Distance in change

[Rick Mc Callister]

Frank:
	Can you elaborate?
	I've read several in several places that the fricativazation of
medial stops is said to be from Etruscan but in others that this phenomenon
only dates back to the 1500s or so.
	But given that Etruscan died out around the time of Caesar, it
could not have had too much of an effect on local Italian
	What I notice about Roman speech is
	/-L- > 0/ e.g. figlio > "fio"
	/-nd- > -nn-/ e.g. andiamo > "annamo"

>However, in the area around the city of Rome itself, unlike the country
>districts of Lazio, the language has changed even more due to the outside
>influence of Tuscan, itself a descendant of Latin, but with an Etruscan
>substrate.

>The pre-modern "romanesco" dialect, as spoken for example in the last
>century,  was not a pure local dialect of Lazio, descended without
>interruption from Latin, but was strongly influenced by Tuscan, cf.
>Corsican.

>Secondly, the present spoken language in the city of Rome is the Roman
>version of the Italian language, itself based on the Florentine dialect of
>Tuscan, and of course influenced by the "romanesco" substrate.