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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Etymology of Warsaw and Kiev?
In-Reply-To: agraps@netcom.com's message of Tue, 27 Aug 1996 20:13:01 GMT
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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 18:21:43 GMT
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In article <agrapsDwtC5p.M8D@netcom.com> agraps@netcom.com (Amara Graps)
writes:

>Lithuanian, by the way, may be the oldest Indo-European language.

There is no such thing as "the oldest Indo-European language."  All Indo-Euro-
pean languages are the "same" age, in relation to being descended from the
original Indo-European language.

If instead we define "language age" as earliest attestation, Lithuanian is one
of the "youngest", as the earliest text dates from c. 1545 CE (a Lutheran
catechism, and therefore not even an original text).  The "oldest" under this
definition is Palaic, an Anatolian language attested c. 1900 BCE, i. e. about
3500 years earlier.

NB: Follow-ups set to sci.lang only.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
