--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>
> > There's a strong tendence to forget about minority
> > languages in atlases and text books. Too often the winners
> > make active efforts to erase the traces of "loser"
> > language, for example, by translating alloglottic toponyms
> > to their own language and even people names.
>
> This can happen, yes. The degree to which it happens varies
> greatly, however, and the winning language isn't always that
> of the winning people.
>
But you can't ignore IE languages have been and are still (see e.g.
Anthony's book subtitle: "How Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian
Steppes shaped the Modern World") too often represented as being spoken
by warfare aristocracies who imposed their language to non-IE speaking
people by military conquest. And while this might be PARTIALLY true (as
there were also non-IE speaking aristocracies) in the Bronze Age, this
model is unable to explain all the IE linguistic facts without incurring
in a plethora of mistakes such as playing tricks with semantics,
converting loanwords in native words, and so on.
unless a huge collapse