Vitaliy wrote:
>> Perhaps, like German, the Russian language has changed significantly
>> in the last few centuries...
>
> AFAIK that's not true. Orphography has, for sure (a few letters got
> eliminated), but the language itself, not so much. It is amazing to
> me that I can read the Tale of Bygone Years in the original Slavonic
> (12th century proto-Russian), and understand much of it:

I have read some old german texts, and what pops out is not so much that th=
e
language has changed but the way the letters are drawn.  All the old stuff
is pretty much in the old style gothic letters, where "s" and "f" look
almost identical, for example.  Sometimes you see umlauts as a little "e"
over the letter instead of the two dots now widely used.  Even today, it's
acceptable to write a umlaut vowel as the regular vowel with a "e" after it
when you don't have a german keyboard.  That's also how the umlaut letters
are sorted in a dictionary.

In contrast, the letters haven't changed as much from old english, but it
feels like the words and their usage seem to have changed more than german.
This probably has something to do with the englishs' habit of getting
overrun by various invaders.


********************************************************************
Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products
(978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.