On Thu, 22 Jul 2004, Robert Sallade wrote: #At 12:26 PM 7/22/04, jeff G. 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. #(Please correct me on the next two points if I'm wrong, Mr. Mandel) # As far as the language goes, drift creates accents first, dialects #second, and new languages third. Eh, that's in lay language. "A language is a dialect with an army." The progression is generally right, -- though there may be some exceptions -- even though you cannot draw any clean boundaries between the "levels". # Even with a common dictionary English #speakers have managed to create three distinct dialectic groups: British, #American, and International. Far, far more. American English is no more unified than American chili, and British English is orders of magnitude more diverse. And "International English" is no more a single dialect than "European" or "Romance" is a single language. It's more of a marketing or catchall term than anything else. Just listen to the English of, let's say, native speakers of Tamil, Singapore Cantonese, Japanese, and Lebanese Arabic, and you will be quickly disabused of any such notion. # None of which has achieved status as a separate language. Have you ever listened to conversational Singapore English? Or, for that matter, Jamaican English. The movie "The Harder They Come" was subtitled for release in the English-speaking world at large. # This has taken about 500 years. This would be equivalent #to about 15000 Dragaeran years. # In Dragaeran, Brust's "translations" provide clues that there are #certainly accents and, in the cases of the separate island nations, #possibly enough linguistic drift to create dialectic changes. Vlad #obviously understands the people in Greenaere. The jokes from Aibynn don't #seem to go over his head, so there is still enough cultural similarity to #keep abstracts consistent. # #Let's look at the general population size. With 200,000 or 400,000 #(depending on who you believe, Verra or Vlad) on Greenaere on an island #roughly 3300 square miles or roughly 90 people per square mile. It is #considered a rural, agrarian nation. # #(Now we hit the generalities. The numbers that follow are a bit arbitrary #and probably fall quite short of the actual numbers.) # Think about the size of the armies Morrolan and Fornia raise. Not #all of the Dragons will be in on that fight because of familial #obligations that preclude siding with either of the leaders, so possibly #one quarter of the House was involved. Each army was numbered in the tens #of thousands so let's call it 50,000 each. That's 400,000 in the House. #Times 17 Houses (yeah the Phoenix have a grand population of One, but it #should average out) makes 6.8 million. And that's the extremely #conservative estimate. This would indicate the Empire is the dominant #culture, at least in the immediate vicinity of that continent. Someplace or other Vlad says that the Teckla constitute 90% of the population. # Documentation is the one good way to preserve language. Written language, yes. The stabilizing effect of a writing system on spoken language is much, much weaker; and remember that many Dragaerans are illiterate. #[...] Now who controls the documentary evidence in the #Empire? the Lyorns. Kragar gets almost all of his information from the #records that they store. I'm sure that there must be some sort of research #facility like a library, but I'm also sure that there must be a great deal #that is meant to be disseminated only to members of the House the records #pertain to (hence the buttering-up and bribery). So I think it would be #that House that keeps the drift to a minimum. Vide supra. :-) -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel