tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post8137359992059816845..comments2024-03-09T09:19:07.054+01:00Comments on Jabal al-Lughat: Beni-Snous: Two unrelated phonetic forms for every noun?Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-54880353654653674382010-08-30T14:25:17.366+02:002010-08-30T14:25:17.366+02:00Anonymous: Thank you very much! Almost the same c...Anonymous: Thank you very much! Almost the same counting rhyme is found in Boussemghoun, in Chaouia, and in Tabelbala.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-28186176738385197632010-07-16T20:08:53.106+02:002010-07-16T20:08:53.106+02:00Hello,
I'm from Khémis at the Beni Snous count...Hello,<br />I'm from Khémis at the Beni Snous country. I remember there was a game back 40 years ago, where we used to count : HAMOU [ONE] TANOU [TWO]TALTOU [THREE] RABU [FOUR] KHAMOU [FIVE] CHELTA [SIX] CHAABA [SEVEN]QAJAT [EIGHT]MAJAT [NINE]MIW [TEN]Anonymoushttp://(optional)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-21952698199345301052010-07-03T00:02:03.379+02:002010-07-03T00:02:03.379+02:00Hi,
I'm from KEF.
I think this is not the ent...Hi,<br /><br />I'm from KEF.<br />I think this is not the entire Berber that you are talk about. It's the new one merged by Arabic.<br /><br />This is what happen with Kabyle Berber now. They don't talk the origine Berber.<br /><br />Regards.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16134736265905743159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-2863256389661461352009-04-28T07:08:00.000+02:002009-04-28T07:08:00.000+02:00>> although... what is that actually, every ...>> although... what is that actually, every single "bilingual" person, and they have been good candidates and quite many, I have ever met has clearly had one native tongue, even though they know some other language excellently<br /><br />> You don't know any people who grew up with two native languages?<br /><br />That is just it: "they have been good candidates and quite many". So, these persons have had parents with different native languages or the surrounding society with a different native language, or some variation of the theme. Bona fide examples of bilingualism, the literature uses people precisely like them as examples of bilingualism. Many have evidently switched their native language. Nevertheless, one language always dominates. So, that language is identifiable as the native language. Therefore, I have become quite skeptical about bilingualism as defined in the literature.linguist.in.hidingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-44702879130894918502009-04-28T01:23:00.000+02:002009-04-28T01:23:00.000+02:00although... what is that actually, every single "b...<I>although... what is that actually, every single "bilingual" person, and they have been good candidates and quite many, I have ever met has clearly had one native tongue, even though they know some other language excellently</I>You don't know any people who grew up with two native languages?David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-78683717868773433472009-04-27T21:02:00.000+02:002009-04-27T21:02:00.000+02:00Friendly neighborhood Romance scholar here. David:...Friendly neighborhood Romance scholar here. David: Petjo and Javindo are basically mixed languages created by children born to Indonesian mothers and Dutch fathers ("Indo-Euros") in Indonesia in colonial days: they basically have Dutch vocabulary and Malay and Javanese grammar, respectively: neither language may be said to be well-documented.<br /><br />Linguist.in.hiding: Erromintxela is unfortunately not a good example of a mixed language whose creation involved "thorough bilingualism": all that was needed to create it was a knowledge of Romani vocabulary, as the grammar is entirely Basque. What makes Mitchif doubly remarkable as a mixed language is the fact that 1-Many speakers know neither Cree nor French, and 2-Only Cree-French bilinguals --individuals familiar with the lexicon *and grammar* of both languages-- could have created it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-62510427180969934602009-04-27T18:21:00.000+02:002009-04-27T18:21:00.000+02:00This thread is spot on the issue I have thought ab...This thread is spot on the issue I have thought about lately. Elsewhere I posted the following comment:<br /><br />============<br /><br />> Perhaps it's best not to use either word, but to talk about Tok Pisin as a Melanesian mixed language based on mostly English vocabulary from the colonial period.<br /><br />I really really really really really don't believe you are a linguist. First of all calling a creole a mixed language is just replacing one usage (technically correct, even if it has negative connotations) with a fraudulent one. And that fraudulent usage strengthens a really really really really really really really really really really stupid layman fantasy of "mixed languages". There are maybe 13 mixed languages out of maybe 8000. Do you really want to make the relative amount of loan words the criteria of calling a language a mixed language? If yes, further discussion is pointless (and, "as a linguist" you should know why).<br /><br />===========<br /><br />I might have mentioned "extended pidgin" but... ...and called loan words something different as they in these cases are, that was a blunder.<br /><br />Then I came across Erromintxela. This language differs from other mixed languages since it is essentially Basque with a Romani lexicon. Yes, there must have had been a thorough bilingualism (although... what is that actually, every single "bilingual" person, and they have been good candidates and quite many, I have ever met has clearly had one native tongue, even though they know some other language excellently) which is one point in favor of being a mixed language. But is that enough?<br /><br />Why is it any different from Media Lengua? The Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_languages) on Mixed languages says:<br /><br />"Media Lengua, an inherited Quechua grammar and phonology with a borrowed Spanish lexicon. However, there are arguments that this was simply Quechua with large numbers of Spanish loanwords. It is no longer spoken."<br /><br />Erromintxela should not be counted as a mixed language.<br /><br />Furthermore on the Wikipedia page on Erromintxela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erromintxela) you have:<br /><br />"The most detailed research to date was carried out by the Basque philologist Josune Muñoz and the historian Elias Lopez de Mungia"<br /><br />The description of the language is ok but as far as I can see there were no linguists involved. It seems that people just had this pet project and wanted to make it special.<br /><br />Our host has written: "If you regard the lexicon as the least interesting part of a language, and cultural differences as a distraction from linguistics". The lexicon and cultural differences might be interesting in themselves but do we really need to take them into that much consideration in the case of mixed languages and Erromintxela? I see this as opening Pandora's box.<br /><br />Any thoughts?linguist.in.hidingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-50526937774424978292009-04-27T00:48:00.000+02:002009-04-27T00:48:00.000+02:00Copper Island Aleut, whose (Aleut) verbs bear Russ...<I>Copper Island Aleut, whose (Aleut) verbs bear Russian inflections but whose nouns are fully Aleut</I><BR><BR>The mind boggles!<br /><br /><I>Ideas?</I><BR><BR>Well, in the place where Mitchif was born, French never had the overriding influence English has (and very quickly gained as soon as it appeared) all over the USA -- though of course Betsiamites Montagnais could disprove that idea.<br /><br />I suppose it's most likely that intertwined languages are extremely rare in the first place; there may not be enough of them for any statistically meaningful claim.<br /><br /><I>Petjo and Javindo</I><BR><BR>What do those look like?David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-60485829949596958392009-04-19T04:09:00.000+02:002009-04-19T04:09:00.000+02:00Friendly neighborhood Romance scholar again.
Lam...Friendly neighborhood Romance scholar again. <br /><br />Lameen: in North America at any rate, native languages have been sufficiently studied for it to be fairly certain that no other Mitchif-like language has appeared: considering that most are experiencing language death even as I type this, it is clear that most cannot yield a Mitchif-like outcome through contact with English. Hence Mitchif is indeed quite a special language, making its similarity to young speakers' Montagnais in Betsiamites all the more noteworthy.<br /><br />(By the way, code-mixing and code-switching are different matters entirely: what makes young Betsmiamites Montagnais speakers' variety so Mitchif-like, and so unlike code-switching and code-mixing, is the fact that, as Lynn Drapeau has shown, a majority of speakers no longer know even basic Montagnais nouns, using French ones, and yet fully inflect their [Montagnais] verbs, making this situation QUITE unlike your typical instance of language death.) <br /><br />David: Light Warlpiri is definitely interesting (Copper Island Aleut, whose [Aleut] verbs bear Russian inflections but whose nouns are fully Aleut, is quite SUI GENERIS): it does beg the question, though, as to why no such mixed language involving English and a Native language ever emerged in North America. Light Warlpiri having an English Creole rather than English proper component as its non-Warlpiri "half", one could remove "in North America" from the above question. <br /><br />I once toyed with the idea that Catholicism might be the factor which caused French to form an intertwiner with a native language in North America, unlike English (Catholic societies in general are far more open to racial mixing than Protestant ones), but quickly realized that this explanation doesn't explain why only one intertwined language (Media Lengua) has been reported in all of Latin America, versus two (Petjo and Javindo) involving Dutch in Indonesia. Ideas?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-67376913618702703812009-04-18T15:56:00.000+02:002009-04-18T15:56:00.000+02:00Aha, Google ate two empty lines. Strange. Anyway, ...Aha, Google ate two empty lines. Strange. Anyway, the quotes are still in italics as intended.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-55253947255547085662009-04-18T15:55:00.000+02:002009-04-18T15:55:00.000+02:00What is there about French and Algonquian (languag...<I>What is there about French and Algonquian (languages? speakers?) that yields this extraordinary outcome?</I>I can of course speculate: the verbs of modern colloquial French are mildly polysynthetic, so you can replace them by Cree ones without having to rearrange the entire sentence.<br /><br />That said, intertwined languages like these are known from elsewhere: <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Warlpiri" REL="nofollow">Light Warlpiri</A> appears to be an example, and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mednyj_Aleut" REL="nofollow">Copper Island Aleut</A> is implied to be another by Wikipedia at least.<br /><br /><I>(Rolls eyes.) Try carefully reading and rereading Bakker's section on <A HREF="http://books.google.ca/books?id=hlE7SyRIl3kC&pg=PA183&vq=%22micmac/maliseet-English+Code+Mixing%22&dq=&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0#PPA186,M1" REL="nofollow">Micmac/Maliseet-English Code Mixing</A> first before theorizing nonsense. These outcomes are only "extraordinary" to you because you're seriously lacking information.</I>That's pretty much the exact opposite sort of mixed language: lexemes from one language and morphology from another. <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erromintxela" REL="nofollow">Erromintxela</A> is another example: most word stems (nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, everything) are Kalderash Romani, but the grammar is Basque. In Mitchif, the verb phrases are entirely Cree (or Ojibwe...) and the noun phrases are entirely French (except the couple exceptions); couldn't be more different.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-69743520478883244772009-04-18T11:02:00.000+02:002009-04-18T11:02:00.000+02:00Anonymous: "There does not exist any mixed languag...<B>Anonymous: <I>"There does not exist any mixed language with English NP's and fully-inflected Algonquian verbs, for instance, nor any non-Algonquian language which has incorporated French NP's and kept its inherited VP. What is there about French and Algonquian (languages? speakers?) that yields this extraordinary outcome?"</I></B>(Rolls eyes.) Try carefully reading and rereading Bakker's section on <A HREF="http://books.google.ca/books?id=hlE7SyRIl3kC&pg=PA183&vq=%22micmac/maliseet-English+Code+Mixing%22&dq=&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0" REL="nofollow">Micmac/Maliseet-English Code Mixing</A> first before theorizing nonsense. These outcomes are only "extraordinary" to you because you're seriously lacking information. <br /><br />And it's too bad that Lameen can't look this up too. Tsk tsk.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-70342120684189542002009-04-18T11:01:00.000+02:002009-04-18T11:01:00.000+02:00This comment has been removed by the author.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-76784278133455122522009-04-18T11:00:00.000+02:002009-04-18T11:00:00.000+02:00This comment has been removed by the author.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-91375743271276315222009-04-18T00:37:00.000+02:002009-04-18T00:37:00.000+02:001. The closest Berber comes to exemplifying a mixe...1. The closest Berber comes to exemplifying a mixed-grammar language is Ghomara, where negation is Arabic and borrowed verbs and adjectives as well as nouns often retain their full Arabic conjugation. There the negative and the adjective do seem to be slightly simplified - but not the verb conjugation, as far as I could see from the very limited data at the Leiden presentation. The difficulty is being sure that the simplification took place in Ghomara, rather than in Arabic dialects of the region; the Arabic of that part of Morocco is heavily influenced by Berber anyway. Apart from the bizarre rule described above, Beni-Snous actually doesn't look any more mixed than the Northern Berber average.<br /><br />2. Given how comparatively recently Michif and BM have come to light, and how many languages are in fairly intense contact with French, how sure can we really be about that?Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-92005884471712171172009-04-17T21:25:00.000+02:002009-04-17T21:25:00.000+02:00FNRS here: Lameen, rest assured that the attacks h...FNRS here: Lameen, rest assured that the attacks have not and will not deter me from leaving comments here: your postings are quite stimulating, rest assured. Moreover, the other commentators are of a high caliber as well: so much so that I would like to re-package two questions I have only managed to touch lightly over the course of the discussion:<br /><br />1-Is it usual in mixed languages (including Beni-Snous Berber) for the components to be simplified somewhat, as is the case of the French as well as the Cree components of Mitchif? If it isn't, than my hunch (that pidginized varieties of Cree and French played a role in the genesis of Mitchif) does seem likelier.<br /><br />2-Young speakers' Montagnais in Betsiamites is very Mitchif-like, as Bakker had already pointed out: what I would like someone to explain is why contact between French and an Algonquian language has -TWICE!- produced such a unique outcome. There does not exist any mixed language with English NP's and fully-inflected Algonquian verbs, for instance, nor any non-Algonquian language which has incorporated French NP's and kept its inherited VP. What is there about French and Algonquian (languages? speakers?) that yields this extraordinary outcome?<br /><br />A final observation: I wonder whether, in the context of Mitchif language preservation/revival, young speakers of Betsiamites Montagnais might not be able to play a major role: I suspect they could become fluent in Mitchif very quickly, and I could easily see young Mitchif learners from the prairies (with English as their L1) being sent to Betsiamites over several summers, where they and their locally-born peers would use Mitchif as their common language.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-73386014979931990472009-04-16T23:27:00.000+02:002009-04-16T23:27:00.000+02:00David, when characters like yourself cannot accept...<I>David, when characters like yourself cannot accept the falsehoods of their statements and instead use strawman arguments, dismiss all references cited from qualified academics without cause, personally attack me both here and through Carlos Quiles's ailing conlang site then, by most definitions of the term "stupid", this entire blogmob and the blog-author who enables the blog attacks by posting them rather than deleting them is qualifiably "stupid". Absolutely, yes.</I>Who is this addressed to?<br /><br />I am most certainly called "David", and you've accused me of making a strawman argument (I'm still not sure it actually is one; why did you harp on and on about the anonymity of YFNRS and Old Wombat if you didn't believe it was relevant to the argument?); but I don't see what false statement I made (oh, perhaps you mean the concept that the size of vocabulary can be estimated to some degree, while you maintain that this degree is exactly 0?), and I haven't rejected any citations. Perhaps most importantly, I had never heard of Carlos Quiles, had only visited dnghu.org once before (many months ago; just for the record, I think the idea of using some semblance of reconstructed PIE is interesting, but silly), and I am not "not that other 'Anonymous'".<br /><br />D. Sky Onosson starts with D, too. I don't keep track what you've accused him of, though.<br /><br />Oh, now I understand: "characters like yourself" doesn't mean you're actually talking about any particular person and then generalizing, you're tallying all sins committed against you on this blog, then lumping everyone who has commented on this blog, and then equating these two sets, as if everyone were responsible for everything. Right?<br /><br />If so, you're committing the fallacy of believing that people who comment here have got anything in common beyond that...<br /><br /><I>None of these attacks actually affect me in the end. They only hurt the attackers themselves, including Lameen Souag who boasts being the author of this now-wrecked blog.</I>Your blood pressure.<br /><br />I think you should read Lameen's comment with the 5 options again. Calmly this time.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-59696868079939758862009-04-16T00:02:00.000+02:002009-04-16T00:02:00.000+02:00FNRS: Your patience with the vociferous misunderst...FNRS: Your patience with the vociferous misunderstandings and unprovoked personal attacks in this thread was remarkable. I hope you won't let this episode put you off commenting in future. I have so far not seen a compelling need to start deleting tantrum comments - at least one turned out to be unintentionally thought-provoking once I got past the playground insults - but I will change that policy if I see it driving better-informed and calmer commenters away.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-64661522193770615022009-04-14T10:43:00.000+02:002009-04-14T10:43:00.000+02:00David, when characters like yourself cannot accept...David, when characters like yourself cannot accept the falsehoods of their statements and instead use strawman arguments, dismiss all references cited from qualified academics without cause, personally attack me both here and through Carlos Quiles's ailing conlang site then, by most definitions of the term "stupid", this entire blogmob and the blog-author who enables the blog attacks by posting them rather than deleting them is qualifiably "stupid". Absolutely, yes. <br /><br />None of these attacks actually affect me in the end. They only hurt the attackers themselves, including Lameen Souag who boasts being the author of this now-wrecked blog.<br /><br />FYI, for the very last time, it's unquestionable that Montagnais and Mitchif have two different histories and two different cultures (thus two different circumstances leading to their similar codeswitching), so I can't be bothered being baited once again into repeating myself for a third time and watching the debate stray further and further off track. <br /><br />Life is short and you people are certainly making it so much shorter for readers here. Bye bye now, kids. Sleep tight.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-88309238479399940342009-04-14T02:17:00.000+02:002009-04-14T02:17:00.000+02:00Lameen, you're right; I overgeneralized. Thanks f...Lameen, you're right; I overgeneralized. Thanks for the link!D. Sky Onossonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03878129270916134167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-83104731937752462582009-04-14T00:14:00.000+02:002009-04-14T00:14:00.000+02:00"natural languages, and natural language change, a..."natural languages, and natural language change, are not the result of deliberate intentional conscious attempts": that is a good first approximation, but by no means entirely true. In recent times, language planning bodies have frequently succeeded in introducing new deliberately coined words into languages (a fair number of Arabs call the telephone <I>hātif</I>, for example), and there is some evidence that similar phenomena can happen at a village level. Thomason has a paper on this: http://cgi.server.uni-frankfurt.de/fb09/ifas/JLCCMS/issues/THEMA_1/JLC_THEMA_1_2007_02Thomason.pdfLameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-50796084515022047082009-04-14T00:08:00.000+02:002009-04-14T00:08:00.000+02:00Friendly Neighborhood Romance scholar here. In ans...Friendly Neighborhood Romance scholar here. In answer to D. Sky Onosson: on the L2 French spoken by older Montagnais speakers and on Metis French, see the chapter (and references therein) by Robert Papen ("Le contact des langues au Canada: le cas du francais et des langues autochtones", pp.111-128) in this book:<BR/><BR/>www.amazon.fr/Canada-bilinguisme-Marta-Dvorak/dp/2868472729 <BR/><BR/>As for young speakers' Betsiamites Montagnais --you know, the variety Glen claims is utterly unlike Mitchif and entirely irrelevant to understanding its genesis ("a silly "apples & oranges" argument between the more-than-obvious historical, social and cultural differences of Mitchif and Montagnais speakers", to quote his own words)-- some data, references and similarities to Mitchif are found in Bakker's book on pages 184-185...yes, the Bakker book, "A language of our own", which Glen gave us a link to. Apparently steering us towards a book on a topic doesn't imply that Glen actually read it. In fairness, considering his repeated inability to understand various postings (not just mine) on this thread, perhaps expecting him to understand a whole book is too much to ask. <BR/><BR/>Indeed, considering his many difficulties with understanding written English I should perhaps end this posting on a positive note and wish him the best of luck in understanding Etruscan (as he reports on his blog): he'll need quite a lot of it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-91381571244000534482009-04-13T23:54:00.000+02:002009-04-13T23:54:00.000+02:00I remember Bakker commenting briefly on Betsiamite...I remember Bakker commenting briefly on Betsiamites Montaignais, but there wasn't enough detail to tell whether it was more like Michif or more a case of intensive borrowing like Ile-de-la-Croix Cree. I too would be interested to see those references you mention.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-28115151945715774902009-04-13T18:18:00.000+02:002009-04-13T18:18:00.000+02:00I overlooked what, now? :)Perhaps I wasn't entire...I overlooked what, now? :)<BR/><BR/>Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear, but the point I should have made is that natural languages, and natural language change, are not the result of deliberate intentional conscious attempts. The word "creation" somewhat implies that, and that's all I was reacting to. Of course, Michif is used by speakers to mark identity - as is every language in the world! But it has no "purpose" and, unlike Esperanto, was not "created".D. Sky Onossonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03878129270916134167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-34155146167297611102009-04-13T17:54:00.000+02:002009-04-13T17:54:00.000+02:00So you have nothing to offer concerning the topic ...<I>So you have nothing to offer concerning the topic at hand (Berber codeswitching) and want to dwell on my irrelevant character? Case in point. You enjoy wasting your time with petty drama.</I><BR/><BR/>The reason I talk about your character at all is that it makes reading this thread more difficult. Once you have established that an opinion is wrong, you waste lots of space (...and time...) with grumbling over how the proponent of that opinion is stupid and evil. That's annoying, it contributes nothing, it's highly unparsimonious = unscientific = indefensible in all of the few cases I've seen, and it wastes not just your time but also that of your readers. This annoyance of mine is what I tried to explain to you.<BR/><BR/><I>I've already cited a quote from Ammon/Ungeheuer/Steger/Wiegand/Burkhardt, Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society 3 (2006), p.1945 which you could read and then, if you're capable and mature enough, speak on it.</I><BR/><BR/>I find nothing to disagree in there. I found the same opinion long ago in the Amazon snippet view of "A Language of Our Own", a book on Mitchif that proposes the hypothesis that Mitchif was consciously created by fully fluent French/Cree bilinguals who were rejected by both cultures and decided to make themselves an identity of their own. I have no problem imagining such a scenario (and am not aware of evidence that contradicts it, whatever that's worth, given that my speciality is very different...); and the most basic premise, that ingroup solidarity and separation from the outgroup is an important reason for why languages change at all, is not in dispute. It is, after all, the reason for most features of every teen speak and the reason for most features of all class differences in language. Like you, I'm surprised that D. Sky Onosson appears to have overlooked that.<BR/><BR/>------------------------<BR/><BR/>To really get off-topic: In <A HREF="http://paleoglot.blogspot.com/2009/03/pie-look-alike-stems-evidence-of.html" REL="nofollow">this post</A>, the second comment says "Just realise <I>sterven</I> in dutch could go back to both *sterban and *sterfan, so in fact there could be Verner at work." I'm not going to get a Google/Blogger account just to make this one comment, so I'll do it here: Does it help that it's <I>sterben</I> in German? And doesn't the AFAIK cognate English <I>starve</I> hint at *b rather than *f as well?David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.com