Re: The chain-of-dialects

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 695
Date: 1999-12-29

junk Gerry asks: What happened with Estonian?


Standard Estonian and Standard Finnish, both of which are Uralic languages, did not exist until the 19th century. These were just obscure mostly unwritten languages at the periphery of Europe. Anybody with any education spoke a different, more prestigious language. The two were once just two Finnic dialects. Now, they are two separate, mutually unintelligible languages.


I have another question. Universal education and television have weakened this chain-of-dialects. Will the internet manage to "dissolve" it?  And if that is the case, what will replace the chain?


If anything, the internet will strengthen local dialects. It lets kind meet kind in a wonderfully convenient way. In the end, however, I think most non-standard local dialects, world-wide, are going the way of the Dodo. There are a lot of people who are afraid that even the standard languages will be pushed to the fringe by the dominance of English; in Europe, the French and Germans both are up in arms about how English is routinely used by all the other members.

Mark.