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When the Roman Empire spread Latin across the continent, the regional dialects morphed into recognized languages – Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish. My daughter is taking French in high school and one of her reasons is that it seems like a beautiful refined language. I told her it could just as easily have been called “Pigeon Latin”; when we in the US (and the South in particular) introduce new words it is called slang and if we spell/pronounce/conjugate existing words differently we are often accused of butchering English rather than evolving it. So, what is the difference? Is it just a change of times? Is it because the Romans/Italians themselves did not preserve the base language? In some respects, you could say they did. We have old English, middle English and Modern English. Isn't Latin really “old Italian”?
Well, the DEA is looking for an Ebonics expert.
I thought about mentioning that, but I think it never got serious consideration because of other political and social baggage. There are places in the Caribbean where it is truly difficult to communicate with locals who speak a form of English that really has evolved away from what we speak in the US, UK and Australia. They struggle with speaking mainstream English, rather than choosing to speak a cultural variant among themselves, which is more the case with Ebonics speakers.
It's an interesting question. When was the last time any new language was formed? I would guess that there would not be any new languages formed (barring some nuclear incident or something like that which sends us back to the stone age). Simply put, there is too much social interaction, writing, and globalization in the world today. Languages which are popular only get more popular because humans want and need to be part of larger world communities to conduct business, create ordered societies, etc. English and Chinese are two languages which will continue to attract more speakers.
I don't know that new languages dont still appear of their own. The one example of a recent new language I can think of is Esperanto, but it is an artificial language. Language continually evolves, one look at writing in just about any language comparing 150 years ago to today shows that.
About the fall of French http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11086381 Concerning how some new languages appeared, I can tell you a little about French language :As you already know French originates from Latin but not just the "standard or classical" Latin but primarily from Vulgar Latin : Latin spoken mainly by the uneducated and therefore illiterate populations governed by the Romans. In addition this language has some Gaulish or Celtic words still used today but the other major contribution to French is ... German ! By German, it's more about the Old Frankish language spoken by the Franks at the time of the Germanic invasions, i.e. Clovis and Charlemagne.This makes French the most "germanised" of the Romance languages. (Which seems to irritate many French ppl ;D)Currently, many words of English origins are part of the language. It's evolving slowly but surely.
And remember — English is a Germanic (Angle-Saxon-Norse) language with a Latin grammar (death penalty aka F if you split an infinitive which is impossible in Latin) with added Celtic Norman-French vocabulary — and in the USA more words mainstreamed by immmigrants and technology. Americanese has 650,000+ words, whereas other major languages are in the 150s+ such as Spanish.There are changes the meaning of slang too. Some become obsolete. Others have meanings changed. One example from when I was in grade school: a pud-wacker was a maturbator -- decades later pud became a synonym for a fool, AH, drip, nerd, etc. Food for another never-ending topic.
And remember -- English is a Germanic (Angle-Saxon-Norse) language with a Latin grammar (death penalty aka F if you split an infinitive which is impossible in Latin) with added Celtic Norman-French vocabulary -- and in the USA more words mainstreamed by immmigrants and technology. Americanese has 650,000+ words, whereas other major languages are in the 150s+ such as Spanish.There are changes the meaning of slang too. Some become obsolete. Others have meanings changed. One example from when I was in grade school: a pud-wacker was a maturbator -- decades later pud became a synonym for a fool, AH, drip, nerd, etc. Food for another never-ending topic.
You're right; it's best to never split infinitives... ;DI have heard it said that English now has Latin roots for 75% of the words. I wish we had the conjugation rules that were less flexible.
