With a POD no later than 1790, create broad diglossia in America between the written language and the majority vernacular.
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AHC: Diglossia in the USA
- Thread starter frustrated progressive
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Deleted member 97083
Wikipedia:
In linguistics, diglossia is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified variety (labeled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used for ordinary conversation. The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (e.g., Latin in the early Middle Ages), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present day dialect (e.g., Standard German alongside Low German (Plattdüütsch); or Chinese, with Mandarin as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese used in everyday communication).
So basically, in this scenario, the USA would have "Classical English" and "Vulgar English".
Maybe if the Episcopalian Church does much better, you could get Prayer-Book/King James English becoming the H version, and ordinary conversational English the L version.
This is a prime example of a lower register of English.
Deleted member 97083
Communist revolution in the US occurs in the 1930s. Communists pursue a phonetic spelling reform of the English language, a new written dialect dubbed the "American Esperanto", which directly matches only one or two spoken dialects of American English; for many others, it is no more accurate than the previous spelling. As such, diglossia increases.
Not likely. At least where I grew up, ebonics is seen as "broken english" and its speakers as uneducated or unwilling to learn how to speak properly.
Could it just be part of America? If Reconstruction was much, much harsher on the South, black people could seize power more effectively in regions like Mississippi. From there, they might gain a "nationalism" like that of contemporary Europe and try to write in their self-proclaimed dialect for poetry and fiction. "Afro-English" (or some other neologism) is standardized by a committee and taught in schools.
NOTE: I'm not saying Ebonics is or isn't a dialect or any kind of debate. I'm just suggesting that ITTL Southern blacks take inspiration from European nationalism and declare it to be a separate language or dialect.
NOTE: I'm not saying Ebonics is or isn't a dialect or any kind of debate. I'm just suggesting that ITTL Southern blacks take inspiration from European nationalism and declare it to be a separate language or dialect.
Loli American
Banned
The problem with this is that the US is and has always been a very literate nation. Usually radical language reforms only happen in countries where the goal is to promote literacy among a largely illiterate population or where the language has no written standard.
Getting back to the OP, diglossia is a matter of degrees. No American here probably speaks in the way that they'd write an AH.com post in real life, yet alone how they'd write an academic paper. People with non-standard dialects even moreso. Historically this division was even greater, with educated Americans affecting a fake, pseudo-British Mid-Atlantic accent and register in formal settings. But after WWII, emphasizing class differences was frowned upon, and the prestige of Britain decreased. So everyone started adopting General American (i.e. Iowan/Central Illinois accent/dialect) as the standard instead for formal speech and writing, which is much closer to how Americans actually speak colloquially. A more unequal society or one where American English continues to not be the prestige dialect of English is probably the way to go.
While American Vernacular exhibits a certain amount of diglossia relative to Standard American English, and several other dialects (African American Vernacular English is one of the most extreme) do show broad and systematic differences, there is no great, katharevousa-style gulf between the written language and the common speech.