Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Geraldine Reinhardt" <waluk@...>
> To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 10:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [Nostratica] Proto-Celtic
>
>
> > OK wise one. If a proto-Celtic spoke proto-Celtic and a Nostratic
> spoke Nostratic, would a proto-Celtic and Nostratic be able to converse?
>
> No. They couldn't have met without a time machine, and, had one been
> available, the system of Proto-Nostratic would have changed beyond
> recognition by the time it became Proto-Celtic (a few millennia
> later). They would have been very different from each other, and
> completely incomprehensible to each other's speakers.

If languages change at different rates, then some of the present-day
languages could actually be aunts, or grand-aunts of
others instead of being sisters. Is that not logical?