Talk:Historical linguistics/Archive 1

message: "Additionally, it contradicts genetic evidence that suggests the first humans migrated from the Horn of Africa into Yemen, rather than across the Sinai peninsula."  How so? As the article stands, that looks to me like a complete non sequitur. - Mustafaa 06:08, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded the question -- how so?Jorge Stolfi 05:11, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Sinai vs Yemen

message: There is another page Historical-comparative linguistics which seems like it should be merged with this one. Anyone disagree? Dduck 12:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge with "Historical-comparative linguistics"

message: Use of the comparative method is validated by its application to languages whose common ancestor is known. Thus, when the method is applied to the Romance languages (which include French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian), the reconstructed common ancestor language comes out rather similar to Latin--not the classical Latin of Horace and Cicero, but something perhaps more akin to the Latin that must have been spoken in various dialects during the Dark Ages, following the breakup of the Roman Empire. 
what is this?
Spoken Latin was different from the written latin. Since allways!!! There was a latin that was spoken, and a latin that was written both were used in the today's latin countries and IN ROME! just, the spoken latin suffered local chanches. And the "classical" latin were also official. At least in Portugal classical latin was the officially used language till 1290!Pedro 01:10, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: IIRC, the divergence between spoken and written latin is attested only by the end of the 1st century BC, when the Roman empire and the city had already grown much beyond the original town, where classical Latin was born. It seems highly unlikely that the written language differed from the spoken language in the 4th century BC, when Rome was just a small kingdom. Moreover, the "Latin" that gave origin to Romance was the language of the Roman army, which was largely made up of people who were not native of Rome. So it was probably some sort of lingua franca that Scythian soldiers could use to talk to Iberian soldiers; distinct not only from the classical written Latin, but also from the Latin spoken in Rome. Jorge Stolfi 17:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Validation

message: You know, it occurs to me that the only way I can think of to justify a bald claim like that there will be no detectable similarities after 10,000 years is glottochronology, which is rightly pretty discredited.  Is that where this claim comes from, or does someone know of a different argument for it? - Mustafaa 06:49, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The 10,000 year limit 

message: Please somebody make a page talking about what we will all be speaking in e.g., 500 years.
I.e., will we all be speaking English? No page I can find on Wikipedia discusses what the linguistic landscape will look like in 500 years. Jidanni 21:50, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Linguistic landscape in 500 years

message: Is indeed "historical linguistics" the same thing as "comparative linguistics"? By logic, the latter term should include both diachronic (historical) and synchronic comparative linguistics.  Jorge Stolfi 16:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are two problems here. The first is the false equation of comparative and historical linguistics - but comparative linguistics is only about establishing genetic relationships. That would be fairly easy to deal with by rewriting the opening para. But the second problem is that almost the entire content of the page relates solely to comparative linguistics. Perhaps ideally this page should be renamed "Comparative linguistics" and linked from a page on "Historical linguistica", but admittedly that's quite a bit of work. Pfold 17:33, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical linguistics = comparative linguistics? 

message: I was wondering, do anyone here know the best books to buy to get a general overview of comparative linguistics, particularly Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic, and as well as of the current discussions in the field. I've looked around for a number of books, but I'm not sure what the best ones to get are, and the German ones listed doesn't help me too much, as my knowledge of English is far greater than that of German. Any help is accepted. Thanks in advance. Satanael 13:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Books on comparative linguistics 

message: Since there is now an independent page on comparative linguistics (replacing the old redirect) and there are existing pages on comparative method, glottochronology and mass lexical comparison, I have cut the sections devoted to those topics on this page. Here they are for future reference, and so that appropriate material can be moved to those pages. --Pfold 21:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cut comparative material

message: I have rewritten the paragraph that mentions alternatives to the comparative method because the previous version treated such techniques as later developments intended to overcome limitations of the comparative method when in fact these techniques are the remnants of prescientific historical linguistics.Bill 06:49, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mass comparison etc.

message: Why is there no section here on the Tower of Babel?--Filll 03:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it has nothing to do with the modern discipline of historical linguistics --Pfold 08:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it doesn't seem to specifically reject a Babal-like event as far as this article is concerned, its not very detailed though. Homestarmy 15:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Reading this article, I get the sense historical linguistics is less certain about things than most other fields when things go farther back in time. Homestarmy 16:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: And there are so many languages about which there is little knowledge.  My favorite are language isolates, about which there are lot of really good speculation, but no good theories.  I especially loved the one that tied Basque, Na-Dene and Caucasian (that would be the language of Caucasus region) together.  When you get this kind of information, the Tower of Babel may not be a bad metaphor for all of this.  But in 100 years, everyone will be speaking English, and then what happens?  The end of the world?  :)  Orangemarlin 16:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I have always been fascinated with the purported link between Finnish, Hungarian (Magyar) and Ainu.--Filll 17:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The link between Finnish and Hungarian is pretty much certain. Much less certain is any link between those languages and Ainu. Or any languages and Ainu, for that matter. --86.138.30.7 (talk) 06:22, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Tower of Babel