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

From: António Marques (m.ap_at_sapo.pt)
Date: 03/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:41:08 +0000

Neeraj Mathur wrote:

>>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?

No, that's just not possible. As has just been mentioned, English has loads
of vocabulary of Norman origin, similar to French, and most of its erudite
words are based on Latin and Greek, as is the case with French. Do you see
the english and french merrily chatting just by making some contrived
vocabulary choices?

The slavic vocabulary in Romanian is far less than the romance / latin
vocabulary in English. And it was still far less when it was more abundant,
before the 19th century.

Romanian is a plain romance language, of which the only weird feature are
the postponed articles. The cases somehow sound more familiar, since they're
mostly a substitute for the preposition and not word order. In its way,
Romanian feels quite like Occitan - the archetype for a western romance
language if there is one. 

-- 
António Marques
First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.
  -- Mark Twain

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