Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[Steve Gustafson]

JoatSimeon at aol.com scripsit:

> -- 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?

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?

I don't have an answer to this, but in the case of Latin it seems not to
have occurred much before Dante and Petrarch lived.

---
Glande accelerata velocior; machina tractore viae ferreae
potentior; alta aedificia uno saltu insilire valens.