tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post5658696321044782240..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Paleolithic Continuity TheoryAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-47243486241630039522012-04-08T12:32:11.552-04:002012-04-08T12:32:11.552-04:00"...there is an island off the coast of virgi..."...there is an island off the coast of virginia that still speaks a dialect of elizibithian English,"<br /><br />I studied at William and Mary, and I don't think that's true. It would certainly have come up in linguistics or HOTEL classes. Gullah did, and the Chesapeake dialects. Occasionally the story will circulate that some Appalachian holler or micro-region, still speaks Elizabethan English, but those don't pan out either.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-47013609064278707212012-04-08T03:29:33.304-04:002012-04-08T03:29:33.304-04:00Personally I disagree anonymous, although I find i...Personally I disagree anonymous, although I find it humourous that you find it necessary to validate your position as a linguist, although not unreasonable. To contest with the theory that languages change quite rapidly, there is an island off the coast of virginia that still speaks a dialect of elizibithian English, quite strange considering the significant changes in the English language in the past 400 years. So perhaps, and this is just my opinion, that the rate in which languages change is dependent on thier level of isolation. As the world is constantly changing and more words are necessary to explain new things and ideas. Also just plain interactions with new people with different ideas or just people who simply want to be different and say something new, take the conlanging community for example which even contains a new word in the title. People as they interact and share ideas form different and new dialects at such a fast rate, yet it's unknown to me if it has been this way for thousands of years or it is this way because the growing rate of globalization? The world making new connections that we never had before. Like we see at the end of Japanese isolation, they were quick to try to catch up with western advancements! So perhaps at the early stages of linguistic development there had to be a certain level of isolation so that these languages could have time to slowly develop. I recently read a theory on how war developed and what fascinated me, with as social creatures we are, we would quickly eradicate any stranger because we saw them as a threat to our way of life and labeled them as a demon, perhaps because they spoke a different language, taking special note to avoid them, or more warlike people would go to destroy them. So that theory satisfies the idea that history is "written by the victor" but also that languages were isolated therefore the thousands of years that linguists wouldn't normally allow are now easily possible, because of the isolation level at the time. Personally I don't think this entirely true, it's just a random idea. I looked into it a little, but I'll let the professionals do all the pointing fingers and what not. You say what you "know" I'll tell you what I see.thisguyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16531222615859501913noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-72878879075275741002008-11-20T17:40:00.000-05:002008-11-20T17:40:00.000-05:00Seeing if my sons take the bait on that...Seeing if my sons take the bait on that...Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-19063599641518430512008-11-20T02:19:00.000-05:002008-11-20T02:19:00.000-05:00Speaking as an actual historical linguist (albeit ...Speaking as an actual historical linguist (albeit one whose speciality is not Indo-European), I can say that language can change surprisingly quickly. We know when English came to America; it's a matter of historical record. In the 400 (or so) years that it's been here, it has both retained features of English of that time (e.g., R at the ends of syllables, unlike British English) and undergone innovations (mainly along the Eastern Seaboard, which has been settled the longest and therefore has had the most time to change, but was also influenced by post-1600 changes in British English).<BR/><BR/>Going back a little further, English spelling, which was more or less standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, does not reflect the large-scale changes collectively known as the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_vowel_shift" REL="nofollow">Great Vowel Shift</A> (and other changes, like the loss of [x], orthographic <I>gh</I> in words like <I>night</I> and <I>laugh</I>), which really took off right after that standardization, hence the horrible correlation between sound and symbol in English spelling. As someone once put it, the chance that we could understand Shakespeare as it was pronounced when he wrote it is increasingly remote.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, Icelandic has changed so little that the Sagas, written down in the 13th century, can still be read by Icelandic schoolchildren (though their pronunciation probably has changed considerably from that of the original).<BR/><BR/>My study of Classical Chinese and Classical Japanese have shown me that enormous changes are possible over a millennium or two.<BR/><BR/>As for language replacement, it's clear that the Ethiopians are not of the same genetic stock as Arabs and Hebrews, even though all speak Semitic languages. Similarly, the Pygmys have abandoned their languages in favor of the Bantu languages of their neighbors. I don't know the histories of those areas well enough to say anything about why those peoples may have decided to switch languages; I simply note that it happens.<BR/><BR/>So where am I going with all this? Well, all historical sciences must deal with inadequate data, and Indo-European questions remain fascinatingly unresolved. Thanks for the great post!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com