Discusion about proto-Romance.

Gerard Cheshire Discussion

 

 

Dear H-Mediterranean members,
Those of you interested in the history of the Mediterranean may like to start a discussion about the linguistic aspects of trade and communication, that have continued into the modern era.
 
Recently the writing system of a Medieval manuscript was revealed to be proto-Romance: i.e. the ancestor to Spanish and the other modern Romance languages. In addition, it is written with a proto-Italic alphabet. It is the only known document of this kind and therefore has considerable linguistic and historic importance.
 
Two papers have been issued, which explain the writing system and translate a number of excerpts as examples. They can be freely downloaded from the LingBuzz website. 
  1. Linguistic Missing Linkshttp://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737 
  2. Linguistically Dating and Locating MS408http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808
 
The manuscript reveals that proto-Romance was a combination of simplified spoken Latin and words taken from various other languages, resulting from trade, political conquest, slavery, royal marriage and the communication of ideas. So proto-Romance was an effective way of communicating between people from many lands. When the political map became more fixed, the relative isolation of different populations then caused proto-Romance to evolve into the modern Romance languages that exist today. 
 
The discussion is this: Which of the modern Romance languages is the most similar to the original proto-Romance? 
 
Regards,
Gerard Cheshire.
University of Bristol.