The Neolithic Hypothesis (Latin et al.)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Just to repeat: I've still seen no direct evidence that OCS was comprehended
>or even heard by the northwestern Slavic speakers who lived in the Elbe-Oder
>area in the time OCS first rolled out.

-- loanwords in the various Slavic languages indicate that their distinctive
features emerged fairly late; hence, at the time OCS was written down, it
merely represented the southern edge of a dialect continuum which was still
mutually comprehensible across the entire area of Slavic speach.

Or to put it simply:  all the Slavs were still speaking dialects of a common,
mutually intelligible language.

If they weren't, the loanwords wouldn't have undergone the (subsequent)
changes that they did.