1138: Rate of Language-Change Jan 20, 2018

Today will continue the theme of reconstruction of dead languages, and the rate of language-change from yesterday.

First, it is important to note that while dialects are not distinct languages (usually) dialects will eventually become their own languages, and subtle differences increase. After dialects become languages, they then can have their own branches, and eventually become their own language families. Much like biological evolution, which is not noticeable unless looked at over a large period of time, random linguistic variations only develop over time by luck. However, while its true that the exact nature of the variables are random, and only spread—more or less—because of chance, some linguists have claimed that languages change at a standard rate over time. This was said after looking at the change of Latin into the modern Romance Languages among other examples. This was later criticized, however, because while those examples retain 86% of core vocabulary over every thousand years fairly consistently, other examples do not, such as Icelandic which is virtually unchanged over the last thousand or so years, especially compared to related languages like Danish that dropped case and other things. Moreover, in a few decades Traditional Dyirbal became the unintelligible descendant of Young Dyirbal without becoming a creole, or anything else such as that even. Linguists search for patterns, but due to population shifts, politics and other social considerations, languages are sometimes unpredictable. You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.