How long before AE and BrE become seperate languages?

Guest   Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:17 pm GMT
How long do you think the two dialects will diverge enough to be called seperate languages, not necessarily mutually unintelligible though.
Travis   Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:39 pm GMT
I doubt such will happen in a long time, myself, as the two standard varieties spoken in the US and the UK are actually extremely similar, when one takes Anglic dialects as a whole into consideration. General American is essentially the same as Received Pronunciation but is rhotic, has a number of vowel mergers, has different outcomes of the trap-bath and the lot-cloth splits, often loses vestigial phonemic vowel length, and has a number of other minor phonological differences. And as long as the two standard varieties spoken in the US and UK are extremely crossintelligible, I doubt that the English dialects spoken in the two countries will be popularly considered "different languages", even if many individual pairs of dialects lack significant crossintelligibility.
Guest   Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:16 pm GMT
Swiss German vs Hochdeutsch
Brazilian Portuguese vs Continental Portuguese

are more probable to split before English
WRP   Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:54 pm GMT
My understanding is that British and American English are getting closer together vocab wise while splitting further accent wise. But in this age of mass communication where there's a huge incentive for them to remain mutually intelligible and more opportunity than ever for speakers of each to mix, it seems unlikely in the extreme that they'll split.
Skippy   Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:27 pm GMT
I give it 200 years. Even now, it would be difficult for someone from Pittsburgh to understand someone from London and vic versa. Contrary to common opinion, the NAE dialects and the English English dialects are actually growing apart. They're less intelligible now than they were 100 years ago. It's one thing trying to understand people on TV (shows like the Office or Keeping Up Appearances or even the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright movies) try actually speaking to someone from London... The two dialect groups are not as mutually intelligible as people think.
JJ   Thu Sep 25, 2008 5:18 am GMT
It won't happen. If anything they will become more alike.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:31 am GMT
Thats never going to happen.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:24 am GMT
Come back in 1000 years and see.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:39 am GMT
Travis

Why do you always use 'such' the way you do? I have never heard any one use it in the way you do.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:24 pm GMT
Travis knows.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:30 pm GMT
>>Why do you always use 'such' the way you do? I have never heard any one use it in the way you do.

It is part of the Travis language, which Travis writes all his posts in.
Travis   Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:37 pm GMT
>>>>Why do you always use 'such' the way you do? I have never heard any one use it in the way you do.

It is part of the Travis language, which Travis writes all his posts in.<<

LOL. Actually, it is just part of my writing style in English, which, by the way, is completely different from how I natively speak in English... (And in most places where I write "such" I would say "that".)
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:41 pm GMT
Ja it's true

Travis started creating his own language a few years ago, as old antimooners may recall it was basically Low German sprinkled with travisms
Travis   Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:46 pm GMT
LOL again. No, it was more like Low Saxon phonology and basic vocabulary combined with Standard German and Standard Dutch literary vocabulary combined with a highly analyticized and degenderized version of German morphology and syntax. Basically, the aim was to create a continental West Germanic analogue to Interlingua. However, though, I put it on hold as I did not have enough access to resources which would allow me to have a truly realistic phonology (as in one that could be linked back to Proto-Germanic) for such.
Guest   Thu Sep 25, 2008 5:09 pm GMT
How do you expect to solve that problem? Wait until the time machine is invented?

If I was you I would change the thing's name to InterTravis and then would be free to just make it all up at will

(Not to mention InterGermania always sounded to me like some SS division name)

Then it would be Travisms sprinkled with Low German