DailyDirt: You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jun 26th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Dead languages don't change and evolve. It's the languages that people speak the most that develop new words and new dialects. In the past, it's been difficult to track the evolution of language, but with more and more ~~wiretapped phonecalls~~ digital voice recordings available for analysis, linguists are in a better position to study how languages are changing. Here are just a few interesting links on language dialects.

Joshua Katz used linguistic data from Bert Vaux's dialect survey to generate interactive maps of how people speak across the continental US. What is your generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage? [url]
Phonemica is a project to record the thousands of different Chinese dialects in order to preserve the richness of the language for future generations. It's run by volunteers who want to collect spoken stories, and it was started with an Indiegogo fundraising campaign. [url]
There are several barriers that prevent various English dialects from becoming their own languages. Modern literacy and the increasing global mobility of people make it harder and harder for new languages to split off and develop. [url]

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Filed Under: chinese, dialects, english, language, linguists, literacy, mandarin, phonemica, speaking, voices
Companies: indiegogo

14 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 5:09pm

I disagree modern literacy is creating new dialects, put a physicist and a chemical engineer in the same room and they will not be able to communicate.
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Miff (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 6:46pm

Yeah, but now that we live in the error of grammar nazis calling out every minor "error", English is not going to evolve even in the minor ways it still could.
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Ferel (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 7:40pm

Re: [screaming internally]
but now that we live in the error of grammar nazis...

(must... resist... urge... to correct... with 'era'...)
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 7:55pm

Nice.
On the Katz link in the Dialect Survey Map : 1st question
"How to you say aunt?"

option: "I have the same vowel in "ah", "caught", and "aunt".

The Electric Company - still paying off decades later. Awesome.
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McCrea (profile), 26 Jun 2013 @ 9:13pm

Re:
"Yea" shouldn't have an "h". (etc.)
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Allen (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 5:31am

barriers that prevent various English dialects from becoming their own languages
Is it lack of Geographical Isolation? or is it that teh interwebs (and ok the Plain old Telephone Service before that) have made Geographic Isolation != total isolation?

But he leaves off two other factors:

1) USAian entertainment syndicated at prices below those that local producers can compete with. Whether you call this cultural pollution (bay watch) or cultural enrichment (some example I can't think of right now)you can't deny that US TV and cinema are globally pervasive.

2) The two most globally dominate countries of the last few centuries were Britain and (at least for the time being) the US. Which means that English is The lingua franca.

Who knows? in 100 years the international lingua franca might be Chinese and condescending arseholes will be using English instead of Latin to say things like lingua franca.
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RyanNerd (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 5:50am

Navajo
My friend who is a Navajo once told me that most dinner conversations in Navajo homes are usually arguments about the meanings of different words.
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John Fenderson (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 11:03am

Re:
Nobody takes grammar nazis seriously, so I don't think they'd have any effect.
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Anonymous, 27 Jun 2013 @ 2:16pm

I've never heard anyone say "tomahto" in my life (unless as a joke). Seriously, who talks like that?
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Anonymous, 27 Jun 2013 @ 3:20pm

Re: Re:
"Yea" is pronounced "yay". "Yeah" is a different word and pronounced differently. Yea verily!
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Miff (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 4:52pm

Re:
I think it's the Pacific Northwest region of the US, but I'm not sure.
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McCrea (profile), 28 Jun 2013 @ 1:30am

Re: Re: Re:
You are incorrect
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Anonymous, 28 Jun 2013 @ 2:39pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
How so? You make a statement like, "You are incorrect", but give no details. Until you point out HOW I'm incorrect, I'm going to assume that you are a liar.
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McCrea (profile), 29 Jun 2013 @ 3:51am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Don't play sillily. "Assume good faith" is the rule. You didn't really say anything more than I was wrong, either.

I did check a few dictionaries for you. Alas, they were different than they were 35 years ago; I have no evidence for my case. When we researched this in school, as instructed, generally "yeah" was not listed, or was listed as slang. Moreover, "Yea" had the secondary pronunciation which we are speaking about.

Offhand, I don't know how to prove the past to you, unless I find a suitable 1970 dictionary, and you happen to have a sister. You can either believe me or not. Hence, why I gave no reason that doesn't change anything.
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