LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.06.06 (05) [E]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.06.04 (05) [E]


Ron wrote in reply to agon Dan:
"In fact, I wonder if all this goes back to a conflux of North Italians with
Romanians."

I really did not want to go into the links between the Vegliot and Romanian
proper, and the Vlachs (largely because it may offend Romanian nationalism),
but here I go.

There is a school of thought, propounded (curiously enough) in Malcolm,
Noel. A Short History of Kosovo (c. 1999 and if memory serves) that
proto-Romanian (that is, Eastern Romance) migrated into the Balkans via
Istria. In short, the theory suggests that most of the Balkans - especially
the areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia) were Eastern Romance speaking until
fairly recently (tenth to eighteenth centuries), and that these speakers
were intermixed with or may have originally been Albanian speakers. This
explains the sprachbund and lexical links between Romanian and Albanian,
which are very strong. These Eastern Romance speakers survive only as the
Vlachs now scattered across the Balkans, and the Romanians. Those in
Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia were Slavicised and became Croats, Bosniacs and
Serbs according to whether they adopted (or were) Catholics, Muslims and
Orthodox respectively. Until the sixteenth century the Morlachs and Vlachs
are referred to in the same area a! s modern day Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia.

>From what I can tell, Istriot is a remnant population at the western end of
this dialect continuum, and Megleno-Romanian and Daco-Romanian comprise the
other groups. As I am no linguist, I have no opinion on the theory, but it
is an interesting one which explains a number of peculiarities of Balkan
linguistics.

Go raibh maith agat,

Criostóir.

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.06.04 (05) [E]

> From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.05.02 (01) [E]
>
> Heather wrote:
> > In the last twenty years 'whom' has practically disappeared from the
> > English
> > of the under 40s.
>
> On the other hand, I just read an English mystery novel (a British
> edition,
> too) that actually contained the sentence "I did not know whom he was."
>
> I suppose the writer must have been over 40, then. I have come across this
> kind of construction more than once, unfortunately; the perpetrators are
> usually the same people who would say things like "it was a great
> opportunity for my wife and I".

I'm barely over 40, and I'd say the loss of "whom", at least in America,
extends well into the over-40 generation.  Personally, I've tried to use it
correctly ever since my high school English teacher gave me the simple
explanation that you use "whom" when it's an object and "who" when it's a
subject.  My response was along the lines of, "Aha! No one ever explained it
to me that way before!"  It suddenly made perfect sense to me.

The dreadful "for my wife and I" construction really grates on my nerves as
well.

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Gabriele (above):
>
> > I suppose the writer must have been over 40, then. I have come across
> this
> > kind of construction more than once, unfortunately; the perpetrators are
> > usually the same people who would say things like "it was a great
> > opportunity for my wife and I".
>
> Don't you think this is in the same league with some English speakers
> (only
> American or also others?) who, beginning as early as in the 19th century
> (when "thou," "thee," "thine," "thy" and "ye" had already given way to
> "you"
> and "your(s)"), wanted to sound "biblically correct" and used objective
> "thee" in place of nominative "thou" and "objective "ye" in place of
> nominative "you"?  For example, "Thee have sinned most gravely, Brother"
> (instead of correct "Thou hast sinned most gravely, Brother," if not
> contemporary "You have sinned most gravely, Brother"), and "Oh, ye fickle
> people of Chestertown, what have ye done now?" (instead of correct "Oh,
> you
> fickle people of Chestertown, what have you done now?").

Wasn't this mainly a Quaker thing (or was it the Amish)?  And isn't the
first "ye" in your last sentence correct, since it's actually the vocative
and not the nominative?  And it should really be "O ye fickle people...",
not "Oh, ye fickle people..."

Kevin Caldwell

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

> "O ye fickle people...", not "Oh, ye fickle people..."

Thanks, Kevin.  Those would mean different things to me.  The first is
vocative, and the second "Oh, ..." expresses dismay or exaspiration.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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