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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Languages naturally diverge over time.

And this is generally bad, as it makes communication more difficult.

I don't trust any group to police language in a way that doesn't betray their own parochial biases.

Indeed. And some of those groups (like the woke, and AAVE speakers demanding other blacks not "talk white") are going to try. So the other groups better try too, or they're just going to get wiped off the language map.

I think we've arrived at the reason why so many hegemonic empires choose a prestige dialect with few or no native speakers- Latin, Mandarin, Koine, etc.

So the other groups better try too, or they're just going to get wiped off the language map.

Your claim is that SAE is in danger of being wiped off the language map?

Your claim is that SAE is in danger of being wiped off the language map?

Not "Standard American English", the living dialect. But the version spoken today, yes.

Yeah, I guarantee that all dialects spoken today will be unrecognizable in a few hundred years except for those fortunate languages who are already dead, that being the only real way for a language to endure unchanged.

Shakespearean English is recognizable today. And I'm talking about dialect, not accent. And I'm not talking about a few hundred years, but a few decades. Your post is just a smokescreen.

Nuh uh, your post is just a smokescreen!

Shakespearean English is recognizably and intelligibly English but the meaning of many words have shifted and many words have fallen out of favor. This process will continue over the next decades and the next centuries if English is fortunate enough to endure.

I realize that changes to the English language until you were born are based and trad and everything after is soy and degenerate, but there is literally (I am using the original form) no escaping this process for any living language.

It makes communication between groups more difficult. But it makes communication inside the group and communication of who is in the group easier. Which of those is more useful or valuable is largely dependent on what you're valuing and circumstances.

If everyone in the world spoke perfect English only then communication would be easier. But we would certainly have lost something of value I think.

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