Out of Pod Experience

Yeah, I kinda figured.

Interwebs and such fight the drift, but we're adding loan-words from so many languanges at this point that I don't think the drift can ever be halted. There may at some future date a general merging of languanges from similar roots, but we're going to drift a lot more more before we start converging again.

Fingers don't always know what they're doing.

Not at all sure I'd agree with that disagreement. I'm rather widely travelled, and work for an international company. Observation (which I admit =! data) suggests otherwise. But what do I know? That's the subjective observation of a life-long globe-trotter. Take it with all the salt you deem necessary.

Who isn't an ass on the forums?

Heh.
Then you run across folks from the Southeast US that need a foriegner to translate so fellow Americans can understand him, or 'english' speaking cultures in inner cities whom can't understand you, and you can't understand them - they're using the same words, but the meaning is completely unintelligible. And it's growing worse - I've been in cities where neighboring gangs need translators, because neither can understand the other well enough to decide it they're friends, or need to start shanking each other.

Among other things in my life, I've been a Service Recruiter, and I can tell you I've run across some astonishing variations in language - sometimes over the distance of a few hundred yards, despite technically being the same base lingo. Loanwods, re-purposed words, and shifts between denotation and connotation make a god-awful hash of things.

But, as I say - I'm a subjective observer, rather than a linguist. Use salt as seems necessary.

That's actually a pretty fair description of me. Plus add some time overseas.

Immigrant gangs contribute to this, but when someone's family has been in the country three of four generations, that distinction goes away. Sometimes it's a synthetic hybrid in that it has been done deliberately to obfuscate and to create a barrier / linguistic boundary. Other cases I've epxperienced genuine borrowing from third cultures' languages - happens where two 'imigrant' communities align side-by-side. Once a loan-word comes into common usage, I no longer consider it foriegn to English. But the communities use the words differently. Also in my experience, 'imigrant' comunities and especially the gangs that inhabit them, use true English words in... odd ways. Again, quite possibly to define boundaries.

As a Recruiter, I went a lot of places where I was distinctly an alien. And treated as such. You had to learn the local patois before you could get any useful work done. Wasn't always easy. Once you'd learned to communicate, you'd usually get some respect for having made the effort.

'Mobile' is no suprise - It's shorter, and Americans usualy prefer speed. "Autumn" on the other hand seems a mis-call. Certainly, I've been using that word since I was a child - as has my entire family, including my grandmother, born in the 19th century.

If you look through my posts, however, I'm sure you'll find more than a few UK turns-of-phrase. Working for a multi-national HQ'd in London will do that for you.

That's called a cant, e.g. thieves' cant. They've been around for thousands of years. They're not dialects.