rate of language change

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/20/99 11:54:07 PM, edsel at GLO.BE wrote:

<<I don't understand that: If the difference is important, the difference in
degree of loss of inflection should have been equally significant, quod non.>>

You're right.  I got confused.

I wrote:
<<Though there were a lot of Danes to the north and Wends to the east that
could have supplied the same kind of need for loss of complex inflections.>>

[ES] wrote:
<<Maybe, but only sufficiently to the north and in Frisian regions.>>

And I forgot to bring up, to the South, the Romance speakers, the
ever-considered but often rejected Gauls and I guess at a certain point
Franks becoming Romance speakers and of course speakers of medieval Latin.
And Hungarian in the farther southeast.  That rounds it up pretty good except
for those in << Isolation in the Alpine region...>>

Regards,
Steve Long