User talk:Christopher Lord

Slovenian language
Hello Christopher,

I am writing to you about your edits to the Slovenian language, in which you have presented a view that Slovenian is not a South Slavic language but rather a West Slavic one. I will try and explain to you why your edit has been reverted.

The classification of Slovenian language within the South Slavic group is undisputed and agreed upon by the linguistic science. While it is true that Slovenian displays certain characteristics in common with the West Slavic languages (most notably, the retention of the -tl- and -dl- consonantal clusters), other sound developments (the development of Proto-Slavic *t’, *d’; development of liquid groups orT, olT; developments in pitch accent) show it is clearly a South Slavic language. Features such as dialectal diversity are not decisive of the classification of a particular language.

On the talk page, you also mentioned the so-called Venetic theory. This theory is popular in Slovenian lay public. I would like to remind you, though, that it is rejected by Slovenian academic circles as pure myth.

In this link, you can read a short summary of an English-language article on this theory for more information on its background (the title is The emotional historiography of Venetologists. Slovene diaspora, memory, and nationalism by Zlatko Skrbiš, page 2 of 4).

Regards, --Jalen 20:10, 9 August 2006 (UTC)