From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 4553
Date: 2000-11-01
>Obviously trade is a flow from the centre to the periphery and backYes, thanks. Mon & Thai are not mutually understandable, are they?
>again. However, its societal impact is highest, I suspect, in centres
>of high population rather than in the rural back-blocks where trade
>may be limited to an occasional itinerant tinker.
>Language can be put to different social purposes and this determines a
>number of factors about the way in which a language subsequently
>evolves. Along the Phrao and Menam Rivers in Thailand, for instance
>it is considered that these areas are almost exclusively Thai
>speaking. This is certainly true in the market-place, in government,
>in schooling and in almost all public fora. Yet amongst close
>aquaintances, at home, in intimate circumstances, in a certain % of
>the population, one finds Mon is the current language, and has been
>for thousands of years.
>Thus Thai is the language which has undergone a degree of
>simplification (although still very hard for non Daic speakers),
>whereas Mon has managed to maintain a degree of original complexity.
>Hope this helps John