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I think that may be verifiably false. If I speak French with a heavy English accent (as in pronounce the words as I would in English, not with what is commonly

by pharke 6y ago

I think that may be verifiably false. If I speak French with a heavy English accent (as in pronounce the words as I would in English, not with what is commonly thought of as an "accent from England") any native French speaker will have a hard time understanding me and likewise non-native French speakers who have learned to understand words as they are pronounced in French. What you are proposing would amount to the creation of a new creole but that in itself is a systematized blending of more than one language by a large group of people. You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. So much depends on the ability to reliably reproduce sounds that can be easily interpreted by others to mean the same things that you intended when speaking.

leto_ii 6y ago
> You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. I disagree, at least in principle. It's important to separate the natural phenomenon of language, which has been going on for perhaps 100000 years or so, from the general understanding of the term. In the general sense language indeed has to be standardized, because that's what is needed to have a functional nation-state that has (ideally) high internal homogeneity. Nation states are however a modern and artificial construct. If you go back a few thousand years (or even a few hundred in some places) you will see much more of a continuous distribution of languages [1]. Even today you can see traces of this in, for example, the Western Romance languages [2]. Again, in the natural sense of the word, there isn't even a clear separation between languages. It's all a continuum of different ways of speaking that flow into each-other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...
- pharke 6y ago
  If you read the first link you gave you'll find several instances explaining that while dialects from nearby locales are understandable, ones from further away eventually become unintelligible. Nation states emerged after the improvement of transport first with rebuilding of road systems and then with further developments in technology that made it possible for more people to travel further. The development of so many dialects was a direct result of people not travelling anymore causing those populations to become isolated and diverge linguistically. The re-emergency of reliable travel necessitates standardization of language since you can't be expected to learn every dialect within an area governed by a single body. Using Romance languages goes completely against your point since they are all offshoots of the OG standardized language.

by pharke 6y ago

leto_ii 6y ago

> You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. I disagree, at least in principle. It's important to separate the natural phenomenon of language, which has been going on for perhaps 100000 years or so, from the general understanding of the term. In the general sense language indeed has to be standardized, because that's what is needed to have a functional nation-state that has (ideally) high internal homogeneity. Nation states are however a modern and artificial construct. If you go back a few thousand years (or even a few hundred in some places) you will see much more of a continuous distribution of languages [1]. Even today you can see traces of this in, for example, the Western Romance languages [2]. Again, in the natural sense of the word, there isn't even a clear separation between languages. It's all a continuum of different ways of speaking that flow into each-other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...

pharke 6y ago
If you read the first link you gave you'll find several instances explaining that while dialects from nearby locales are understandable, ones from further away eventually become unintelligible. Nation states emerged after the improvement of transport first with rebuilding of road systems and then with further developments in technology that made it possible for more people to travel further. The development of so many dialects was a direct result of people not travelling anymore causing those populations to become isolated and diverge linguistically. The re-emergency of reliable travel necessitates standardization of language since you can't be expected to learn every dialect within an area governed by a single body. Using Romance languages goes completely against your point since they are all offshoots of the OG standardized language.