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Will English die out?
<<The only British show that I recall ever giving me much trouble is Hamish Macbeth (set in Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands). I can understand nearly all of it, but I definitely have to concentrate on the language.>>
Yeah, I watch Hamish MacBeth as well. I've never had any trouble understanding the actors.
Travis, your suggestion that 'North American' is a more useful term for classifying dialects than 'American' is probably a good one. The main reason I've been hesitant to use it in the past is that I myself don't know much about Canadian dialects.
I used to listen to CBC broadcasts on short-wave radio, and the announcers spoke very much like American announcers on national networks (notable exceptions -- the pronunciation of 'schedule' and 'ou'). Once, though, I talked with a girl who raised sheep in Nova Scotia (or possibly Newfoundland -- some place on the east coast with 'New' in it), and her accent sounded nearly as different as some of the British ones. That made me uncomfortable with generalizing about how Canadians speak. The distinction between British and North American accents may be the more important one, but it's hard for me as an individual to say anything about dialect that I know would include Nova Scotians.
>Yeah, I watch Hamish MacBeth as well. I've never had any trouble understanding the actors. [Lazar]
I've just watched a couple of episodes. Maybe if I watched it more, it would be easier for me. I can understand it, but it takes much more concentration than Fawlty Towers.
>Within the context of the US, I see little reason to have much emotional attachment to English, as at least here [where Travis lives], if things had gone slightly differently historically (say, the US never got involved in WW1), I could have German rather than English as a native language right now.... [Travis]
I'm surprised to hear you say that people in the US have little reason to be attached to English. The Declaration of Independence was written in English, the Constitution was written in English, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered in English. Every major American writer wrote in English. Just to name a few who wrote in English before WWI -- Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, William James, Henry James, Jesse James (just kidding), Edgar Allan Poe, Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain. Speaking for myself as an American, I'm attached to the language of these historic American documents and to the literary works of these writers. I have attachments to writers who wrote in other languages (in other countries), but "in the context of the US" English is the language that carries the cultural associations that I value most.
Well, as a fellow American, I can't say that I get all that excited over it. It's just a language, like any other. I don't associate any cultural values with it.
Gjones2, one note is that I was speaking for myself when I commented about emotional attachment to English or lack thereof, rather than for the US as a whole; remember that the historical linguistic situation in, say, the Upper Midwest differed from much of the rest of the US, due to having different immigration and settlement patterns than, say, the Northeast or the South. That is why I emphasized the specific area in which I live, because what I was saying does *not* apply to the US as a whole.
>>I used to listen to CBC broadcasts on short-wave radio, and the announcers spoke very much like American announcers on national networks (notable exceptions -- the pronunciation of 'schedule' and 'ou'). Once, though, I talked with a girl who raised sheep in Nova Scotia (or possibly Newfoundland -- some place on the east coast with 'New' in it), and her accent sounded nearly as different as some of the British ones. That made me uncomfortable with generalizing about how Canadians speak. The distinction between British and North American accents may be the more important one, but it's hard for me as an individual to say anything about dialect that I know would include Nova Scotians.<<
The main thing is that Atlantic Canadian English dialects differ very significantly from the rest of North American English, whether that in the rest of English-speaking Canada or that in the US, and is largely isolated from the rest of North American English geographically, as it is separated from the rest of English-speaking Canada by French-speaking areas, and the only other English-speaking areas which they are contiguous with are the far northeast US. If anything, one could probably consider them to be a separate major dialect group from the rest of North American English.
>..."in the context of the US" English is the language that carries the cultural associations that I value most. [Gjones2]
>I don't associate any cultural values with it. [Uriel] I just mean that these American associations came to me through the English language (I don't want to imply that they are peculiar to it alone). I recall hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of phrases and ideas from the writers that I mentioned, and they are all (with rare exceptions) in the English language. Of course, emotional attachment is based on a value judgment, and it will vary from person to person. I can't apprecite poetry, though -- or even very good prose -- without forming an emotional attachment to the language in which it is expressed.
Travis, though I myself would have difficulty knowing how the dialect of the Atlantic Canadian provinces differs, I have no problem with your distinction.
"I'm surprised to hear you say that people in the US have little reason to be attached to English. The Declaration of Independence was written in English, the Constitution was written in English, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered in English. Every major American writer wrote in English. Just to name a few who wrote in English before WWI -- Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, William James, Henry James, Jesse James (just kidding), Edgar Allan Poe, Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain. "
And the native language of most Americans is English.
>>Will English die out?
yes it will, but not just yet.<< English will only "die out" when it fragments into a number of daughter languages - which is at least a few centuries away. And even then it will only have "died out" in the way that Latin died out - that is, only lost its unity as a single language rather than having actually gone extinct.
Well Travis, your the optimist I am the pessimist, you speak of latin and anciant greek I speak of saxon and phoenician.
There is only one way to find out, stick around for the next 2000 years, lol. I´ll be seeing you for the next 2000 years ;-). |