Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

From: Comm (tjsrno_at_spampost.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:12:15 GMT

"Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d1chod$r4m$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
>
> "Comm" <tjsrno@spampost.com> wrote in message
> news:FG9_d.10842$oO4.3945@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>>
>> "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:d1afl9$7ig$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
>>
>> An aside - you have a beautiful name! Ok, see inside :)
>
> Thank you very much! It's Sanskrit. 'Neeraj' means literally 'born from
> the water', and is the name of the lotus flower upon which the Hindu god
> Vishnu reclines.

Born from the water? If you had any idea what other stuff I'm up to, that
name meaning has a coincidence to it that is amazing - has to do with
oceanic poetry I collected. Anyway, see in.
>
>>> "Comm" <tjsrno@spampost.com> wrote in message
>>> news:9lLZd.9617$oO4.4756@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>>>>
>>>> "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:d164co$i91$1@news.ox.ac.uk...
>>> I'm a bit confused here, because the definition of 'creole' that I gave,
>>> which you agree with, was based entirely on grammar and structure (note
>>> phrases like 'simplified languages', 'grammatical complexity').
>>> Vocabulary has nothing to do with that definition of creole.
>>
>> Hmm, not to my ear. I hear what happens when Mexicans, Anglos, Haitians
>> >> and Jamaicans have to work together. Not too long before they speak
>> a
>> language in everyday use that heh, no one ELSE understands. Then the
>> words I used before "contact and blending" (Martin also said blending, I
>> think) is more appropriate.
>
> Yes, certainly, there is often vocabulary blending. But does that make it
> a pidgin or a creole? Vocabulary alone can be used to communicate very
> basic ideas, I'm sure, and so that might work for pidgin. But the
> distinction between pidgin and creole must be based on grammar.
>
>> I think I know what you mean. Ever hear hillbillies talk? They say
>> things like "uglysome," "lonesome" (means lonely, but "lonsome" is still
>> used by everyone), they'd us "some" instead of "ly" all the time, or a
>> lot of the time - even "friendlysome!" And they make words like "yorn."
>
> What does 'yorn' mean? Something to do with yesterday..?

No, it means "yours". "Kids o yorn" = "your kids." Good example then -
and defacto proof (not academic, but proof enough). Everyone used to watch
the TV show Gunsmoke - I just thought of that. Festus Haggen is a character
on there that speaks hillbilly or some kind of mountain dialect. Everyone
in the USA watched that show - it was on for 20 years and always at the top
in ratings. They understood Festus - a main character. So my detractor
(with his nasty, mealy-mouthed, mean-spirited, patronizing, overlording,
heavy-handed crap) is full of it. And contrary to what another person
said on here, "I left out" is not "regional" unless the whole USA is being
considered regional! Also, the example he tried to give was a non-issue. I
gave you verbatim conversation.
>
>> The speech is also highly metaphorical. It takes a while, but it's
>> understandable. The grammar is mutilated - unless you regard it as
>> another >> language (I do, but if I had to edit somethnig they wrote, I
>> became a grammar/spelling nazi). The thing with written language is that
>> it tends to be held in stasis by "those who ahem, Properly Speak it" -
>> unlike non-written language.
>
> You're absolutely right here. No linguist worth his salt would disagree
> with you. Within the speech-community of any given language, there is
> likely to be one or two 'prestige' dialects - to the linguist, this does
> not make the other dialects unworthy of study. But, as you said, all the
> varieties do have grammar. These grammars can be understood from a
> historical perspective.

OK, but in the past, those dialects were not put to print, people didn't all
know how to read or write. Public school is a very new thing.
>
>> It's everyday speech and no, it's not regional at all! I just said to
>> the handyman before, when he asked me "Where you were?" I answered, "I
>> left out to th'store, missed ya." He's a bilingual Puerto Rican from NYC
>> and he had no problem understanding what I said - and I talk very fast.
>> He said what he was going to do to a room (which I can't quote verbatim).
>> I said, "ged." Normal English!
>
> Normal? I'm not certain. I speak English as a first language, I grew up in
> Toronto, and I'm sure I wouldn't have understood the exact nuances of what
> you meant. Heard on its own, 'I left out' would leave puzzled; in the
> sentence you gave, I would wonder what the particular meaning of your
> sentence is. It seems that it is not equivalent to 'I went to the store'
> or 'I was at the store'; perhaps the closest is 'I'd gone out to the
> store'?

All are ok, "I'd gone out to the store" is proper English to say what I did
and when and why he missed me :) Or "I went to the store," that's ok. What
is implied in spoken language when he asks "Where you were?" is that he came
to the house and found me gone. What I said, in proper E is, "I left the
house (implied: "which is why you found me absent") and went to the store."
Heh.

> Certainly, in the moment and with context, I would have understood enough
> to go ahead with the conversation. But that doesn't mean that the sentence
> is grammatical in any of the versions of English that I know.

OK, but who is to declare what is grammatical and what is not? That's what
I mean by languages held in stasis. When did "As a friend, I come" or "I
come as a friend" become "I come friendily?" What happened to "yorn"?
People say "y'all" and "yous" for plural "you." Gads that makes being
understood SO much easier, especially if it's a heated convo and you have to
say something like (caps for emphasis in speech, spoken loudly) "YOU think
that blah blah." The person immediately reacts, "I do not. I have never
said I think that, how dare you accuse me, etc etc." Next, "No no, I don't
mean you personaly, blah blah." Why not use yall or yous? Why is that
ungrammatical? Who says it is? It makes what a person says clearer.

The fact that it
> is grammatical in the English you speak is quite interesting; the fact
> that it seems to have a very specific semantic niche means that your
> grammar and lexicon are certainly complex. I'd be interested in knowing
> how this construction developed. I wouldn't think that it has much to do
> with creolization!

Well, from NY to Florida - I've heard the same type of intereactions.
Wisconsin, Chicago areas, California, it's all over. People in the USA
understand it. How it developed? Hmm, all kinds of ethnic groups here and
blacks - all speaking English, tho. I don't know how it developed - it's
unthinking for the most part - the speech is FAST too, not slow and labored
at all, it's "from the heart talking" very spontaneous. It's about
everyday stuff, or even heavy, heated conversations. The only reason I
even thought to remember the convo is
due to this thread and something said in email about it from someone. It
was weird, like "hearing myself talk" and a few times I had ask Ray
(handyman) "huh?" To repeat himself because I was listening to the language
and thinking about it, and not really hearing what he was saying. I just
settled for a few samples (or else he'd have been here for hours).
>
>> Now, is "where you were?" a Spanish grammer thing? I don't know. He
>> speaks English with a NY accent, not a Spanish accent. He was born here.
>> I'm also phonetically spelling out the conversation here, verbatim. This
>> is normal interactive conversation, everyday mundane stuff.
>
> 'Where you were' might work as a word-by-word translation from Spanish
> 'donde estabas', if the person thinks 'donde = where' and 'estabas = you
> were'. Of course in English, 'where you were' is most naturally
> interpreted as a relative clause; most English speakers find that in
> questions, wh-movement forces the verb to go in second place, and if this
> makes the verb appear before its subject, it must be replaced by one of
> the invertible auxiliaries. What I just said is not something that
> teachers or parents beat into their children, and wasn't always the case;
> but you said yourself that you found 'what light through yonder windows
> breaks?' ungrammatical. (You would probably not have felt as strongly
> about 'What light breaks through yonder window?' or, better in keeping
> with the aspect rules of modern English, 'What light is breaking through
> yonder window?'. Now it's just the vocabulary that seems a bit odd.)

Heh, someone would think someone broke a window :) Well, the "where you
were" also had a tone to it, I knew it was a question. He might have just
got done speaking Spanish to someone when he got here. Heh, I woke up
earlier, half asleep, said, "Raining. It is all day." Realized I screwed
up the sentence. Caught it. Wrote it down :) I do that a lot, LOL. Point
is, when I write something (serious, not chatty) I never ever make mistakes
like that. Here is another one, person in kitchen just asked me this one,
"Who you be conversatin with?" OH, and, "Chu be writing down what I say?"
oh oh...heh. She's reading this. :)
>
>> I'd have to say that all English speakers would understand it. It would
>> only be "ungrammatical" if editing was required! The point to language
>> is not proper grammar that's held in stasis - - the purpose is being
>> understood - communication.
>>
>> See above what I said about normal mundane conversation. I have said in
>> a crowded room "eeh, cold." everyone understood me. Some said "me too."
>
> There are three distinctions that speakers make: 1) understanding a given
> utterance; 2) judging an utterance to be grammatical or not; 3) producing
> an utterance. These are not just things that are taught by parents or
> schoolteachers.
>
> As an example, I offer you myself: I grew up in a bilingual home, where
> everybody spoke both Hindi and English. I learned both as first languages.
> However, since for all of my life I have lived in English-speaking places
> (England for the first four years, Canada thereafter through high school,
> now back in England for university), I have only ever been schooled in
> English. I know virtually no Hindi slang, and I don't know the sorts of
> constructions that Hindi-speaking kids would use that get their parents
> annoyed (like 'ain't' in English). I have never been taught Hindi
> actively, other than its alphabet, and I have never made any formal study
> of its grammar. Still, I can tell you when something is grammatical or not
> in the language. If somebody uses a plural verb with a singular noun, I
> feel that it is odd; if somebody fails to make the proper agreements for
> gender or gets the gender of a word I know wrong, I know immediately that
> they have made a mistake. I knew this even before I learned about
> linguistic theory and grammar in more general terms or from other
> languages I have studied. Communication is not impaired, but I can tell
> when something is grammatical

OK, but you were not born with that knowledge! Do people who are speaking
it as natives "wrongly," know they are goofing up the grammar?

> or not.
>
> Here's another example. Suppose you were on a tour bus, and the guide
> points to an artifact and says, 'This bridge has been built two hundred
> years ago.' I am certain that you understood him completely. On the other
> hand, you would almost certainly feel that something was odd about the
> sentence and you wouldn't feel it to be grammatical. That is because you
> have an inherent

That is because I can be a grammar nazi (even bitching about split
infinitives) and I was taught *Proper* English when school was good here.
"This bridge WAS built two hundred years ago." or "This bridge HAD BEEN
built two hundred years ago..... when...blah blah" - more to the sentence.
How about this: 'The bridge done be built 200 years ago." Or "The bridge
done BEEN done built 200 years ago." (implies that it's over and gone with
for good) BVE. I understand that without even having to think abou it.
And blacks are no longer the only people that speak it. Friend impatient in
kitchen now drinking a cafe with liquor, (like a latte) speaks like that and
she's white - but most of her school is black and she likes rap music.

> notion of a distinction between a preterite and a present perfect, and you
> know that only the preterite is appropriate with adverbial phrases that
> fix a reference point in the past. This isn't something you've necessarily
> studied, and you may not be able to put it in those words, but you would
> still feel that the sentence is ungrammatical.

Actually, we were taught all that past perfect, present perfect, parsing
sentences, in the 2nd grade of school and I forgot every word of it. I also
hated it :) But you are wrong about not being taught. I was - and very
very early on. That is the only reason I know something is wrong with the
sentence. I have edited sci fi stories with some of the most complicated
and deeply thought out ideas - written by college students. I have found
wrong grammar in every single paragraph at times. The least of it would be
one big mistake on every single page. The writers are not stupid, their
ideas are complex and often abstract and coherent. BUT: "thier?" (for
they are and for their and for there). "it's"? (for belonging to it.) And
other BIG mistakes. Putting punctuation outside of quotes instead of inside
the quotes. Things like that, consistently too, it's not a typo; but also
bonafide wrong grammer. College students. They aren't speaking - they are
writing. I have seen misspelled words for so many years, and so much of it
that I doubt my own spelling now. I'll look at a word and I'm lost, is that
spelled right or not? And that seriously sucks! I aced all that stuff.
And then another error that a college graduate (honors too) argued
with me about when he helped to proof my novel (there is a point when you
can no longer proof read your own work; it's too familiar) - and he called a
professor because he was so insistent. My grammar was right. His was
wrong. I'm not a person that studied any of this in college. He did a bit
(not linguistics, literature). So it's not so obvious, not even to a
college student. He even tried to parse the sentence and he did it all
wrong. I didn't parse anything. I can write in Proper English if I have
to. I wish I could remember exactly what sentence it was, I'd find it in my
novel and type it in here.

You might say to the guide,
> 'Don't you mean, this bridge *was* built two hundred years ago?' and
> expect him to answer, 'Yes, *was* built. Sorry!'
>
>> This means that: 1) English
>>> speakers have an intuitive knowledge of a grammar that is
>>> psychologically >>> real to them;

See above. No, they don't. Not even if they are college grads with honors.
Understand also, I grew up watching TV shows where grammar was perfect, like
"Leave it to Beaver" and shows like that. Today, all kinds of slang the
type of which I showed you, is normal for TV. That might be the answer to
the question - where did it arise. Before, you could hear one kind of funny
grammar and strange words from Italian communities - Jewish communities -
our community, and so forth. But never on TV. It's all blended now, along
with black
English - and it's on TV - everyone hears it all the time. I also notice
some snide innuendos from the jerks that replied to me, as if they want to
mock out the black English. What, no mockery for, "badaboom badabing?" Or,
"Wassa matta?" No mockery for, "Hefe wachoo doon?" How about, "Choo eat?"
To "DIS" someone is to disrespect them. They DIS me and think I'm not gonna
flame them back if I bother to? They think to get decency when they SPIT on
people? Of course, they do it in Proper English. That makes it all better
.....
and, in the ubiquitous lingo of every ethnic I know, that is all "SO very
WHITE of them." Some say, "It's goyische." Heh.
>>
>> I doubt it. They are corrected as kids when they often say things, and
>> they say things as if they are using that creole grammar (I read one
>> paper on that, which was astonishing). Some kids, not all, are
>> constantly being corrected by their parents due to wrong grammer.
>
> Of course, conscious correction is possible. But that's not the primary
> way that children learn grammar rules. I was never corrected for using
> 'wrong' grammar in Hindi, nor was I ever taught what 'right' grammar
> should be. Nevertheless, I know what is grammatical and what is not in
> Hindi.

Then you heard it. I know exactly how I came to know Proper English because
I can analyse how, remember it very clearly.
>
>> There is nothing innate about how we speak a language. It's learned -
>> from home, school and then from peers, TV and etc.
>
> I agree that it is learned. Most of this learning - all, in some cases -
> is subconscious. In either case, if language is learned, we must ask
> ourselves what exactly is learned. As I see it there are two things that
> children learn: grammar rules and vocabulary items. Most children learn
> these subconsciously - I don't think either of us has ever looked up
> 'mom', 'toast', or 'bus' in a dictionary.

Sure it's subconscious. I knew when I was 6 years old that Jackie Gleason
on "the Honeymooners" was "dumb" because of the way he talked (that was a
very bigoted conclusion, btw). I knew that Mr. Cleaver and family were
smart due to the way they spoke. Again, bigoted. And yup, I thought Festus
Haggen of "Gunsmoke" was retarded (how very wrong I was - I've watched the
repeats - he's one of my favorite characters now!).
>
>> The only valid experiments in language to determine the way the brain
>> works would be illegal to do. Take a group of newborn babies from
>> various >> ethnic groups - separate them from ANY heard/spoken language.
>> Caretakers would have to be mute, never speak (they'd have to be cared
>> for up to a point). Do the same thing again - only this time with
>> identical twins. See what happens by the time they are 7 and talking, and
>> then age 18 and talking. That would teach you about language, I really
>> think. What language does the human ANIMAL speak in the wild - and what
>> >> grammar? You'd find out that way. You'd also find out how capable 7
>> year
>> old kids can be if they have to be! But they would have a language. What
>> would it be? What kind of grammar would they have?
>
> These would be interesting experiments.

You bet. They'd show you exactly what kind of grammar is innate - as in
*inborn* - and/or even innate to *different* ethnic groups if they separated
them - if any difference showed up! Hmm, would a difference show up? That
is also a GOOD question. Too bad they can't do this experiment. I think
their paradigms would be smashed to bits if the experiment was done. I'd
bet hard cash on that.

As it is, most linguists are
> limited to things like studying language acquisition in infants, studying
> language disorders, and those few rare cases where somebody is brought up
> in a relatively language-deprived environment (there was an American girl
> named 'Genie' I think who was in this situation, and there is a lot of
> material on her; I can find you references if you're interested in seeing
> what happened).

I know that studies (neurological) of many children (the one in the Ukraine,
forgot her name, she lived with dogs) - show that these people can not learn
to speak. They can learn to say words, but not communicate. The girl was
able to bark to dogs and communicate with them! But this is not the same as
the experiment I suggested.
>
>> No, there are more rules and such imposed on people at an early age,
>> either at home, school, or from TV. Take English - somewhere along the
>> line English speakers dropped all that imo silly gendered word crap -
>> they dropped the cases too - and there is hardly any verb declension
>> compared to other languages. In a funny kind of way, English IS like
>> Chinese that way. It's simple, direct.
>
> Of course, what English dropped in those categories it made up for by
> gains > in others.

I agree. Maybe that's why English is THE language of commerce, science, the
global language. I think that gendered words and cases are a waste of
speech. Also, Spanish speakers say it takes a lot more words to say things
in Spanish (long sentences) than it does in English. Even polling surveys
asking questions take 2 times as long in Spanish. English is parsimonious!

 'The man ate the leaf' means something different from 'The leaf
> ate the man', and 'ate the the man leaf' doesn't mean anything at all. In
> Old English you didn't need to worry so hard about those awful word order
> rules; in Indo-European you likely didn't bother with them at all until
> you were worried about topicalisation / focus.

True, cases tell you what's being said, I think. Word order doesn't matter
that much. The FUNNIEST was my grandfather trying to MAKE cases when he
spoke English. OH, if you want to see a BIG sample of BVE, I can email you
a "skit" that's humorous where one character is speaking it phonetically.
Everyone that read it understood it! I'll do that.
>
> Here's an example of a redundant rule in English: for the third person
> singular of any verb in the simple present tense, a sibiliant ending is
> added /s, z, Iz/. This is not something that a child learns from parents,
> or from schoolteachers, explicitly; I think that most studies show that
> children learn this rule at about the time that they get beyond the
> two-word sentence phase (I may be wrong). This agreement adds nothing to >
> communicative efficiency. However, a statement like 'he walk home from
> school at 3' is felt to be ungrammatical to an English speaker. This is
> the sort of thing I meant when I said that there are more rules than are
> needed. This is a rule that is learnt subconsciously at an early stage.

Well, does that mean "he walks home at 3" or "he walked home at 3?" The "s"
is needed for what he *does* and not what he *did*. A teacher or parent
would ask the kid which one he wants to say - and correct it.

Also "He goed home." NO, "He WENT home." "He runned." NO, "He ran."
Why no "ed?" Laughed. Crashed. Dressed. Why not eated? Did the meal get
cooked?
>
>> Hmm, every Dane I know understands German a bit, they can read it too -
>> but not the other way around! I know that vowel sounds change - they
>> just seem to do that - regionally - but I'm not able to say why.
>
> Vowels change, and so do consonants.

I know that, but not nearly as fast as vowels change. My vowels have
changed since I was a teen. I heard myself on tape from back then. I had a
distinct accent of some type. Not anymore. I sound very "NY" to everyone,
though not to anyone who is from NY. :)

 German 'z', for example, has a regular
> correspondence to English 't' (compare 'to' and 'zu'; 'heart' and 'herz').
> One consonant has changed. Another example of regular change is the less
> of /r/ after a vowel within a syllable in many dialects of English.
>
> About one-way understanding: this does seem to happen in many languages,
> and is an interesting phenomenon. You'll find a lot of Punjabi speakers
> who can understand Hindi/Urdu, but not the other way around. Odd.
>
>> OK - about the grammar. I hear ungrammatical, horribly ungrammatical
>> English every day in 99% of my daily dealings. I also speak it. And I
>> speak it very very fast - as do others speaking to me. The words slur
>> together to such a degree that they become one word.
>
> 'Ungrammatical' can have two meanings: 1) not conforming to the grammar
> that a person inherently, subconsciously knows; and 2) not conforming to
> the grammar that has prestige in a society. Perhaps a lot of the 99% can
> fall into category 1, even if not category 2. I'm not convinced that the
> existence of 'idiolects' is proof of creolization of a language.

Mine fits both. If I stop and think about my speech (which is not speaking
from the heart spontaneoutly) it's pretty ungrammatical. Again, I do not
"inherently" know this. I learned it. I HAVE to say this, you opened the
door: - then, of course, there is the grammar of George W. Bush - our
prestigious president. LMAO LMAO LMAO. Anyway... From the samples above
you thought it was creolization. If I think about what I have to say
(consciously), some phone call to a business, etc, the grammar is perfect.
If I just speak, from the heart, spontaneously, it's not. Nothing
subconscious about it.
>
>> That was not what happened between the Romanian and the Pole. They were
>> talking - then both switched to broken English and dragged me into it
>> asking me about my related ethnic groups in - which ones were they in the
>> former USSR.
>
> That is interesting. Are you sure that they were both speaking in their
> natural way, without any affectation of their language (such as contrived
> vocabulary choices) to make themselves understood? Are you sure of how
> much they were understanding of each other?

I can't say what they were changing to communicate, but oh yes, they did
understand each other. The thing is, they were speaking fast, not slowly.
I think they'd have to slow down to pick and choose like that. And you
watch someone say "oh, that's not possible" when it is possible, it
happened.
>
> I suppose if need arose I could deliberately pick my Hindi sentences so
> that a Farsi-speaker could follow me. But this doesn't mean that a
> Farsi-speaker would understand much of a conversation he overheard between
> two Hindi/Urdu speakers.
>
>> I think spoken Middle English was. You can't know what that was like -
>> you can only know what intellectuals of the time (the educated!) wrote
>> down.
>
> Yes, that is a problem.

Ah, thank you. I base my ideas simply on observation of living people,
including myself - and how we actually speak to each other. That I know
proper English is not the point. I can edit stuff. Whoopee! I don't
normally speak proper English - and I speak from the heart, not cerebrally
slow speech (the kind that makes me want to rip the words from the speaker's
throat for talking too damned slow). I don't subconsciously or even
*consciously* notice right or wrong grammar - unless I *have* to speak it or
edit something. And for those that chime in derogatorily to say that
"slower speakers have more things to say of a
complex nature" I say bull***. They speak that way because they are
repressed to the point where they can not speak from their hearts and spit
out what they want to say, not about anything, not even to tell me what
dress they plan to wear to a party, or answer if they want coffee, tea, or
something else (which takes no brains to say at all). They speak with fear,
halted, braced, suffocated, all the time - about all things.
(I mean native speakers, not foreigners). I have NO patience with that!

It is a bigger problem that, until the Norman
> invasion upset the political structure, most Old English texts were also
> written, not just by educated people, but by conscious conformation more
> or less to a standard language, that of Alfred the Great. This means that
> changes that were gradually occurring between Old and Middle English
> appear to have happened all at once at the time of William's invasion. The
> effect would be vaguely similar to if, say, tomorrow, Russia took over all
> English speaking countries and English was then written phonetically in
> Cyrillic script, with each region writing their variety of English
> according to their own speech. To a linguist looking back in nine hundred
> years it would seem that English underwent huge changes all at once at the
> time of the Russian takeover. He might be tempted to think that it was in
> fact because of the Russian takeover that the changes occurred, whereas
> the truth is that the Russian takeover simply cleared the way for the
> changes to be seen.

Good analogy.
>
>> And I think that is the big problem. The Romanian was using mostly
>> Slavic words. I even recognized a few of them (tho I no longer speak a
>> word of Russian - well, curse words I remember HA!!), enough to know the
>> brunt of the convo - which "races" would end up on which side! The
>> Hispanic with me - and she understands all kinds of Hispanic (Spanish,
>> Portuguese and even that other language spoken in Spain - the name of the
>> language startes with a 'c" - I don't remember what it's called - but she
>> translated stuff for me that was spoken in it. - and she also speaks
>> Italian fluently her husband is Italian) - she did not understand a
>> single word of it. Not one SINGLE word. The Pole understood it. Now
>> here is the thing: apparently, it was easier for the both of them to
>> speak like that, than to resort to what English they both knew - and I
>> know they knew enough English to ask me a kind of complex question about
>> ethnicity and religion.
>
> Ah, there's my answer. Okay, now I understand your point a bit more: you
> are > suggesting that a linguist should recognise a close link between
> Slavic and Romanian because a Romanian speaker can choose from amongst the
> words in his lexicon to make himself understood to a Slav, although this
> means that he can no longer be understood by other Romance speakers.

YES! Tho I didn't at first use those languages or any specific languages.
Why these linguists, who are trying ever so hard to insult me, don't
understand that this was my only point the entire time..... is well, maybe
because they are - STUPID? You sure aren't. You understand after 2 posts?
That Martin Phipps guy was saying the same things I'm saying. He got
trashed and called stupid, too - and he's a physics professor, LOL.
>
> Yes, you have a point there. I would just mention that such Romanian would
> sound very forced and contrived to most Romanian speakers. A better test
> would be to see how much a Pole can understand when overhearing a
> conversation of two native speakers, or a folk song.

Well, I played a *Russian* folk song for the Pole, a few of them - and he
translated them. Now, I can hear songs in plain proper English and not
understand half the words - I kid you not. There is always at least one
word, or whole sentence, I just can't get. But I can write down the notes
and chords :)
>
>> Written language, even right now - and definitely in the past before
>> public school - is probably NOT what the ordinary people were speaking.
>> I really don't think I need a thesis to support that idea, either.
>
> Yes, I agree. I still don't think, though, that that justifies the claim
> that English is, or has been, a creole.

See what you said above. I gave you phonetic spoken phrases. If I had a
tape recorder on - well, that would take a lot of time transcribing it
phonetically, and I'd be aware that it was on, and so would anyone else I'm
taping (I'd have to tell them, I can't just tape a person in secret like
that - it is illegal - and wrong).
>
>> People from India I've known, most of them wre doctors I worked with at a
>> job (highly educated, you see?) spoke Perfect Proper English. They often
>> had a hard time understanding casual chat - even from me.
>
> Yes; happened to my dad when he showed up for his second degree at Hull in
> England. While he had no trouble following his lecturers, he couldn't deal
> with the registrar asking, 'What's your name, love?'. Go figure.

HAAAAAAAAAAAA! Gwine! (that means, "oh, go on!") aka "you gotta be
kidding. LOL. <clear throat> Surely, you do not mean that in a literal
sense, do you? LOL.

Maybe it came out like: hoohaats yawr naym loov?
>
> Neeraj Mathur
>