I like that idea. I always figured we'd end up with a Brazilian
look too, although people tend to enjoy forming separatist
groups, so I don't think we'll lose our distinctions as for as
much blending there is, there will always be people who are
separatist as well. But I actually like your vision. = = It's
possible but you'd have to eliminate national pride, traditions,
people saving historical languages and resurrecting old ones....
it's a lot of deconstruction that would be required for your
vision to take place.== to reconstruct, destruction is implied
though, unless you think people will just accept whatever the
dominant cultural force is, and blend in. == Oh it's not insane
- I think the languages of the future will definitely be a
continuation of the processes that have been taking place for a
very long time already. Bt Ftr Lng M Luk Lk Ds 4xmpl. = Yeah our
first battle is removing the archaic "4 race" system.. thanks to
early anthropology. *sigh*. Makes me wonder what our current
mistakes are that we can't see, because they couldn't see it was
a mistake back then. == It sounds interesting. It's related to
the "form v function" argument in architecture imo. It's a false
dichotomy of course but it continues in architectural schools...
a continuation of a misquote of a guy from 100 yrs ago. == I
believe there is a combination of message and medium together;
If I receive information via my TV, my newspaper, a friend, the
Internet, my own intuition, studying world affairs, astrology,
and I end up with the same information... ... did the medium
affect my message? Maybe. Maybe it didn't. I think the medium
influences our INTERPRETATION of the information and our
response to it... and there are affordances to different types
of information that can be transmitted in different mediums...
but I think the two have to work in tandem. [whether it's form
and function or medium and message] Just as we can't have pure
data, neither can we have pure medium. Their relationship is
complex and intertwined and quite plastic (malleable in nature)
== Well, I was implying [about something] in my above statement,
which I should've been explicit about. Everybody else is smarter
than me [about something]. == I learned Spanish in high school.
Even though I have trouble understanding spoken spanish (they
speak too quickly), I found I could understand a lot of Italian
in the process. Later on, when I made portuguese friends online,
even though Portuguese is quite different in VERY many ways, I
was able to make out some of it before needing translators.
Similar experience to learning Russian. I instantly gained
Polish and a number of other Slavic languages, as well as
Greek... once I nailed down the Greek alphabet as well. == I
really suck at language production honestly tongue emoticon I
can listen or read and work out what's happening in a lot of
languages (even ones I don't know much about) but actually
producing grammatical sentences? I stink at it. My nature
language I have enough trouble in... outside of writing tongue
emoticon -- When GOOD translators became available on computers,
I was in love. Then when Google started supplementing their
"Google Chat" with translation bots about 7-8 years ago, I set
up two way translators and was in love... all these people I
could talk to now. And now.. it's integrated into EVERYTHING.
Fucking love it. So Much. == One of my best friends on G+ is a
Korean (North or South I don't know or care) dude who is going
to University learning Quantum theory. He latched onto me when I
was in my uber-science phase and was talking all quantum this or
that. He doesn't write a word in English and I don't write a
word in Korean. But we've had some damn deep conversations about
complicated things using the built-in translators. The way
English comes out in Korean is laughable on his end, and the way
Korean comes out in English is laughable on my end... ...I mean
it's REALLY REALLY terrible... but it's enough for us to "get
by" and have great, lengthy conversations - not just about
physics, but also about relationships, family and stuff. Really
awesome. == Yup. As long as the 'gist' of the message gets
across and the people who WANT to communicate are willing to
overlook the medium and all of the errors within, communication
is productive and effective. == Do it man. Linguistics is
fascinating stuff. It never gets tiring. My suggestion is to get
a little George Lakoff in with the diet of Chomsky as well.
Chomsky is the predominant force in Linguistics. [ok, he's the
ONLY real force in linguistics for like 50 yrs now]... ..but
there are other competing philosophies of linguistics, all with
their merits and drawbacks. ==
