On Friday 01 September 2006 05:09 pm, Beartooth wrote: > On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:51:40 -0700, jdow wrote: [...] > > > Are you sure? Do remember that there was a pocket of hillbillies > > discovered who were speaking almost pure Elisabethan English. [...] > > Urban legend, unfortunately -- and likely akin to the one about incest, > which is equally false and whose origin is known -- but that's another > story... > > The fact is, Tolkien still has it right : the same tongue, *any* tongue, > in places largely or entirely isolated from one another, *will* change in > both, just because languages, like other living organisms, do change -- > grow or die. All known examples fit. But with nothing to keep them > coordinated, they will diverge gradually into two -- such as Sindarin and > Quenya, or Platt and Swiss German. It's going on now in the Koreas : > > http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/30/news/dialect.php > > And for the matter of that, as those of us who live here know perfectly > well, Appalachian dialect is *not* Shakespearean, contrary to popular > imagination elsewhere. > > But it has developed largely apart (largely, not entirely!) from dialects > in other parts of the country, and many things have changed in different > ways; some have even changed in one stream but not the other. > > The idiolect of one lady I know in East Tennessee (and probably of others > in her generation who're still around) does not contain the form "isn't." > She says "'tis not," always and only. That detail is unchanged from > Elizabethan times, yes; but others are as changed as in Maine, or Texas, > or Scotland, or Queensland -- or South Africa or India -- some of them > even in like ways. > > A guy I went to grad school with, who came from Northern Indiana, was (and > may still be) studying the German dialect of a little town near the > Michigan border. It was known to have been settled by people all from one > little town in Northern Germany. So he could compare the way it is now > with the way people talk in the German town now. He happened, by accident > of birth, to have a head start in a field well known across the continents > and the centuries. > > -- > Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, > historian of literature and of tongues. > Just this once, I happen to be professionally > acquainted with what I am talking about. There used to be a guy on the carnival circuit [about 40 years ago] who could after hearing you speak a few sentences, could tell you where you grew up sometimes right down to the county and sometimes right down to the part of the county [this was in the Southern US]
