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Subject:
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Age of languages
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Question:
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Steven Roger Fischer in A History of Language states that ''No language on Earth is older than any other: every currently spoken natural - that is neither revived nor invented - tongue shares exactly the same age''. Can anyone elucidate or expand on this statement?
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Reply:
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One additional comment in concurrence with what my colleagues have written. Sometimes the term "the old language" is used by a person or family to refer to the language they spoke in their land of origin. It is also not uncommonly used by a people to refer to the language native to them when a more recent intrusive language has come in and has perhaps even become the dominant language. This is even "officially" true in the case of Wales and the Welsh because the Welsh commonly refer to Welsh as yr Heniath 'the Old Language", and often even write it as one word, as I have done. hen#iath it is linguistically.
But Welsh is actually no older than English, although the ancestor forms of Welsh was spoken in the British Isles and in particular on Great Britain long before the older forms of English were. This characterization of Welsh as the "elder" of English is a demographic language use characterization, not an accurate characterization of the relative ages of the languages themselves.
U of Cincinnati
Dept of Anthropology
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Reply From:
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Joseph F Foster
click here to access email
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| Date: |
Aug-02-2009
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Other Replies:
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Re: Age of languages
James L Fidelholtz
(Jul-31-2009)
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Re: Age of languages
Geoffrey Richard Sampson
(Aug-01-2009)
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Re: Age of languages
Herbert Frederic Stahlke
(Aug-01-2009)
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