Re: A New Accent, Political Boundaries and Accents,

Lars Henrik Mathiesen scripsit:

> Cultural/ethnic/religious barriers can divide standard languages as
> well, sometimes to the point that colloquial languages achieve mutual
> unintelligibility. For instance: Serbian and Croatian, Hindi and Urdu.
Well, I don't think we have mutual unintelligibility here; in fact,
I can't think of any examples of twinned standard languages without
geographical separation that are truly mutually unintelligible.
That would require a degree of social apartheid that makes the
caste system look like nothing.

Unless you mean m.u. of the *written* forms, in which case it is
mostly a matter of script, and easy to interconvert.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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