English will fragment into 'global dialects'

>>I think the professor is a romantic who needs a better crystal ball. It couldn't matter less how English is mangled on a Singapore street. The binding cement is the internet, and "Singlish" will never be understood globally. I'd postulate the opposite of his hypothesis. The internet will have a compressing and standardizing influence on English, the better that a TS guy in India and a customer in Indiana can understand each other. As far as people in Singapore developing a pidgin, that's been done before, literally centuries before. It may help locally with populations who have mutually unintelligible dialects, but it's not going to affect the big picture at all. Anyway, cheers to the good professor. In my best crystal...<<

The thing, though, is that writing significantly hides dialect differences while actually having practically no influence on how people actually speak. For instance how I write is basically Standard English with some minor dialect influence which sometimes leaks through. At the same time, my everyday speech is apparently not entirely intelligible to English-speakers who are not already somewhat familiar with more progressive Upper Midwestern English dialects, and often barely unstandable by non-native English-speakers who have not lived a good amount of time in the northern US. And yet, I do not speak anything like Singlish or even many of the English varieties further from Standard English such as a northern English English dialect or Newfoundland English. Consequently, at least from my point of view, you really cannot dismiss English dialect divergence by relegating discussion of it to more marginal forms like Singlish...

... or saying that the media and Internet will cause people's speech to converge over time (which is patently untrue, as influence between language varieties actually requires everyday contact between them and is not normally due to mere passive exposure).

I think if it were to fragment, it would have already. English has been spread around the world since the 17th century and it has held together pretty well. And with the new age of communication and travel, I believe such changes in all large languages will slow in comparison to the past when people were more isolated from each other. That just makes sense to me.

<Nope, sounds like perfectly grammatical English to me. >

Perfectly.

<<... or saying that the media and Internet will cause people's speech to converge over time (which is patently untrue, as influence between language varieties actually requires everyday contact between them and is not normally due to mere passive exposure). >>

What's passive about Internet communication?

<I think if it were to fragment, it would have already.>

I agree.

>>What's passive about Internet communication?<<

It is passive in that the vast majority of actual voice communications over the Internet is not actual close two-way interaction, with the vast majority of realtime two-way communications being text rather than voice-oriented.

>>I think if it were to fragment, it would have already.<<

Actually, English has *already* fragmented significantly, and that is even when one completely discounts any forms involving any sort of creolization. English is not the sole language descended from Old English, as Scots is also descended from Old English and is sufficiently distinct from English to be hard to call a dialect of New English. There also was an Anglic language spoken in Ireland called Yola which also split from English during the Middle English period but which is now extinct. Also, if one ignores mere tradition, the Anglic dialects native to northern England, particularly Northumbrian dialects, could be called a distinct language from that normally known as English without too much difficulty.

>>English has been spread around the world since the 17th century and it has held together pretty well.<<

Mind you that that is still a relatively short period of time compared to, say, the period from the initial spread of Old English to Great Britain to the present which is reflected in the distance between traditional Anglic dialects there today. Also, why then have we seen divergence with respect to phonology in North American English dialects in even the last 50 years? (Do not forget things like the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the California Vowel Shift, the Southern Shift, and the Canadian Vowel Shift...)

>>And with the new age of communication and travel, I believe such changes in all large languages will slow in comparison to the past when people were more isolated from each other. That just makes sense to me.<<

The matter is that any slowing of English dialect divergence has clearly been due to advances in transportation resulting in overall dialect groups becoming larger as people become mobile. However, English is now spread over such a wide area that even that cannot really stop dialect divergence. Yes, most people may not live in the same village or valley their whole lives anymore, but even still, over the size of English-speaking North America there is not enough movement to allow sufficient direct contact between dialects for any sort of real convergence to take place on a generalized level.

[quote]I think if it were to fragment, it would have already./quote]

Precisely. It's not near ready yet. I think we're at the point at which the Romans were gossiping about the shameful use of Latin in the Spanish provinces. When our constitutional barrier is removed and we have our first Trajan, but of Indian origin, then I'll worry. If I'm alive... :)

"English has been spread around the world since the 17th century and it has held together pretty well. And with the new age of communication and travel, I believe such changes in all large languages will slow in comparison to the past when people were more isolated from each other."

I think whats holding language in place now, is education that enforces a standard, and not necessarily communication/travel. The world is much more developed now than it was in the past, with most people having access to basic education, which is why regional differences in english are only cosmetic.

The reason Latin quickly ran wild transforming into mutually unintelligable dialects was because few people were educated. Romance languages are the simplified spoken languages developed by the illiterate masses in the various parts of the Roman empire. I doubt changes that drastic could happen in the modern world.

There are no native English speakers in India who are ethnically Indian. The same can be said about China.