How Language Evolved from Climate and Terrain

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

My point is, in a large plain area, the language tends to merge, rather than diverge. The distance can only slow down the process.

That makes no sense as it stands. If you start with one language and distribute the population speaking it into widely separated communities with limited communication, it can only diverge.

 

[juvenissun]

That makes no sense as it stands. If you start with one language and distribute the population speaking it into widely separated communities with limited communication, it can only diverge.

But if they started with different languages, then the consequence is converge.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

But if they started with different languages, then the consequence is converge.

Not really. In Britain, Welsh (Cymraeg) is wholly distinct to Scots-Gaelic (Gaidhlig). In fact, Welsh is even more distinct to the Cornish language (Kernowek) even though they are separated by a distance of a couple of hundred miles at the most.
IN FACT, China disproves your point even further since China has 56 different and distinct languages.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

But if they started with different languages, then the consequence is converge.

That may be the case in the very long term, where there's a lot of intermixing of communities and/or one language becomes dominant, but it doesn't follow - for example, 'There are 1,250 to 2,100 and by some counts over 3,000 languages spoken natively in Africa..'. Africa is generally considered to be the birthplace of humanity, so has had the longest continuous human occupation, and is a single large area, so according to your idea there should have been language convergence...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The language won't change so fast even by isolation. There must be other factors involved.

Just like in evolution, the amount of change will be proportional to the amount of time / generations that it is left to itself.

As others here have already told you, dialects can already be apparant between 2 villages only a few km's apart.

I live in a small community that is made up from 3 villages.
Total population of the community is about 10.000
To cross the entire community, passing through all 3 villages, takes 10 kms at most.

And even here, we can tell who is from which village, purely by the pronounciation of certain words.


Also.... do I take your post here as you not accepting that French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish all derive from Latin? Do you deny that the ancestors of these people, spoke Latin? Is that what you are saying?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

But if they started with different languages, then the consequence is converge.

Really?

You might not want to say that out loud in certain parts of Belgium.
The north speaks Dutch. The south speaks French. This has been a point of discussion and conflict all the way back to the 1200s, accumulating in a rather bloody war in 1302, known as "De Guldensporenslag" (don't know what the name is in english and to lazy to look it up). The franks against the dutch.

Since 1830, both the north and the south are united in the country called Belgium.
But french is still french and dutch is still dutch.

There has been some inter-mixing, sure. Certain french words have been adapted and included into belgian dutch dialects in communities near the "language border", but that's about it.

That hardly qualifies as "convergence".

 

[juvenissun]

I don't know much about language, I quit.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I don't know much about language, I quit.

Then why did you come on to a topic that you knew nothing about then?

 

[Mike Lane]

Then why did you come on to a topic that you knew nothing about then?

Do you really need to ask?