--- Martin Wohlert <martin_wohlert at hotmail.com> wrote: > Well, I know that with radio and TV Swedish has actually become much more > standardized in the last hundred years, and I suspect it's the same with > English. We're moving towards conformity, not away from it. Or maybe both > ways at the same time. ;) Both. Linguists and language lovers have long lamented [I swear, that alliteration was unintentional] the decline of local dialects, but much to our surprise, American dialect divergence is continuing and even perhaps accelerating. (now, was that the Northern Cities Shift I was thinking of, or...?) -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com