Re: terminal dialect?
From: | FFlores <fflores@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, March 31, 1999, 14:30 |
Gary Shannon <reboot@...> wrote:
> > we know that nearly every language in existence tends to
> >undergo successive phonetic changes which over the course of just a few
> hundred
> >years can transform the language into something remarkably different.
>
> However, this linguistic law is based on past observations. But there is
> something radically different about the world today that will probably cause
> this law to be repealed, or at least beome far less apparent. That
> something is the ability ot record sound and pictures. At no previous time
> in the entire history of language has it been possible for a people to watch
> or listen to historical events from 100 years before, or to watch reruns of
> I Love Lucy 50 years after the fact.
>
> (My two cents worth, anyway. Historians always underestimate the impact of
> technology. I suspect linguistic historians will probably do the same until
> that impact becomes more evident.)
>
This covers English in the USA and the UK, but English is also spoken
in many other places with a lower access to that technology for most
people. Remember that our "technological civilization" includes several
billions of people who've never used any communication device more
complicated than a staticky radio. In general, the influence of technology
in languages worldwide is still small.
--Pablo Flores
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The trouble with the rat race is that even
if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin