Lianne wrote:Thanks for laying out what was/is making this discussion so frustrating. I've been using your definition (1), because regardless of whether that's what linguists use, that is what the average person means when they say "old". Latin is older than French because Latin was being spoken long before French existed. It's been frustrating to say things that feel like common sense and then to be talked to like I'm saying something insane. (And then to have people telling me that humans are fish and I'm just supposed to go along with this logic, definitions of words be damned.)
I hope that, conversely, you can see why the claims that you disagree with aren't complete insanity either depending on your perspective. If I were to draw a timeline that shows the transition of Latin into French and labelled it "The History of French" or "The History of Latin in France", both titles would make sense despite French and Latin not being the exact same language. And yet they become more or less interchangeable in this situation. Each label simply shifts the focus. They're two sides of the same coin, so to speak.