Re: terminal dialect?

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 this law to be repealed, or at least beome far less apparent.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