Re: Mutant English take two

From:    Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Gary Shannon wrote:
> > English was once a single spoken language of a large
> > group of Earth humans and had, therefore, a single
> > manner of producing verbal sounds to convey the
> > language audibly. But, of course, not all sentient
>
> To the best of my knowledge, that's never happened.
It's actually a disturbingly common phenomenon if you count those
languages which have precisely one speaker left.  Of course, you
are right in that English has never been so cursed.

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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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