Re: terminal dialect?

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> At 23:45 30/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
> >Gary Shannon wrote:
> >> This radical change could very well cause the English language, at
> least, to
> >> become much more stable in the centuries to come.  My grandchildren are
> >> watching the same Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV that I watched in the theaters
> >> when I was a child.  So for two generations we have been exposed to the
> same
> >> pronunciation.  And once the reruns of I Love Lucy are no longer being
> >> watched, the reruns of tomorrows sitcoms (featuring pronunciation that
> those
> >> actors learned while watching I Love Lucy reruns) will continue to
> >> perpetuate the "standard" pronunciation.
> >
> >Well, technology is definitely causing greater standardization, but I
> >doubt that reruns will be popular enough to retard language change
> >significantly.  You must also consider that technology is changing
> >society at an unprecedented rate, and rapid social change is always
> >associated with rapid linguistic change.  I mean, I can see your point
> >about technology retarding change, and maybe there's something to it.
> >Who knows which influence will win out?
> >
>
Although I agree with Gary that recording technology will *slow down*
the evolution of pronunciation and grammar (if it has not already),
but our rapid advances in technology, IMO, have greatly increased
the rate at which new words and phrases are added to the lexicon.

I also think that modern technology (esp. the internet) will slow down
the tendency for languages to branch off into mutually unintelligable
tongues.  I think that it won't be until we have isolated colonies in space
that we will have "Anglic" and "Hispanic" languages that are as distinct
and as diverse as the Romance and Germanic languages of today.

Although some theorize that we will one day have very different
American, Australian and British languages, I think that the media
has had the unintentional effect of slowing down this diversification.