Re: Language Change

fortytwo@gdn.net writes:
>The speed of linguistic change is quite variable.  Icelandic, for
>instance, has hardly changed at all in the past thousand years, while
>I've heard of Australian languages which have changed dramatically in
>just 20 or so years, to the point where a man who'd left his tribe for
>20 years had slight difficulty being understood.
I read a web page on Maori, and they said that in some of the north
islands tribes, when a person took a name, that word would no longer be
used by the tribe. It said that the south island Maori had difficulty
understanding the north island Maori. Also, Kristian a long time ago
pointed out to me that in some cultures, when a person dies, whatever the
word for their name was is no longer used.

>
>As a general rule, languages which are isolated from other languages
>tend to change more slowly, since contact with other languages tends to
>cause features and words to be borrowed between them.  Also, there's a
>rough correlation (tho only a very general rule) that social changes
>tend to be accompanied by linguistic changes.
Hmmm, I wonder how the Philippines has so many different languages and
dialects? Often, many tirbes are isolated from one another. So, do
dialects for quicker in isolation (and then these become languages)?

________________________________________________

It's worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance...