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That's an interesting take on it. I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolvi

by ufmace 10y ago

That's an interesting take on it. I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolving separately, either intentionally to demonstrate group membership, or just due to lack of communication between groups, and continuing to differentiate until they're effectively different languages. I only speak English, but I've heard several different accents on it so strong that they're hard to understand. I wonder if the speakers of these accents find it impossible to understand other strong accents.

mablap 10y ago
Well there you have it. The vocabulary teens use varies from city to city. The vocabularies of (France) French and Canadian French are different to an extent, as are those of (England) English and American English. It seems to me completely obvious that "one language to rule them all" is an absurd idea bound to fail. It will morph and splinter by itself.
freyfogle 10y ago
much history? This is exactly the way new languages evolve.
khedoros 10y ago
My mother-in-law is from an island off the coast of Honduras. She's a native English speaker, but has a strong accent, and the dialect of English that they speak has grammatical differences, along with some different vocabulary. I suspect that some comes from Spanish and some from Garifuna. Without modern communications, their dialect of English would've continued diverging, and eventually be considered different enough to be a new language, rather than just a dialect.
jugbandjames 10y ago
> I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolving separately, either intentionally to demonstrate group membership, or just due to lack of communication between groups, and continuing to differentiate until they're effectively different languages. Thats basically what sociolinguists investigate. Here's an example of a study that kind of does that: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233713880_A_Quantitative_Sociolinguistic_Analysis_of_Bahamian_Copula_Absence_Morphosyntactic_Evidence_from_Abaco_Island_the_Bahamas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233713880_A_Quantit...

by ufmace 10y ago

mablap 10y ago

Well there you have it. The vocabulary teens use varies from city to city. The vocabularies of (France) French and Canadian French are different to an extent, as are those of (England) English and American English. It seems to me completely obvious that "one language to rule them all" is an absurd idea bound to fail. It will morph and splinter by itself.

freyfogle 10y ago

much history? This is exactly the way new languages evolve.

khedoros 10y ago

My mother-in-law is from an island off the coast of Honduras. She's a native English speaker, but has a strong accent, and the dialect of English that they speak has grammatical differences, along with some different vocabulary. I suspect that some comes from Spanish and some from Garifuna. Without modern communications, their dialect of English would've continued diverging, and eventually be considered different enough to be a new language, rather than just a dialect.

jugbandjames 10y ago

> I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolving separately, either intentionally to demonstrate group membership, or just due to lack of communication between groups, and continuing to differentiate until they're effectively different languages. Thats basically what sociolinguists investigate. Here's an example of a study that kind of does that: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233713880_A_Quantitative_Sociolinguistic_Analysis_of_Bahamian_Copula_Absence_Morphosyntactic_Evidence_from_Abaco_Island_the_Bahamas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233713880_A_Quantit...