Re: THEORY: Vowel shift (was: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation)

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> I hope not! But it will be centuries, if not millenia before the world
> is as interesting linguistically again as it was a century ago.
I don't think the world will *ever* be as interesting, linguistically,
unless civilization collapses.  Unless things change, there'll
eventually be perhaps a dozen languages left, maybe, one day, just one
(English?).  As long as modern civilization exists, with its increasing
interconnectedness, I doubt that new languages will have the chance to
evolve.  But, if civilization is destroyed, who knows?  That's the idea
behind the Earth of my conuniverse.  In the 25th century, shortly after
the Great Economic Collapse, a world war broke out.  During this war,
genetically-engineered viruses were accidentally released.  Virtually
all of humanity died out.  A few Plague-Havens (Ha'ens) had been formed,
self-contained cities, to preserve some remnant of humanity.  In
addition, a very tiny remnant of humanity survived by a chance mutation,
which gave them immunity.  There was only one place, in what is now the
Eastern United States, where enough survivors were gathered to form a
viable population.  Thus, with the exception of the Ha'ens, the last of
which died out in 28976 (one by one, the ha'ens' security was somehow
broken, allowing the virus in), only one tiny group survived.  Outside
of Earth, civilization survived, but the disease remained in various
carrier species, as well as in the survivors, so it was sealed off.=20
Those survivors increased in numbers, and eventually would colonize the
world, creating a new language family, based on American English.

--=20
Yaw=EDntasva natab=ED, plan saf=ED nlak=FAsi.
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