Moreno History (sort of)

[James Sacks]

Dear Michael,

You are certainly right. This just goes to show 
how when you are certain we can still be dead 
wrong. I will try to remember that, the next time 
I'm absolutely sure of anything.

After I read about  your great-grandfather's 
provenance I looked it up Ladin (English for 
Ladinisch)" on Google and found that that story 
of that group is as interesting as that of the 
Ladin speakers. My wife was reared in Graubünden, 
a valley in Switzerland which is mostly Romansch 
speaking but I noticed one sentence on an 
Internet site: "There are cultural ties with the 
Ladins of Graubünden". I asked my wife but she 
never heard of the Ladins although there are 
apparently 30,000 strong even now. Maybe in the 
long period of the Roman Empire as Latin slowly 
broke down into variants and those who spoke a 
variant closer to the original were called Latins 
or Ladins by the others and this might have 
happened in different times and places throughout 
the old Empire so there could then be "Ladins" in 
totally different places. In the US we refer to 
people from the whole Western Hemisphere south of 
us as "Latinos" because they nearly all speak 
Romance languages.

People in the Alps seemed to  have lived in 
relatively isolated valleys for centuries and 
could rarely travel over the mountains - ideal 
conditions for yielding a rich array of languages 
and dialects. This is analogous to Darwin's idea 
that separation into isolated groups fosters 
speciation. A trait which is of survival value in 
one habitat may not be so in another. This is 
something we can be aware of the next time we 
press for the unity of humankind. Unity has no 
space for spontaneity. If we ever settle down to 
one language and one culture it will probably be 
like the mass culture in America;.in other words, 
the homogenization of cultures is finally the 
death of all culture.  From what I read about the 
Ladin language and culture, they are successful 
in saving it. They use the language exclusively 
in the elementary schools, etc. Vive la 
difference!
Jim

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>Dear Adam and Cynthia,
>thank you for sharing about Ladino.
>I went to google scholar and found that 
>"Ladinisch" is a roman idiom in the Alps and 
>seems not the same like Ladino.
>My great-grandfather was Marcelino Dapont, born 
>around 1860 in Colle Santa Lucia, Ampezzo, North 
>Italy. He was a farmer of hemp. After the farm 
>burned down part of the family moved to 
>West-Austria.
>But anyway I would appreciate to have Jewish ancestors.
>Warmly
>Michael
>
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