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From: jlg@lanl-a.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Linguistic evolution; American/British English
Message-ID: <11557@lanl-a.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-Aug-84 18:10:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl-a.11557
Posted: Sun Aug  5 18:10:05 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 03:50:19 EDT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 47

>After all, American colonists were relatively isolated from other
>cultures (except for the Indians, who communicated with the colonists
>in English more often than the colonists communicated with them in the
>Indian languages) for over a hundred years.  Their linguistic
>evolution must have been extremely slow due to their geographic and
>cultural insularity.  Meanwhile, back in England, extensive contact
>between the European countries must have caused British English to
>continue to evolve, in pronunciation, idiomatic usage, and spelling,
>towards the other European languages.


This is a backward argument.  Biologically, isolation increases evolution
rates.  This is clearly true of linguistic evolution as well.  In the early
American colonies the settlements were not only isolated from Europe, but
from each other as well.  During the time, regional dialects developed
which are still known.  When travel became easier (or war and economics
forced travel) in the 19th century, some cultural dialects formed.  These
were caused by cultural rather than geographical isolation (e.g. blacks
didn't mix with whites, so now we have 'black English' throughout the
country).

If isolation slowed linguistic evolution, the english should now be changing
VERY fast.  We are in contact with the rest of the country (and most of the
world) on a daily basis.  Yet, rather than breed linguistic diversity, this
increased communication is slowly eliminating regional and cultural dialects.

Meanwhile, in England, I suspect that dialects have changed more slowly
(except toward each-other).  There have always been a lot of regional
dialects in England, and there still are.  Which one of these dialects
is the descendant of 'The Kings English' is hard to tell (nobody ever said
which time period or region was the standard).  Association with other
European languages probably had little effect (not since the Normans invaded
anyway).  When I learned German in college, I didn't start speaking more
Germanic English than before, nor did my spelling change any.  An influx
of European immigrants would have had a larger effect on England (guess
which country had THAT: and it led to a lot of cultural dialects in the
cities).

The only real effect was probably the introduction of new word (for which
English had no good equivalent).  This is still going on, 'detente' for
example, is a French word.  Here, American English has probably remained
consistent with the British, we both adopt the same foreign words.

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				J.L. Giles
				...inhp4!cmcl2!lanl-a!jlg