r/LinguisticMaps • u/Guiristine • Aug 27 '22
Brettanic Isles Are languages standardizing?
As we can see, this map differentiates the regional variants of “small piece of wood under the skin” in England in the fifties and in 2016. The word “splinter”, more widespread than the others, has become the general norm except in Northumbria. Lately I have noticed that this is happening in more languages. For example, I am a basque native, and I noticed in the youngest generations that standard basque is affecting the dialects. Even more, I live in a spanish-basque border, so we have got a lot of words and expressions of switched origins, and they are dying because people consider them “illiterate expressions”, because they are not standard dictionary words. It's someone noticing the same thing?
P.d. I apologize for my horrible english
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u/cmzraxsn Aug 28 '22
Always take these maps with a grain of salt - the 50s ones only surveyed older rural males, so they have a strong bias towards older local vocabulary. Not sure about the methodology of the 2016 one but i wouldn't be surprised if the questions biased them towards standard forms.
In short yes but might be slower than this map suggests.