In Anderson's Time Patrol series, The Time Patrol collection imparts new information because it includes the never previously published short novel, "Star of the Sea."
I felt that these two collections had something in common. This is it.
Today has been more productive than yesterday despite some computer problems.
Good night. (I would like to say that in Anglic, Planha, Eriau or Temporal but can't.)
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have sometimes tried to imagine what an English morphing into the Anglic of Flandry's time might look like, reading texts in that language. We do see Flandry mentioning in A KNIGHT 0F GHOSTS AND SHADOWS of how he read an Anglic translation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument."
Ad astra! Sean
Note that if English spelling was phonetic -- thot instead of thought -- it would appear radically different in print form. It would also be difficult to understand, because spelling differences between words that are pronounced identically nowadays makes it easier to comprehen.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, but if we assume something like the Technic timeline happens in our real world, then English would still change and morph into something else. IIRC, mention was also made of Anglic absorbing loan words from non-human languages.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: mass literacy, and even more recorded sound, have slowed down linguistic change -- and reduced dialectical variation, too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Not entirely! One shop keeper, in London no less, could tell not only that I am American but came from Massachusetts.
I think dialectical variations will become more important once humans start colonizing elsewhere in the Solar System.
Ad astra! Sean
Possibly; that will slow down communication. OTOH, they'll have plenty of recorded sound, too.
If you listen to -very early- recorded voices, there's more variation and eccentric accents than say, since the 1920's.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Also, a common standardized written language, like English, should minimize difficulties in communication.
Ad astra! Sean
Direct conversation with someone farther away than the moon won't happen, so messages to Mars or Neptune's moons will mostly be the equivalent of emails or text messages. However, there will be lots of audio and audio-visual files sent across interplanetary distances. My understanding is that radio & TV did a lot to create eg: one fairly unified Italian language out of all the dialects spoken between the Po Valley & Sicily. So dialect variations within the solar system will be limited by that factor.
One thing about claimed dialect variations that has puzzled me: USians say that Canadians (including me) pronounce "about" like "a boot". I hear those two phrases when said by Canadians as quite distinct. I suppose Canadian "about" might be *closer* to US "a boot" than US "about" is, but the claim still seems strange to me.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree with your first paragraph. My understanding is that the Tuscan dialect of Italian is the preferred standard for a unified Italian.
Your second paragraph simply supports my belief that some dialectal variations in any language will linger.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah, standard Italian is basically Florentine with a few modifications. It didn't really displace the other dialects until after 1945.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That variation from standard Italian was esp. pronounced in what used to be the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, almost a separate language. With many of the people there long resentful of their forced unification with northern Italy.
Ad astra! Sean
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