Re: [T] -> [f] (was: Chinese Dialect Question)

On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 06:31:47AM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> That's why I said "How so?" It was meant as a genuine question (no sarcasm,
>  irony or whatever).
Yeah, I didn't think you were being sarcastic.  Anyway, I didn't mean that
historical change was literally different from current change; just that
they feel like different phenomena to me, subjectively.

> Linguistic evolution happens a lot quicker than biological evolution.
Sure - generations instead of millions of years.  But from the point of
view of a single person's lifetime, both time periods are similarly
large.  1, 2, many. :)

> The 'great vowel shift' of English seems to have occurred within
> a couple generations in the south of England during Tudor times -
> and that was a greater change than [T] --> [f].
True enough.  Drastic as all get-out.   If only it had happened *before*
the spelling was standardized. :)

> As for [T] --> [f], it appears to have already been underway in the 19th
> century and now in the 21st cent. it's still, apparently, only a regional
> phenomenon. I suspect established spelling, education and the growing use
> of an English Koine as a global auxiliary language will prevent the change
> ever becoming complete.
Yeah, I think at least international standard English will be relatively
frozen henceforth.  But what do you mean by "an English Koine"?  I thought
Koine was Greek.

-Mark

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