Re: Future of the Highlands?

On 2007-11-03, buddenbrooks <buddenbrooks@xxxxx> wrote:

"Jim Webster" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5p2kusFoc55eU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


getting people to all speak English is going to be the real trick ;-)



People through history have spoken a common language with their primary
and secondary groups.
These groups have grown with ease of travel and the number of world
languages actively used keeps dropping.

England had several languages which have collapsed into one with regional
dialects reflecting the old regional language.
Now we have well in excess of 10% of europes population economically active
in areas speaking a seperate language to their birth place we can expect the
evolution of "European" It will not be EC beurocray driven but evolve by the
commen linguistic abilities of this mobile population. Given the mix of
peoples one can guess that it will contain a big chunk of English French
Russian and Spanish.
Listening to R4 yesterday it was interesting to hear that "Polish Radio
London" is servicing 400,000 Poles in the UK and is the most influential
Polish Radio station in the World, causing Polish polititions to come to
London to fight their election campaign.
With this number expect English to start seriously absorbing polish into the
language in the next generation as their children go through the education
system. "Wicked in'it" will probably be replaced by it polish equivalent.
However by then it will be an english expression.

This would be the second Polish invasion, the first being those who
served in WWII and remained on?..

English wont become the worlds language, it will evolve to be the worlds
language because of its freedom to evolve.
In 200 years time it will probably be difficult for a current english
speaker to understand, while french will probably be exactly the same with
L'Académie française maintaining a full grip and demanding European with its
mongral origins be dropped in favour of traditional french.


Agreed. `the common stream' of English is its strenght.


--
greymaus
Just Another Grumpy Old Man
.

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