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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:22
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quote:
We've had far more years. |
This is irrelevent when it comes to linguistics. North American English isn't a new language that was spawned in the early 17th century, its a direct continuation of early 17th century English from the British Isles. We have just as much variety as you do because... we came from you. This should be no surprise.
Basically, you can narrow down the lingustic influence on the eastern United States (just the east coast mind you) can be broken down into 4 immigration waves from the United kingdom in the early 17th century. East Anglians went to New England, South of England (London and further south) to Virginia, North Midlands to the Delaware region, and the borderlands (Ireland, Scotland, Northern England) to the frontier and Appalachia. All of the linguistic variety from those regions can be reflected in their respective ending locations in North America (though in 16th and 17th century formats), and thats just the eastern United States. Canada, the Western US and the Caribbean are a whole other story.
Again, no on is denying there's alot of variety in the UK, we're just saying there's just as much here and it would be ignorant to deny that.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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stop the crap? no one here has referenced anything scientific... explain to me how it could possibly be that there is more variety in England when England has not undergone the two causes of linguistic variety as much as America has.
is this a case of something just being so, despite scientific theories making it very much clear it shouldn't be so?
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Stop the crap here Speer. Dialects in the New World are notoriously more uniform than in Europe, where there is an history spawning milleniums. Many dialects in Europe can trace back to different languages spoken by small Celtic, Germanic, Caucasian, etc, tribes. |
Not true, do some some research.
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Well come on that AS, reference something scientific, educate us all... |
You're the one making ridiculous, sweeping claims. I'd say the burden of proof is on you my friend.
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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
stop the crap? no one here has referenced anything scientific... explain to me how it could possibly be that there is more variety in England when England has not undergone the two causes of linguistic variety as much as America has.
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I have just given you another cause for linguistic variety, which is history and tribal amalgation. America was populated at a time where communication means were relatively developed, and things only went farther in that direction, all with a strong central government.
For instance did you know that in France, in the 15th century, only 10% of the population spoke French? 300 years later, in 1792, that number had reached 50%.
Now, at the same date, in America, what was the percentage of the population that didn't speak English at all and never was able to do it after a few years because of the absence of contact with the local population and/or education?
quote:
is this a case of something just being so, despite scientific theories making it very much clear it shouldn't be so? |
You've gotta know how to use this 'scientific' stuff properly.
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Oncle Boris
I have just given you another cause for linguistic variety, which is history and tribal amalgation. America was populated at a time where communication means were relatively developed, and things only went farther in that direction, all with a strong central government.
For instance did you know that in France, in the 15th century, only 10% of the population spoke French? 300 years later, in 1792, that number had reached 50%.
Now, at the same date, in America, what was the percentage of the population that didn't speak English at all and never was able to do it after a few years because of the absence of contact with the local population and/or education?
You've gotta know how to use this 'scientific' stuff properly. |
We're not talking about Europe, we're talking about the UK and North America - and specifically English. There may well be a country in Europe that is more lingustically diverse than the UK and North America combined but thats irrelevent to the discussion.
As far as accent mixing is concerned, the UK has, arguably, experienced quite a bit more of homogenization than North America has. North America has never had anything quite so dramatic of an influence as the BBC, which was a great standardizing factor in the UK. Prior to its existence, various countries in England still spoke their indigenous languages, but not anymore. What you UKers here as a "North American" TV accent is our equivalent of BBC English... its a standard, but it certainly isn't a norm.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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quote:
For instance did you know that in France, in the 15th century, only 10% of the population spoke French? 300 years later, in 1792, that number had reached 50% |
thank you for agreeing with me that the linguistic variety in England disappeared with time and contact between peoples a short distance from each other...
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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i'm trying to look up the simple theories about differentiation being the result of population drift and seperation but when i google search terms like "linguistics" "differentiation" "diversity" "barrier" "drift", i keep getting these complicated webpages dealing with matrices, gaussian functions, correlations between genetic and linguistic differentiation, etc.
everything i'm finding is far too scholarly and beyond this level of discussion.
clearly, we're dealing with a 'duh' concept that languages differentiate as the populations speaking those languages physically diverge from each other...
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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in the 16th century, anyone with a horse or donkey could make a few day's journey and be on the other side of the country... what recent movement? you can travel from one end of England to the other in mere days. movement was constant. America is thousands of miles wide...
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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alright fine then... during victorian england, englishmen travelled the mere few miles across the country and had immense contact, shedding their regional differences...
America, however, spans an entire continent and it has only been with the invention of commercial jet airlines and national television that people in NYC have had contact with people in LA.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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and thats not even mentioning, the dozens of languages the immigrants to america spoke and their transmission into regional dialects... england never experienced that.
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mrmitchell
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quote:
For instance did you know that in France, in the 15th century, only 10% of the population spoke French? 300 years later, in 1792, that number had reached 50% |
If less than half of French people spoke it, why was it called "French"?
What the hell did the rest of them do for a language? Grunt their way around? German? Some old, forgotten language?
---
OF COURSE the British isles have as much linguistic differences as us. There's even whole seperate languages. English, Gaelic, Welsh, the Irish one. They've been around since, like, two thousand years more than the Americas were even discovered. Of course they've had more time to develop.
And have you seen those British guys talk on this very forum? They're all like, "oh no I'm moving to the South" or "haha! Northerner." or "Ipswich/Exeter/Yomama/this place here or there is very bad." It gets down to specific neighborhoods! How big is Britain, again? About as big as Oregon maybe, and they differentiate between "North" and "South" and have their own little Detroits and Phillies that everyone can agree are sh*tholes? It's incredible. America only makes up by its size, so I hereby end the contest. Both countries are badass.
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Oncle Boris
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Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
and thats not even mentioning, the dozens of languages the immigrants to america spoke and their transmission into regional dialects... england never experienced that. |
A good example would be that of French Canada. Even though the colony was separated by a few months of boat from mainland France, the fact that it was colonized in the 17th century made a huge difference. The difference between French Canadian and French is smaller than the difference between some German dialects, which is a fact that definitely goes against how your pseudo-theory applies to the New World.
The fact is probably that uniform education has a huge effect on dialects. All immigrants were different, therefore something with strong conventions had to be taught to them. I'd say that immigration probably has a softening effect on dialects, because immigrants typically don't learn and use local slang like locals do. They tend to uniformize the language.
Also, as I said earlier, colonists in North America all had the same basic language - English or French from the 18th century, with their newly formed standardized grammar - to evolve from, while in Europe, larger political instability and historical dialects that had been there for centuries continued to influence the languages of the populations.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:22
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England was more homogenous than France and King James actively attempted to standardize the English language so it is likely that Englishmen were speaking a mutually intelligible form of English as far back as the late 17th century... people from all across England travelled to America, bringing their disparite or similiar languages here. Colonists in Virginia had no contact with colonists in Massachussetts. As a result, within 50 years, Virginian was far different from Massachussettian, and both were far different from England English. The Bostoners learned a few regional Indian words, while the Virginians learned a few regional Indian words, further diverging their languages. Fast-forward to the 19th century and the Bostoners experience immigration from Germany, Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy, etc. and those languages dramatically influence the Boston tongue... Virginian develops with influence from Scotch-Irish and a limited African influence...
and those are two areas only a few hundred miles away from each other. differences become more extreme when dealing with the west coast vs. the east coast.
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03-10-2004 22:08
. Tennessee is just a great state overall.
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