.

>Many Germans think they can get by here, like they can in 'Low
>Germany' by hammering a fist on the table and scream: HABEN SIE
>VERSTANDEN!! That is a mistake which I suspect you are making too.

Well, if you don't have verstanden, da werden die Kanonen sprechen. :)

>Exactly. You are arguing with yourself that Torsten may be right
>while attempting to ascribe his opinions to yourself.

>And again you quoted an entire long paragraph, instead of choosing
>one sentence containing the gist, and putting in the following
>line your "Exactly."

>Obviously I did not claim any causal connection between the putative
>Mithridates campaign in the northwestern Black Sea litoral and the
>putative genesis of the Romanian language in the present Slovenia,
>such as you claim.

You still do. Why? Because you extremely deal with Mithridates
actions related to actions by Burebista and then with the ensuing
slave-coins thing. And this one, in your own words and vision,
must have been the inception of Proto-Romanian (way before Dacians,
Moesians and Thracians were hit by the Latin/Roman impact!). These
are your links!

But even if you were right, and the history of the Romanian
language would have to be rewritten in all books dealing with
it: what's the reason mentioning switching languages or
creolization or whatever in the context of the Verdrängung of
Bastarnae out of Bessarabia and Peuce? In the frame of discussing
those Germanic movements from SE to NW as well as to South
Germany (South of the Danube) during Sulla's, Marius's, Pompei's,
Caesar's time, you brought into discussion the importance of the
foreign slaves in Italy (incl. Spartacus's revolt and battles).
But what have all these to do with the transformation of the
Roman population in the North of the Balkan Peninsula after the
withdrawal of the Roman administration, state, army? Where's the
beef?

>Any Romanist who thinks the Romance languages, apart from those
>(probably non-existent) cases where they originated in a purely
>Roman milieu (eg colonists), did not go through a pidgin and a
>creole phase, is incompetent.

No one denies this. Only that "creole" might not be one of the
best terms for the phenomenon.

>Not true, cf
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language

You can't compare them. Or you can, but only as far as
"technicality" (in linguistic aspects) is concerned. Sources
and istoriographic presentations don't tell us of voluntary
Romanization. It occurred in a status of subjugated peoples
over there. (And Roman citizens they could become en masse
only in the 3rd century CE, since Caracalla!!) So, the
history of that territory and those ancient peoples there
confirm my assertion that referred to the preconditions.
Your hypothesis is based only on a theoretical possibility,
not on what really happened.

>Jews gave up Aramaic pretty quickly, and kept Hebrew for only
>liturgical and literary use; in general they are probably the
>group which has changed language most often.

Yes. But from Jesus's time (when Jewish everyday vernacular
was Aramaic) up to day Talmud studying Jews must also deal
with Aramaic (i.e. learn it to some extent), because
considerable parts of the Talmud are written in Aramaic (AFAIK).
"Liturgical", yes, but it is learnt at least as class. Latin
is learnt in schools (and Christian theology students, esp.
Catholic ones, must also learn some Hebrew, along with old
Greek).

>The fact that some peoples did not switch language under other
>people's overlordship does not change the fact that some
>people, like the Danes, did. As they did in the Danish regions
>east of the Øresund after it was conquered by the Swedes in 1658.

I speak neither Danish, nor Swedish, but aren't these languages
so closely akin that one could deem them one and the same
language (incl. Norse)? Even if Danes would have been under
Austrian yoke and constrained to learn South German: the linguistic
relationship wouldn't have been and is not as, say, between
Danish and Turkish or Arab or Kartvelian!

>I never mentioned Sarmizegetusa. Those hoards are found all over
>Dacia.

*I* mention Sarmizegetusa, since, if those significant slave
exports were made under such powerful leaders as Burebista,
Diurpaneus, Decebal, the most significant places must have been
those in the most significant centers of power within the
Dacianry. And Sarmizegetusa was to them what Köbenhavn is to
the Danes today.


>>Not even in 108 CE (when Decibalus had been dead for two years)
>>was there a Romanization of Northern Dacia, nor of Southern Dacia,
>>Thracia and much of what's today FYROM, Serbia, Croatia.
>
>Because? Evidence?

You wanna be taken seriously?

>>Only
>>western parts of the latter along with what's today Albania and
>>Northern Greece (and along the Via Egnantia) got gradually
>>Romanized.
>
>Because? Evidence?

You wanna be taken seriously?

>>the new Romance idiom being spoken after the 6th
>>c. virtually only by the later on so-called "Vlachos", a very low
>>social stratum, that during several centuries turned from a chiefly
>>urban population to a rural and pastoral mountain population,
>>living in regions that weren't attractive for the Turkic, Slavic
>>and "Byzantine" upper classes).
>
>Evidence?

"Byzantine" chronicles et al. hist. sources.

>That's blasphemy. God created the world out of nothing. ;-)

Hehe, no theologian and no physicist know out of what God
created this universe.

>>then how can you
>>imagine that Thracian was still attested as spoken by
>>some people even in the 6th-7th century?
>
>I don't understand your reasoning.

Obviously you don't understand, because you *mechanically*
impose a model you saw in "creole" cultures upon realities
in the Balkan Peninsula. And you ignore what history
teaches you, namely that those ancient populations there
were conquered by Rome and Rome imposed her language,
culture, structures and will by... force, and there was
resistance. There wasn't much enthusiasm for Romanization
in the free areas; I don't say there wasn't at all, since
I don't know exactly what ancient chronicles reported on
this issue; but historians haven't taught us that those
peoples not conquered by Rome were as fond of Latin as
upper classes in many European nations were fond of French
in the latest 2-4 centuries (it is said that king Friedrich
II "the Great" von Hohenzollern, Voltaire's host, used to
speak French; he spoke German only with some servants, how
cared for his horses etc.)

>You said yourself that some languages survive in spite of
>their populations being subjugated. Why wouldn't part of
>Dacian/Thracian survive as Albanian?

Of course. But we can't say for sure *which* language, since
we don't know how Dacian or Thracian were, so we don't know
what and how got through transformations until it popped up
as modern Albanian vocabulary and structures. And we all see
that Albanians themselves represent another theory, namely
that their idiom is a continuation of ... Illyrian. So...

>>How can you imagine that a compact
>>population called Albanians could have preserved a separate idiom
>>that shows myriads of elements illustrating the "freezing" of
>>the Romanization process in an early phase (as compared with
>>its neighbor, Romanian)?
>
>??? That is exactly what I am imagining. What makes think I'm not?

Now then, if this illustrate a certain resistance or stubbornness
or, perhaps, a lesser talent when learning Latin, then this (and
other "markers" in the Balkans) ought show you that the populations
there were not eager to Latinize, and that their Romanization had
its appropriate conditions only under the "whip" wielded by the
Roman occupant.

>>If your assumption had something in it,
>>then Albanian must have sounded today almost as Romance as
>>Sicilianu as well as the Veneto and Furlan dialects!
>
>Why??

If their ancestors were eager to be Latinized, and started the
process at a such an early stage (the 1st century BCE). By AD 400
(when St. Hieronymus wrote his "Vulgata"), the ancestors of the
Albanians would have been employable as Latin teachers in high-
schools! :) And the issuing Albanian language would have been
even more Latin than Romanian. This is why.

>>But of those
>>Arbäräsh Albanians who've been present in Southern Italy since
>>the 15th c. (Puglia, Calabria etc.) many are even *today* bilingual,
>>i.e. they haven't assimilated completely linguistically in 5-6
>>centuries.
>
>And therefore what??

This shows us some kind of outstanding linguistic conservatism.
The fact that Albanian is a surviving substrate language - practically
the only one along with Greek. And the fact that more recent
Albanians, namely the Albanian minority in Italy, were able to
upkeep their own idiom for such a long period of time. Not the
kind of population that today speaks A, tomorrow B, and the
day after tomorrow language C.

>And if it hadn't been for a few resourceful individuals in the
>early 14th century (and some help from the German emperor),
>Denmark would have spoken at first Low German, then High
>German, then become part of Germany with no more power to
>object that Capt. Thomsen had.

Would it been bad? After all, the same "Stamm".

> And BTW the Germans and the Swedes should not get too smug about
>their present good fortune for their industry. Most of its expansion
>takes place on the Chinese market, eg. in train technology
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
>but the deals are conditioned on technology transfer agreements,
>meaning the services of the Europeans will no longer be needed in a
>few decades, if that long, cf the fortune of the British locomotive
>factories after the German ones learned how to build their own.

That's right. And has depended for several decades now on some
kind of a... fad (and ideas and ideologies that are rather
"Anglo-Saxon").

George