Mycenaean (Standardization)

[Gordon Selway]

At 12:41 pm 29/4/1999, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>In 1741, Parliament specifically narrowly defined "cattle":  >>

>-- in other words, the official, written language was changed to bring it
>more into line with popular spoken useage.

>Selah.  My point is proved.

Utter nonsense, twaddle, just blethering.  Definitions in statutes are
given for the purpose of understanding the statute, and do not - cannot -
have a wider function.  Unless the legislature is _completely_ out of its
mind.  [You may think so from time to time; I could not possibly comment.]

Legislation can appear to have an indirect effect, eg when it embodies
educational policy, and there is a general publicly provided school system
teaching the centrally determined syllabus, but that is confounding the
messenger and the message.

There are other government influences, which may help determine the common
speech of the people: possibly Modern Hebrew (I have no direct source for
this) is a case in point; the origins of standard Modern English include
15th century Chancery usage; and 20th century Irish Gaelic owes a lot to
the need of the civil service to devise a wide range of technical terms and
usages.  But that is clearly not a good example - there is a wide gulf
between what is written in the Department of Finance or the Department of
Education (eg) and what is spoken in Gaoith Doire &c.

What evidence do we have that the good folk of Argos, Knossos, Pylos,
Tiryns, wherever, spoke the language of the tablets?  Maybe the tablets
show a version of Greek which is a short branch off the main thread of the
story, cf the Rgveda language in the history of Indian.

[ Moderator's comment:
  *Somebody* in those cities knew the language, and wrote in it.  Whether or
  not everybody spoke the same language is in a sense irrelevant for the status
  of Mycenaean as a South Greek dialect (like Arcado-Cypriot and Attic-Ionic).
  --rma ]