Quote:
Originally Posted by Dharma & Greg
I don't know that it's entirely a question of being charged, but we're a nation of 300 million people dispersed over a landmass the size of a continent. The idea that we could have a uniform anything is a lie of modern history. In any other time period without modern forms of communication we would simply culturally evolve into countless cultures that had little to do with one another, but because of modern technology we are thrust together with the idiotic notion that all of us should naturally be the same simply because we all have "America" labeled on our butts.
Without the "benefit" of electricity and whatnot we'd all eventually be different cultures the same as Europe is assuming Europe hadn't evolved with Morse code and radio and whatnot after the fall of the Roman Empire.
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^ Very good points about technology and how it promotes/maintains a standardised language. I like the bit about Europe moving from the Roman Empire to Morse code.
Perhaps I'm missunderstanding what you wrote (in bold): the USA has plenty of uniform stuff: rules of the road, domestic voltage, money, etc. And on the topic of language, even a uniform accepted language allows for variations of spelling, pronunciation, etc. It's not like everyone in America is being forced to speak like Gore Vidal.