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If it's in modern society, I doubt about it, because social media (tv, internet etc.) would retain it.
How do you explain Ebonics and the Urban Dictionary? If a group of people has a strong incentive to disassociate from the tongue of the masses, they will do so. I don't see any trends in "modern society" to make the centralized global oligarchy look attractive enough to become unanimously embraced without any pockets of resistance, Orwell notwithstanding.
In fact, a blend of Latin and Greek is the unifying world language, and is actually becoming more prevalent and solidified as we speak. The English language is full of expressions from the International Scientific Vocabulary, each of which was back-formed from Latin/Greek. Kilogram, television, subscribe, communism, psychopath,abortion, juvenile delinquent, universoity, graduation, justice, modem, control-alt-delete, all words that trace back to Latin/Greek, and simply adapted into English and all other languages simultaneously. They just get pugged into sentence blocks according to different grammatical rules in each language.
Language is a very, very powerful and irresistible human dynamic. It is very misleading to look at it through the parochial eyes of your own language, your own culture, your own era, which are mere trees that block your view of the whole forest.
It'd be terrible, there would be too much cultural sameness, language is often the only barrier which prevents complete globalization, ideally the best solution would be bilingualism, everyone should speak both a lingua franca and its national language.
Gosh. Why did Jamacia and Nigeria not lose their culture?
Gosh, why do Nigerians speak a multitude of local languages and use English as a second language? (plus, Nigeria itself is a British invention).
Jamaicans speaks a local patois I really doubt you could understand.
But, hey, why don't you ask how beautiful it was to absorbed to Aborigines and Native Americans?
On the other hand, why don't you look at how all immigrant groups in the US have lost their culture and they are now American?
Gosh, why do Nigerians speak a multitude of local languages and use English as a second language?
Serious answer. English is spoken in Nigeria only by those who have had at least a few years of education. That is still a minority in the counrry. Outside the modern urban areas, most people cannot speak enough English to use it as a common language (although they probbly know a little basic English), so they speak the traditional tribal language -- the only one their parents know..
To this day, millions of Nigerian children do not go to school at all, because schools there are not free, and few families can afford the fees. Often, villages are many miles from the nearest school. The only language they have is the one spoken for generations by their families. Simply put, there is no way for half the Nigeria population to learn English.
No way! I love linguistic diversity! In fact, I really hope they can resurrect all the dying and extinct languages like native American and aboriginal Australian languages for every day use among their respective populations
In my lifetime, a whole new language has split off from English and begun its own separate evolution, called Ebonics.
Nonesense. Ebonics is a made up term by some people in Oakland, California in the mid 90's. Ebonics is little more than Southern American English with Black American idiosyncrasies.
If it's in modern society, I doubt about it, because social media (tv, internet etc.) would retain it.
This isn't always true. The Northern Cities Vowel Shift is actively diverging in this very day. Now because that area is still within the same English Speaking country it was born in, it won't go much further. However, if this region were to become it's own nation, they would then standardize their version which would include spelling words the way they say them and introduce grammar that suits the speech pattern better. Over time, this linguistic drift would no longer be mutually intelligible with other dialects, language is born.
Now, to answer the original question, no, I don't think and would hate if the world actually did speak the same language.
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
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Quote:
Originally Posted by deneb78
No way! I love linguistic diversity! In fact, I really hope they can resurrect all the dying and extinct languages like native American and aboriginal Australian languages for every day use among their respective populations
Well I really hate it. Its such a pain in the arse when you goto other countries and your just standing there thinking "what the hell".
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
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I do. I stick to English speaking areas and I like it, theres nothing wrong with that.
Last edited by Sickandtiredofthis; 05-03-2015 at 09:06 PM..
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