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From: alderson@netcom18.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Etymology of Warsaw and Kiev?
In-Reply-To: agraps@netcom.com's message of Thu, 29 Aug 1996 09:16:49 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.96Aug29182847@netcom18.netcom.com>
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Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 01:28:47 GMT
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In article <agrapsDww742.Dvz@netcom.com> agraps@netcom.com (Amara Graps)
writes:

>So I'll retract what I said, and instead say that the Lithuanian language may
>be the _least changed_ out of all the Indo-Europian languages and a reason why
>linguists seem to find it interesting. Here's a quote from _The Mother Tongue_
>by Bill Bryson:

Bryson is not a linguist, he is a journalist, if I remember correctly.  I was
unimpressed by the level of sophistication in his book, in any case.  A case in
point is the very quote you provided:

>"Of all the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is the one that has changed
>the least- so much so that it is sometimes said a Lithuanian can understand
>simple phrases in Sanskrit. At the very least, Lithuanian has preserved many
>more of the inflected complexities of the original Indo-European language than
>others of the family."

It is sometimes said, but never by an Indo-Europeanist.  Lithuanian has changed
in a number of ways, all as far-reaching if not as immediately obvious as the
changes in the Germanic languages:  The vowels differ, the accent differs, two
series of obstruents have fallen together (the "mediae" and the "aspiratae"),
massive palatalizations have taken place; several new cases have been built on
models taken from their Finnic neighbours; and the syntax has changed.

No, the average Lithuanian in the street cannot understand a word of Sanskrit,
certainly not by virtue of speaking Lithuanian.

>By the way, I'm (obviously) not a linguist. I just find the etymology of words
>interesting.

It's a good start.  It's one of the things that got me started as a linguist.
-- 
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_
