On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Philip Hart wrote: #On Thu, 22 Jul 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote: # #> In point of fact, after >200,000 years no name or word or language would #> be recognizable. # #Given the correction factor of perhaps x30, and the continuous control of #territory by one culture, I don't know if I agree. I was thinking of Easterners. # For example, when someone refers to "breaking the stick" from the #6th cycle, is she translating? We don't know. #Could someone important who lived the entire time (and was much at #court) single-handedly stabilize the language? Not in our world. It would require magic or something comparable, constantly affecting the minds of all speakers. Now, *something* has held back technological evolution for both races, so maybe there is something. But it's not in the nature of human language (counting both races as human) to be so stable. #How much has Chinese changed over the last 3k? As much as Latin, I think. The near-complete unity of the writing system across the "dialects" -- languages, by other criteria, such as intercomprehensibility -- tends to mask this. #Do the Dragaerans have dictionaries? I'm trying to remember the #categories of books given in _Athyra_ and whether any would be suitable. Those were categories of literature, iirc. They wouldn't include reference works. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel