Re: American (was Re: Cants)

From:    Greg <greg.johnstons@...>
> Oh, definitely. This is actually already occurring. Each area of
> the US has its own set of slang (even every group of people does).
> One only uses English for "official" matters (school) or international
> communications.
This is rather missing the point.  Slang is, by definition, a
phenomenon that usually passes away out of fashion in a short
period of time.  (There are exceptions, like Latin _testa_ 'jug'
> Romance 'head'.)  If you're going to point to real instances
of geographic change in the US, the place to look is the vowel-shifts
underway in the Northern and Southern US. Both are chain-shifts,
but are proceeding in the *opposite* direction.  We won't really
know for several centuries whether this actually causes a
geographical divergence in dialects.  Right now, what seems even
more likely is a distinction between the dialects of cities and
rural areas, and this too may change depending on changing
demography (the US population is booming by the rate of 30 million
more every decade, but most of this is going to the cities.)

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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