Re: NATLANGS: Difthongization across Europa

Tristan McLeay skrev:
 > On 19/02/08 21:48:23, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
 >> On 18.2.2008 David J. Peterson wrote:
 >>> The former is happening/happens in my English before
 >>> nasals:
 >> It's part of sweeping changes taking place in North
 >> American English. Read the Labov articles I linked and it
 >> will all become clear. I guess the risk that NAmE splits
 >> into mutually incomprehensible languages is a baehd
 >> thing, but the alternative is to kill it!
 >
 > A bad thing? As a conlanger, surely not! It's just the
 > Real World conlanging for a change. Europe and India
 > manage to get by just fine with lots of different
 > languages. Why couldn't North America? The written
 > language needn't break up right away anyway: Much like the
 > status of Latin in the early stages of the Romance
 > family/late stages of Vulgar Latin.
 >

My remark was tungincheek! And as I said the alternative to
letting language change run its course is to kill the
language (cf. my sig!)

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)

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