LL-L "Language politics" 2008.07.06 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 06 July 2008 - Volume 03
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From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2008.07.06 (02) [E/LS/French]

> from heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk
>
> This may be a new thread - I'm not quite sure!
>
> Reading Mike Winzer's contribution re the French
> language..
>
> I read this morning in an old National Geo that the
> Icelandic language has
> barely changed in the last 1000 years to such an extent
> that modern day
> icelanders can still read the old sagas with ease.
>
> Why is this? What has happened in Iceland that the language
> has not
> diversified, changed,

Hello,

I'm sorry to be short about this.
It has all to do with points of view.

This question: do you English-speaking people read older texts? And how much
do you understand? And how much do you understand of Pepys?

The same for the Dutch. They understand quite a lot of older texts. E.g.
Roelantslied: "Maer Roelant doen bequam, / Ende als hi dien Sarrasijn
vernam, / Ende hien metten oghen siet: / Dune bent van minen ghesellen
niet"... well, they manage without a dictionary.

Once upon a time the professor of literature Sigurður Nordal published a
famous anthology of Icelandic literature up till ab. 1750 for Icelanders, a
volume of ab. 400 pages; and he let it go with a volume with explanations,
totalling 171 pages. ???

This kind of above mentioned statements arose in the time that linguistics
was very much circling around inflection and declension.

There you are.

vr. gr.
Theo Homan [today I'm clear in the skull]
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