XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-09-04, Sergio Gatti    
   wrote:   
      
   >> > Deletion of final consonants and vowels in a High German dialect   
   >>   
   >> Standard German is notably conservative.   
   >   
   > As a native Italian, I have to point out that this statement is utterly   
   > ridiculous.   
      
   You ripped that out of its context, which I restored above.  So:   
   ... compared to German dialects.   
      
   > Italians attending grammar schools read Dante in the last three years   
   > before university (he died 1321, so he must have written the Divine   
   > Comedy before that) and could understand most of it.   
      
   Excellent.  With so much widespread exposure to early 14th century   
   Italian, maybe somebody can tell me which of these conspicuous   
   features of the Italian verbal system--not inherited from Latin and   
   notably absent from Spanish--were already in Dante's language and   
   which are subsequent innovations:   
      
   * replacement of the 1PL present indicative by the subjunctive form   
   * leveling of the same 1PL (-iamo) and 2PL (-iate) present subjunctive   
     endings across all three conjugations   
   * leveling of one ending across all persons in the singular of the   
     present subjunctive   
   * replacement of 1SG imperfect -ava/-eva/-iva by -avo/-evo/-ivo   
     (Wait, I think I read that this one happened only in the last 200   
     years.)   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)