Mark A Mandel <mam at theworld.com> writes: > On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Steve Simmons wrote: > > #ask a related question of the language pros. > # > #In Dragaera, we have people who live for 3,000 years. It's not clear at > #what age a typical Dragaeran has children, but it looks like a number > #of them get married by 500 or so. That means a 3,000-year-old is going > #to be alive and speaking the language across five or six generations of > #descendants. > # > #With that kind of life span, what would it do towards keeping the language > #stable? This laymans guess is that the Dragaeran language would change > #very slowly, if at all. Slowly enough that 200,000-year-old texts might > #be readable with no more difficulty than you or I have with Shakespeare. > > My first reaction was, "Do the math. The lifespans differ by a factor of > 50. 200,000 / 50 = 4000. Four thousand years changes human languages > beyond all recognition and comprehensibility, although not beyond > analysis." > > But then I thought about the great-great-grandparent effect (so to > speak). That could make a difference. Possibly, just barely enough of a > difference, even if gg-grandma normally raises baby, which seems very > unlikely!: Another point, perhaps very relevant, is that the "grandparent" and "great-grandparent" generations *aren't that old*. In our culture, grandparents tend to be retired, and often somewhat frail and limited in what they can do. And great-grandparents nearly *always* are. That means they mix less in society. On Dragera, for contrast, many grandparents might still be an active soldier. That probably means there's a wider range of ages mixing in lots of social and professional situations. That means that any hypothetical resistance to linguistic change provided by the older people might have more effect there than here. Hmmm; reading back I see a risk of people thinking I don't know that some parents on earth are pretty young. No, I do, I'm just pointing out that in terms of percentage of lifespan a Dragaeran parent is earlier in life than a human parent. Is this crazy? I'm dabbling in your professional field, so I'm a bit nervous. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / New TMDA anti-spam in test John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/ New Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info