"R. A. Hettinga" wrote: > > At 4:25 PM -0500 on 1/9/03, Trei, Peter wrote: > > > Basque is unique, as you say > > I remember someone saying somewhere, probably on PBS, that Basque is *very* > old, paleolithic, and lots of popular mythology has cropped up that it's > the closest living relative to some other ur-language, which even > Indo-European is derived from.
<pedant mode ON> All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are the same age. Of course some might change more slowly than others (Greek seems to have a;ltered less than Latin in 2500 years), or might remain in one place longer than others (it is silly to say that Welsh is an older language than English, but it is older in Britain) I don't know. The youth of today. They should make them all do cladistcs. <pedant>
