rate of language change

[Larry Trask]

On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

[LT]

> >Abraham Lincoln was born in Illinois.

> -- Kentucky, actually.

Whoops, sorry.  I knew that looked wrong when I wrote it, but I didn't
check.  Stupid.  If my high-school history teacher were here today, he'd
probably box my ears.

[LT]

> >How successful do you think he'd be at understanding present-day
> >Chicagoans?

> -- quite successful; each would simply appear to have a strong
> accent to the other. (Lincoln would sound rather like a hillbilly,
> pronouncing words like "idea" as "idear").

I'm not so sure.  Quite apart from language change in the narrowest
sense, Lincoln would encounter such a vast number of words for objects
and concepts unfamiliar to him that I think he'd be bewildered.  He'd
pick up a newspaper and read something like "Tribe blank Pale Hose" or
"Ram raiders net ATM", and he'd wonder what planet he was on.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk