Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[Robert Orr]

>> -- well, you can use modern Lithuanian as a "proto-Language" for Latvian,
>> but isn't this sort of off-topic for the instances (Latin, Sanskrit) that we
>> were using of dead liturgical languages?

Just a few comments:
1) There is a school of thought in Slavic studies that suggests that
Lithuanian may be used as a surrogate for an earlier stage of Common Slavic.

However, as pointed out by other scholars, this approach denies Lithuanian a
history of its own.

>Similarly, in one sense you could use modern Icelandic as a "proto-language"
>for Norwegian, and probably the other Scandinavian Germanic languages as
>well.

>Now, modern Icelandic is partly explained by the romantic attachment of the
>Icelanders to their Norse past; and their standardized language reflects
>that allegiance.  A similarly romantic spelling was inflicted long after the
>fact on Faeroese, even if the conventional values of the Latin alphabet will
>not serve you well if you try to pronounce Faeroese based on the writing.
>In writing, Faeroese seems a dialect only slightly different from Icelandic,
>and might serve just as well as a proto-language for Scandinavian.  But
>Faeroese writing was invented in the nineteenth century by Hammershaimb.  It
>seems to represent a tradition that isn't really there.

>This begs the Latin question once more.  The spelling of Faeroese, Gaelic,
>or English depends as much on a will towards cultural antiquarianism and the
>prestige of norms laid down in the past, at least as much as it does with
>the standard use of the technology  embodied in the alphabet.   I don't
>think you can answer the question of when Latin (or Sanskrit, or English)
>"died" without answering the question: when did written Latin start to
>become a foreign language; and more importantly, when did it -cease- to be
>"merely" a normalized, learned, written language that was obviously related
>to, but profoundly different in vocabulary, syntax, and usage, from the
>spoken Romance that was the mother tongue of many Latin writers?

2) One reason for adopting a qausi-etymological orthopgraphy for Faroese was
to make it more accessible to other scandinavains - in its written form at
least.  If you look at (I think) Svabo's orthography, with its "uj" and
"eav", etc. (I don't have diacritics on this programme), the relationship
with other Scandinavian languages becomes less apparent.

Robert Orr