The Neolithic Hypothesis

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Definitely *much* more.  West Germanic started to split up c. 500 BC
>(Mallory's Jastorf Iron Age)

-- This is a strange statement, given the virtual uniformity of West Germanic
until the Migrations period.

The Jastorf Iron Age culture also shows a high degree of uniformity.  The
first runic inscriptions, from the 3rd-4th century on, are still virtually
proto-Germanic.

>The split with North and East Germanic was considerably earlier than that,
>possibly as early as 1500 BC (start of Scandinavian Bronze Age).

-- hell, in 1500 BCE there probably wasn't much difference between proto-
Germanic and the other northwestern IE languages, much less within proto-
Germanic.

>Yeah, I've read Mallory, p. 49, too.  Avestan and Sankrit are similar, but
>they're not in any way "virtually the same language".  The differences are
>far greater than between Swedish and Danish.

-- apparently not with any profit.  The languages (or, better, dialects) are
clearly mutually intelligible; the differences are comparable to those between
English dialects.  Broad Yorkshire and Deep Texas are considerably more
distinct.

Or don't you think that "tam amavantem yazatem" is similar to "tam amavantam
yajatam"?

You don't think two people speaking these dialects would get the meaning?

>[ Moderator's comment:  I'm not sure that the attested differences are much
>greater than between, for example, the forms of Spanish spoken today in
>Madrid, Buenos Aires, Caracas,  and Mexico DF.  --rma ]

-- agreement there.