On the origins of Romanian language

You were trying to "lead me towards that link"...???

Hi Agarici,

No offence taken.

Zayets feels exactly the same, but he states it often in small posts rather than the occasional bigger one.

If you and he wish to boycott this or any other thread then nobody can stop you. Participation is not now, nor has ever been, compulsory.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. Purely as a matter of interest, what exactly are "the points from" my "agenda that have become obvious"?

Hi Imperialist,

Yup. It is the first that comes up when you put "glottochronology" into Google.

Knowing your earlier low opinion of Wikipedia as a source, I would have been interested to see if you cited it or not.

However, my safest bet was that you would not even get that far, because you usually display complete inertia whenever I make a suggestion.

Fortunately, bogmih did follow deeper into glottochronolgy where you have chosen not to go.

Cheers,

Sid.

I think he referred to this statement of yours:

http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...indpost&p=36870

The romanian lexicon make up discussion was started on the same Transylvania History thread by you mentioning the relatinisation.
This new thread was formed, and eventually, after lengthy discussions, you came up with this statement:

Now someone can go back at the start of this thread and will be struck by the vehemency with which you tried to prove something. That vehemency did not come out of the blue. You made strong statements, not asked for info. You wanted to push through a point. And in my, Zayets' and Agarici's view, the point has now become clearer. Nothing personal.

Thank you. I would have preferred and outright, direct link.

And the first link to appear on Google was this one:

http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~gstump/519/outline10.html

My browser says: The page cannot be displayed

So, in the future, please provide a direct link.

Hi Imperialist,

Thank you for including the significant qualification "If one accepts the Hungarian version........". The word "If" rather undermines your case that I was pushing a particular point with vehemence.

You will note again that it is YOUR proposition that Romanian was a little differentiated language (i.e. no dialects) that argues for a more recent Romanian dispersal from a common source, not mine. This is what the second of my quotes was pointing out.

No offence taken.

Cheers,

Sid.

I was talking about vehemence on this thread (the language issues), not on the post I linked to.

I said it was a language with little differentiation between dialects (what later I found out to be called sub-dialects), not "a little differentiated language (no dialects)".

This post has been edited by Imperialist on September 06, 2005 05:25 pm

Hi Imperialist,

How strange! I still get the wikipedia first. I thought Google always put first the most used link. Why on earth would it put a redundant link up first? Who keeps using it? How peculiar.

Is anyone else having the same problem?

Cheers,

Sid.

I regoogled and I still get the wiki site first. Btw, Imperialist, your link doesn't work for me.

Sid, I'll read your link tomorrow. Until then, just a comment: a low level of difference between the Romanian language spoken in various parts of the country doesn't necessarilly means a recent moment of divergence. The Icelandic language has changed very little in the last 1000 years, for example.

Imperialist's link is actually the second link returned by the search, but the first one having the aspect of standard results (the link to wiki is in smaller characters and without the couple of lines of additional information)

http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=glotto...aut%C4%83&meta=

Nope,I don't think that way.I don't know why do you have to drag me into this boycott since I did not expressed any thoughts about this.
Please,mind your own business,leave the rest alone.All I have said is that you will not gain a lot of supporters here.And that's simply because you came with an agenda and lying everybody that is something you would like to know.That's about it.Period.

This post has been edited by Zayets on September 06, 2005 06:50 pm

It didnt work for me either:

Zayets, if you don't want to discuss something just don't do it. Otherwise, refrain from offering such advices. You certainly don't have any word on what can or cannot be discussed here.

Zayets, if you don't want to discuss something just don't do it. Otherwise, refrain from offering such advices. You certainly don't have any word on what can or cannot be discussed here.

Sorry Victor but I hate when somebody puts his words into my mouth without even having my consent.
And to be honest I made a mistake,it should have been "me" instead "the rest". This I am fully entitled to say.Sory for hurting your feelings.I know that time to time you have to show someones whos the boss here.There you go,I understood.

This post has been edited by Zayets on September 07, 2005 07:00 am

Sid, I've just started reading your link, but either I don't understand a thing about glottochronology or there's something awfully wrong about it. That's what it says between the 3rd and 4th pages:

"The time at which two languages began to diverged can hence be calculated based on the inferred genetic distance between the languages using the equation

t = log C/2 log r

where t is time depth in millenia, C is the percentage of cognates shared, and r is the "universal" constant, or rate of retention (the expected proportion of cognates remaining after 1000 years of separation). For the Swadesh 200-word list, a value of 81 percent is often used for r. If two languages share terms for 150 (75 percent) of the 200 words in the list, then according to the above equation we would infer that they separated about 680 years ago."

So if we have an 81 percent retention rate, the languages split 1000 years ago. If we have a lower retention rate of only 75 percent, according to my logic the languages should have separated more than 1000 years ago. Instead, the paper says the result is 680 years. I really don't understand.