IE and Substrates and Time

[Sheila Watts]

>So can we not assume that somewhere between 1000 and 2000 years is required
>for communications difficulties to become strenuous, and more than 2000 years
>for them to be so large as to prevent communications, i. e., to require one
>party to learn the other's language before communication can take place, if
>both are members of the same general speech community.

This seems to me to be too broad a generalisation to work in any useful
way. A lot depends on exposure: in Scandinavia, for instance, some Swedes
understand Danish rather well, and others find it very difficult, mostly
depending on how close they live to Denmark and whether they are within
range of Danish TV. Some Germans understand Dutch reasonably well without
learning it, others don't - and vice versa. Again, this is at least partly
regionally dependent, partly dependent on the degree of communicative need
felt by the speakers. Some Swiss dialects are wholly impenetrable to German
speakers from Germany or Austria. Yet these languages have all been
separate for less than 1000 years (I mean, in each pairing I describe, not
the whole group).

The ancestors of English and German were probably mutually comprehensible
less then 2000 years ago, yet now they aren't even close. The Normans have
a lot to answer for.

 It seems to me that trained linguists tend to overemphasise wildly the
ease with which ordinary people will understand a spoken language in real
time - not a written document over which they can pore, but an utterance at
which you only get one chance.

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816

[ Moderator's response:
  As I mentioned in the preamble comments before the suggestion quoted above,
  I have myself seen communication among a mixed group of speakers of Slavic
  languages, none of them trained linguists and most with high school level
  educations.  It is not a matter of instant understanding, but of working at
  understanding by all parties.

  I do not mean to imply that a Gael and a Turfanian of c. 700 AD could have
  understood each other in this fashion, but that 3500 years or so earlier,
  speakers of the easternmost and westernmost IE dialects might, with a will,
  have done so.  I certainly do not think we should reject the latter notion
  out of hand.
  --rma ]