Comments on: Mysterious Proto-Romance

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 16 May 2019 14:28:16 +0000

Maybe it’s a new name for this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca

“Proto-Romance” really introduces a thousand year confusion for me if that’s really the new name for something that existed in the early Renaissance.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Thu, 16 May 2019 14:03:54 +0000

The article is mostly BS. There was no “proto-romance” language. There was Latin, which mixed with various local languages in different areas at different times, and was written in the Latin or Greek scripts. And “proto-romance” certainly wouldn’t apply to the languages spoken in the 15th century, from which we have numerous written records.

The Voynich manuscript was, a couple years ago, found to be written in early Turkish. They have other examples of the script, and the language is recorded in their early government documents and religious texts. It is a book of herbology (thus all the detailed pictures of plants) and magic spells.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 16 May 2019 05:46:01 +0000

‘It demonstrates that the spa lifestyle was highly regarded’-

No. It demonstrates that the writer liked pictures of naked women.

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 16 May 2019 01:13:24 +0000

Also, I had a mysterious proto-romance once. It did not go well.

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 16 May 2019 01:12:54 +0000

That left me a bit confused but I’ll have to put off looking it up as it is after 2100.

Proto-Romance made me think of something interim between say, Vulgar Latin and Old French or early forms of the Iberian language and Italian dialects, among others. All of which already existed in the early to high middle ages, or even later forms, including as literary languages. Even to some extent as legal and administrative ones, for all Latin did retain the major role as indicated.

I must have the terminology wrong in my head.