Re: OT: Isolation of English Dialects (was Re: THEORY: Anglic languages)

Gary,

There are all kinds of scenarios one can come up with to explain isolation
and splitting of English into various new "Anglic" languages, such as
effects of global warming, wars, nuclear fall-outs, pandemic, money crash,
all these or some combined can lead to the end of "western" civilisation as
we know it today. A situation could arise where there are no rich countries
and small surviving groups start moving around across the globe or living in
isolation. These groups will all remember a time when English was used as a
WWLingua Franca. Members of these new "tribes" will by no means all be
native English speakers, so there'll be plenty of room for substrate
interference, vocabulary exchange etc.

Dan


From: Gary Shannon
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:59 PM
"There are a number of converging trends which point to scenarios for
isolating various dialects of English that are not only plausible, but
probable.



The economic dominance of the United States is rapidly waning. China and
India are emerging as the economic powerhouse nations of the next few
generations. As a debtor nation which continues to go deeper and deeper into
debt, the US economy is likely to collapse in the not too distant future.



There are good reasons (see the cost of travel and the difficulty of
communication below) to believe that the Balkanization of North America
could occur within the next few generations. Instead of a single monolithic
"USA" and a single monolithic "Canada" there will be a few dozen independent
countries, including the Spanish-speaking nation of Aztlan that used to be
Southern California and the desert southwest.



In May of 2005 the amount of crude oil pumped out of the ground per day,
world wide, hit a peak which has never been matched, before or since. After
2006 world oil exports went into net decline of around 3.3% per year. The UK
North Sea and Mexico's Cantarell giant oil fields are collapsing already.
(Pemex claims their super giant Cantarell field has seven years of declining
production left before going dry. That's the end of the third largest
supplier of crude to the USA) Demand continues to rise forcing reserves
lower and lower. Transportation fuels will continue to rise in price until,
by the next generation at the very latest, travel will be an expensive
luxury enjoyed only by very few people.



Already increasing fuel costs are making the supply of electrical power more
unstable in numerous places around the globe. South Africa and adjoining
countries face electric energy shortages and outages regularly. Brownouts
and blackouts will become commonplace in the former USA as aging
infrastructure fails and the economic wherewithal to repair it is nowhere to
be found. What little electricity is available will come from aging
hydroelectric and coal-burning plants. With, perhaps, only a few hours a day
of reliable electricity, the Internet will be a luxury. That assumes that
computers can even be found at any price given that transportation costs are
so high that only locally produced goods are affordable.



In two or three generations people from The Republic of Cascadia
(http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_%28indep
endence_movement%29 ) will have neither the means nor the inclination to
communicate with people from Aztlan, less than a hundred miles to the south
(Goggle MEChA), let alone with the unimaginably distant New Confederation,
or the nation of Vermont. (Goggle Green Mountain Manifesto)



This kind of fracturing of English-speaking groups into dozens, if not
hundreds of local regions with little or no mutual communication will,
within a half-dozen generations, produce as many mutually unintelligible
dialects of what used to be English. This is especially true since as North
America slips into third-world status, or worse, literacy will fall to 50%
or less.



For an entirely plausible look at how this might all unfold read

http://www.amazon.com/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0871139782



And none of this takes into account the vast socio-political upheavals and
mass dislocations caused by global climate change in the next fifty to a
hundred years.



References:



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/18/northernrock.alistairdar
ling

http://dieoff.org/index.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Africa/Africa.html

http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

http://uk.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/31/15295/970

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3623



--gary"