Re: Recovery, just not the normal sort

On 2007-03-21, The Horny Goat <lcraver@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:00:11 -0500, Kevin <kevin_at@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I also thought that you meant Latin-of-AD-400, when it *was* the common
language all over the fricking place. ie, classical Greek in AD 50 was
roughly similar to Latin in AD 400, position-wise, which is more or less
like English in AD 2000, and (as far as the Western World is considered,
at least) there haven't really been any in between those.

You don't think French qualified as an interim Lingua Franca, for the
Western World, preceding English?

If you were Frederick the Great or Catherine the Great it certainly
did - but for Johann Schmidtz or Igor Ivanov in the same period one
could argue equally well that at least in trade matters it was German.

Majority of Russian population at the time was bonded serfs and
general opinion of them was that they were revolting. I strongly
doubt Igor Ivanov spoke anything other than his native tongue.

OTOH by Catherine's time the new nobility[0] was on its second
generation and they all had to pass Latin (Greek and others depended
on the field of study IIRC)... I doubt Igor used it in trade matters,
though.

[0] Peter disbanded feudal militias and drafted barons' tough guys
into a new Western-style army, of which he was the commander in chief.
The barons didn't like that very much, so he founded a couple of
sniversities and opened them to the public (peons excluded, of course).
Every student received a small title and became a nobleman upon
graduation -- the idea was to give the barons a lot of someone elses
to be pissed off at so they'd leave the Ceasar^WEmperor alone.

Dima

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