3 ms·

We're crossing one century of audio reproduction now, and... it really seems pretty conservative. Play a radio show from 1920's middle America and there are al

by ajross 3y ago

We're crossing one century of audio reproduction now, and... it really seems pretty conservative. Play a radio show from 1920's middle America and there are almost no linguistically significant changes from modern American English. Almost all the change has been superficial stuff like idioms and choice of vocabulary. No vowel shifting, no new grammar (or lost grammar), new added or removed articles or prepositions, no new ways of expressing tense. I'm not a linguist, but over any other four generations you'd surely expect to see a lot of this stuff change.

philwelch 3y ago
A century isn’t that long a period of time, and there are actually tons of small but noticeable changes in dialect between today and those old radio dramas that you probably just aren’t hearing.
- ajross 3y ago
  Any examples? Again historically languages change much faster. Three and a half centuries were enough for a transition from Middle English (not remotely intelligible) through Chaucer (requires translation but you can see why it's the same language) to Shakespeare (we all read it as kids, merely "funny sounding").
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Shakespeare died over 400 years ago and, as you point out, he’s still mostly comprehensible. And Chaucer wrote in Middle English so I don’t know what you mean by that. If you want to focus on spoken language, as per the claims about sound recording, Simon Roper and Dr. Geoff Lindsay both have videos on YouTube about dialectical changes over time. My impression is that the difference between 1924 and 2024 seems about as big as the difference between 1824 and 1924, despite the invention of sound recording. And this is exactly what I would expect. I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen, for instance.
    - ajross 3y ago
      > I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen Conversely, I don't think I know any Americans who haven't seen The Wizard of Oz (1939). And again with the sole exceptions of superficial idiom and vocabulary (and some really minor pronunciation changes that are as much theater affectation as they are language) there's absolutely no change at all from the stuff you hear from a 15 year old member of the High School class of 2027 (I live with one). Again, I really don't think that's normal historically.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        If you're going to dismiss dialectical features of old films as "theater affectation", that's also going to work against your thesis that old films and speech recording in general exerts a conservative influence on dialect change, isn't it? And I mean...actually listen closely to these people's accents. You're really going to claim that there's "absolutely no change at all" between them and your teenager? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c
      - simonh 3y ago
        They may have seen it, but how much does it influence their day to day language? I think there's an argument audio-visual recordings will promote comprehension of older spoken language forms. I'm sure a lot of modern English speakers have a much better ability to comprehend dialogue in English Circa 1700 due to familiarity with Shakespeare than they would otherwise, but influencing modern usage is a very different thing.
    - boxed 3y ago
      Shakespeare is only comprehensible because English spelling has fossilized to not resemble the spoken language. There's a ton of rhymes and puns in Shakespeare's writing that are just not there anymore in modern pronunciation. https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronunciation-Ben-Elizabethan-English-British https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronun... for how it would (probably) actually have sounded like. Pretty hard to understand!
  - infradig 3y ago
    I suppose you meant Old English. As a lay reader I managed to struggle through most of Chaucer's (Middle English) work and enjoyed it.
  - 0xEF 3y ago
    Specific to the early decades of radio in North America, a good example might be the Mid-Atlantic Accent or Canadian Dainty, both falling out of favor around the early 1950's, about the same time the last nail was hammered into the radio drama coffin, by my listening. These are accents though (not dialects) and consciously learned ones at that, but widely used during their short existence, then fizzled out quickly as broadcast media became more widespread.
canjobear 3y ago
There has been tons of sound change over the last 100 years. In old radio broadcasts you hear lots of sounds you don't hear any more, especially in regional dialects that have either changed or been levelled out of existence. Check out this spellbinding speech from Calvin Coolidge in 1924: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 We've got... * Non-rhotic dialect with "earnings" as [əjnɪŋz] * Final /ɪ/ as in British English, not /i/ as in modern American English. "Country" is [k@ntrɪ]. * /p/ is clearly unaspirated * "paid" is [pɛ:d], not [peɪd] as in modern American English * "grant" is [grɑnt] not [grænt] As another example, the Northern Cities vowel shift (for example "Chicago" pronounced [ʃɪkægo]) only really got going in the 1960s.
- ajross 3y ago
  Coolidge was born in 1872, so you're looking at more like 5-6 generations from the most modern forms. And I don't see that picking on accent specifics is all that interesting? It's true this isn't the accent that you hear most commonly on the streets of San Francisco, but it's a real one and it and variants still exist today in New England, where he's from. Again, I'm not saying there is no change at all, I'm saying this change is trivial when compared with language from people born c. 1750's. And that this seems to be reasonably due to the presence of audio recording technology.
- klyrs 3y ago
  The rhythm of his speech is notably foreign to me. His delivery of "industry" sounds like three words to me, "in dust ree."
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
> ...a radio show from 1920's middle America Is today's equivalent of liturgical language. Those exist too, but aren't the primary medium of human communication.
boxed 3y ago
A century is 100 years. Dune is 26000 years away. 260x of those 100 years. Just listening to this recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 it's a bit hard to hear what he's saying through the dialect in my opinion. That shift times 260 would be devastating to understanding.

by ajross 3y ago

philwelch 3y ago

A century isn’t that long a period of time, and there are actually tons of small but noticeable changes in dialect between today and those old radio dramas that you probably just aren’t hearing.

ajross 3y ago
Any examples? Again historically languages change much faster. Three and a half centuries were enough for a transition from Middle English (not remotely intelligible) through Chaucer (requires translation but you can see why it's the same language) to Shakespeare (we all read it as kids, merely "funny sounding").
- philwelch 3y ago
  Shakespeare died over 400 years ago and, as you point out, he’s still mostly comprehensible. And Chaucer wrote in Middle English so I don’t know what you mean by that. If you want to focus on spoken language, as per the claims about sound recording, Simon Roper and Dr. Geoff Lindsay both have videos on YouTube about dialectical changes over time. My impression is that the difference between 1924 and 2024 seems about as big as the difference between 1824 and 1924, despite the invention of sound recording. And this is exactly what I would expect. I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen, for instance.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen Conversely, I don't think I know any Americans who haven't seen The Wizard of Oz (1939). And again with the sole exceptions of superficial idiom and vocabulary (and some really minor pronunciation changes that are as much theater affectation as they are language) there's absolutely no change at all from the stuff you hear from a 15 year old member of the High School class of 2027 (I live with one). Again, I really don't think that's normal historically.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      If you're going to dismiss dialectical features of old films as "theater affectation", that's also going to work against your thesis that old films and speech recording in general exerts a conservative influence on dialect change, isn't it? And I mean...actually listen closely to these people's accents. You're really going to claim that there's "absolutely no change at all" between them and your teenager? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c
    - simonh 3y ago
      They may have seen it, but how much does it influence their day to day language? I think there's an argument audio-visual recordings will promote comprehension of older spoken language forms. I'm sure a lot of modern English speakers have a much better ability to comprehend dialogue in English Circa 1700 due to familiarity with Shakespeare than they would otherwise, but influencing modern usage is a very different thing.
  - boxed 3y ago
    Shakespeare is only comprehensible because English spelling has fossilized to not resemble the spoken language. There's a ton of rhymes and puns in Shakespeare's writing that are just not there anymore in modern pronunciation. https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronunciation-Ben-Elizabethan-English-British https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronun... for how it would (probably) actually have sounded like. Pretty hard to understand!
- infradig 3y ago
  I suppose you meant Old English. As a lay reader I managed to struggle through most of Chaucer's (Middle English) work and enjoyed it.
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Specific to the early decades of radio in North America, a good example might be the Mid-Atlantic Accent or Canadian Dainty, both falling out of favor around the early 1950's, about the same time the last nail was hammered into the radio drama coffin, by my listening. These are accents though (not dialects) and consciously learned ones at that, but widely used during their short existence, then fizzled out quickly as broadcast media became more widespread.

canjobear 3y ago

There has been tons of sound change over the last 100 years. In old radio broadcasts you hear lots of sounds you don't hear any more, especially in regional dialects that have either changed or been levelled out of existence. Check out this spellbinding speech from Calvin Coolidge in 1924: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 We've got... * Non-rhotic dialect with "earnings" as [əjnɪŋz] * Final /ɪ/ as in British English, not /i/ as in modern American English. "Country" is [k@ntrɪ]. * /p/ is clearly unaspirated * "paid" is [pɛ:d], not [peɪd] as in modern American English * "grant" is [grɑnt] not [grænt] As another example, the Northern Cities vowel shift (for example "Chicago" pronounced [ʃɪkægo]) only really got going in the 1960s.

ajross 3y ago
Coolidge was born in 1872, so you're looking at more like 5-6 generations from the most modern forms. And I don't see that picking on accent specifics is all that interesting? It's true this isn't the accent that you hear most commonly on the streets of San Francisco, but it's a real one and it and variants still exist today in New England, where he's from. Again, I'm not saying there is no change at all, I'm saying this change is trivial when compared with language from people born c. 1750's. And that this seems to be reasonably due to the presence of audio recording technology.
klyrs 3y ago
The rhythm of his speech is notably foreign to me. His delivery of "industry" sounds like three words to me, "in dust ree."

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

> ...a radio show from 1920's middle America Is today's equivalent of liturgical language. Those exist too, but aren't the primary medium of human communication.

boxed 3y ago

A century is 100 years. Dune is 26000 years away. 260x of those 100 years. Just listening to this recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 it's a bit hard to hear what he's saying through the dialect in my opinion. That shift times 260 would be devastating to understanding.