doug (07/30/82)
Rama's comments remind me of a linguistic theory a Finnish friend of mine reported to me a couple of years ago. He was telling me how certain Finnish communities in the U.S. use idioms and phrases like the Fins at home used to use decades ago, even though modern day Fins don't use them at all anymore. Anyway, the theory was that groups who break away from their homeland tend to remain static in such things as prononciations and spelling, even as the homeland changes its usage. He even claimed that people in the U.S. now talk more like people in Britain did in the 18th Century than do the modern day British. Of course people in the U.S. talk in so many different ways I don't know how one can measure. Besides, we don't know how people talked back then. This submission is no more rambling than most of the items I see posted to net.nlang. Doug Lerner doug@uwisc
rvpalliende (08/02/82)
One easily recognizable fact which tells that North American pronunciation is "older" than the one they use in England now is the pronunciation ov the "r" in final position.