Replies

Dio’s “linguistics” is really glossolalia — speaking in tongues, incomprehensible “words” that he doesn't define or explain.
Although Croats had no standard (codified) language before they were given the Serbian Shto-dialect by Catholic Archbishop Strossmayer and Vienna, they nevertheless did speak, in Kaj-dialect and in Cha-dialect. They wrote using the Glagolitic script, which was based on the Byzantine diplomatic code. In Bosnia Croats wrote in “Bosancica”— Bosnian Cyrillic, based on 9th century Byzantine Greek. Cyrillic continued in use up to our own time for diplomas. Without a codified standard, there was still a rich literature among Croats and Serbs in the Middle Ages: GOOGLE: Thomas Butler: Monumenta Serbo-Croatica...

My M.A. specialization is in Mediaeval Latin: there was no no single (codified) standard, but plenty of literature and many regional languages. —This doesn't have to be boring: get a CD of Carl Orff’s CARMINA BURANA (GOOGLE THAT). Fun music. The music is from the 1930s, the song texts (spring time, love making, satire of king and pope, drinking) are in mediaeval Latin and mediaeval German. Germans, too, had no standard (codified) language before Luther's Saxon dialect (Upper Silesian) dialect was adopted by the hundreds of German principalities as a lingua franca. — That was once Frankish, subsequently any international languge. So the plan is like “Vlachs, Valachi”, who were many diverse nationalities that were not German or Hungarian. Today's Franks are the Holland Dutch who kept the old language. In Gallia (called France today, though it isn't Frankish anymore) the Franks dropped Frankish and now use the Francien neo-Latin dialect of the region. Along this track, in Serbia there is Fruska Gora, which originally meant ‘Frankish mountain /woods’. (Which “Franks”?)

When is Dio going to explain “Vlach” to us? I'll keep my calendar open.