allen@osu-eddie.UUCP (John Allen) (01/26/85)
One of the most common complaints about my last post on Esperanto was
my assertion that Esperanto would dialectize. Esperanto is already changing;
witness the fact that "The letter _^h_ is used infrequently... it is
generally being replaced by the symbol and sound of _k_." [_Esperanto_ by G.
A. Connor et al.] There is also the fact that anyone picking up Esperanto
will speak it with the accent of their native language. Children learning
it will learn it with the accent, and since there is no large native
population, there is nobody to compare usage and pronounciation with and
these dialects will continue to diverge. One of the reasons that Esperanto
has not changed very much is that language change takes time. Languages
change when the children interpret various aspects of the language
differently from their parents. This process necessarily takes several
generations to be noticed. Another reason that Esperanto is not changing
much is that it still has a relatively small population. The larger a
speech community is the easier it is to form subgroups that don't maintain
as much contact with other subgroups or even the group as a whole. These
subgroups can then diverge from the main group. Jim Gillogly mentions the
stabilizing influence of television on language. While it is true that TV
will slow down the rate of language change and hinder regional variation, it
will not totally eliminate language change.
-John Allen