M. Warner Losh scripsit:
> 1500 years ago, no one spoke English. Chances are the people that
> deal with this problem in 1000 or 2000 years won't speak any language
> recognizable to anybody alive today.
Well, actually people did speak English in 500, as historical reconstruction
makes clear, though we have no specimens of English that old. Certainly
not 21st-century English, of course.
Still, language drift unlike calendar drift is not inevitable, and nobody
knows what effects, if any, the availability of sound recording will have on
language change.
--
The Imperials are decadent, 300 pound John Cowan <cowan_at_ccil.org>
free-range chickens (except they have http://www.reutershealth.com
teeth, arms instead of wings, and http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
dinosaurlike tails). --Elyse Grasso
Received on Sat Jan 21 2006 - 23:25:49 PST