From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!uwvax!doug
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: How Dare the British Criticize How We Speak..
Article-I.D.: uwvax.518
Posted: Fri Jul 30 16:40:55 1982
Received: Sat Jul 31 06:27:00 1982


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