Chronology of the breakup of Common Romance

[Anthony Appleyard]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Stephane Goyette <s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca> wrote (Re: Latin verbal system: how
perfect and aorist joined in the new perfect?):-

> ...its distribution matches that of Classical Latin --take Romanian AUR
> "gold", LAUD "I praise" versus FOC "fire", DORM "I sleep", where the au/o
> distribution corresponds perfectly to that found in AURUM, LAUDEO, FOCUM and
> DORMIO. ...

I have seen a suggestion that:-
  (1) The Romanians are not descended from the Dacians, but from Vlachs
(scattered nomadic mountain shepherds who are found over much of the Balkans)
who found what is now Romania largely empty after Central Asia finally
exhausted its supply of fresh tribes of steppe horsemen (Huns, Avars, Magyars,
Patzinaks, etc) to maraud westwards and devastate south-east Europe;
  (2) The Vlachs are descended from Latinized Illyrians who fled into the
mountains when the Avars marauded in;
  in which case the ancestors of the Romanians started learning Latin when
Rome invaded Illyria, not when Rome invaded Dacia, and that alters the
linguistic timetable a bit.