Further thoughts on dialect and accent:
\nA hundred years ago, it would have been incredibly unusual to hear a French, Spanish, Chinese or American voice in the streets of Chichester. Now it is an everyday occurence.
\nWith global travel and global communication now so very common, I wonder if, in a hundred years time, we will not only see the disappearance of some regional accents, but maybe even some national accents. Will we all speak American? Will anyone who doesn’t speak English (or at least Spanish or Chinese) be able to communicate with anyone outside their local community without an artificial aid (I hear rumours that IBM are working on a babelfish project – combining instant translation technology with speak-n-type software).
\nIsn’t this an absolutely horrifying scenario? I’m not too parochial (ok, maybe a bit), but the thought that regional identity might be lost in some way is not a prospect that pleases me. How on earth do we go about preserving such intangible assets?
\nBut equally, should we resist change? If we had, we’d all go round using words like “forsooth” and “oddsbodkins” in every sentence, and moaning that nothing has been the same since the invention of the printing press. Perhaps this is just a natural part of the progression of our society, technology driving us towards increasing global homogeneity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Further thoughts on dialect and accent: A hundred years ago, it would have been incredibly unusual to hear a French, Spanish, Chinese or American voice in the streets of Chichester. Now it is an everyday occurence. With global travel and global communication now so very common, I wonder if, in a hundred years time, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}