corrections

[Tom Priestly]

Sorry to be pedantic but, like I am sure many other linguists, I find
errors about languages to be something that cannot be ignored.  (The same
is surely true of other professionals and specialists).

***Those who dislike pedantic comments should delete this message here and
now. And I hope Lia Laura Pugliesi will forgive my effrontery.***

1. There are, by consensus, more than 7 Romance languages. This is a
problematic area because the term "language" has multiple meanings, as does
the term "dialect." However, most linguists will agree that
- Friulian (N.E. Italy) and Romansch (Switzerland) are independent "languages"
- Sardinian is a "language" and not a "dialect"
and many will also accept that
- Occitan (S. France), Aragones and Asturiano (Spain) are also "languages."
And there are more Romance varieties whose speakers claim them to be
"languages," e.g., Corsican, Franco-Provençal.
Incidentally, Gallego is enough of a "language" to have certain rights
written into the Spanish consitution.

2. Roma, Sinti and the other languages of the people who used to be called
the Gypsies (nowadays that is a derogatory term) are Indic languages.

3. Breton is very close to Cornish and Welsh and very dissimilar from Irish.

4. "The Etruscan language ...  cannot be shown conclusively to be related
to any other language, living or dead, except for a couple of sparsely
attested extinct languages" (from a website).

5. The Celts at one time colonized most of what is now Modern Europe and
beyond. Cetainly, Gaullish in Caesar's France was a Celtic language (and
spoken by, e.g., Asterix). Another, Celtiberian, was spoken in what is now
Spain & Portugal. "Ethnically", however, the amount of "Celtic-ness" must
have become very diluted all over Europe except on the N.W. fringe (the
Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons). The contemporary Celtic
"ethnicity" of the Gallegans is probably minimal - although the root "Gal"
has been preserved there, just as it was in (a) the village of
Gallizien/Galicija in Austria, (b) the region called Galich or Halych in
Ukraine, (c) the home of the Galatians (now in Turkey) to whom St. Paul
wrote his letters.

6. Basque is an "isolate" language - unconnected to any other in the world
- and was spoken in Euskadi (and elsewhere?) before the Indo-Europeans
immigrated from wherever they came from. (The Indo-European place of origin
is very hypothetical but is unlikely to have been India.) People have been
trying to find linguistic connections to Basque (e.g., in the Caucasus) for
over 150 years, without success.

There, I have let off some steam. Again, my apologies for taking up your space!
Tom Priestly





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*       Tom Priestly
*       9215-69 Street
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