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