I've though long and hard about the generational evolution of "spoken language" and I've come up with that following quote:
Spoken Language is nothing more than the vehicle to get from one generation to the next.
This is evident across multiple pockets across the United States and those families that purposely block the organic transfer of the dominant language, for generation to generation, are only putting future generations at a huge disadvantage linguistically and professionally speaking
Let me give a few examples.
A huge portion of the United States used to be
French:
Obviously, they spoke
French with Louisiana holding the most dominant position.
Almost all of the ancestors of these
French immigrants slowly evolved and learned the dominant language of their region, English, but there are still pockets in Louisiana where the speak their versions of a bastardized version of
French passed down form generation to generation. You can imagine how well these 8th, 9th, 10th? generation Americans are doing, socially, without a full grasp of the English language.
Another example is Italian spoken in the Northeast. This one is a trick question because the Southern Italians NEVER really spoke high Italian. High Italian was Italy's attempt at unifying their dozens of dialects and
Italian= The Tuscan dialect.
The Southern Italians that flooded into places like New York City were NOT educated Tuscan speaking Italians- NO!
They arrived speaking THEIR local dialect of Sicilian, Calabrese, Neoplitan, etc. but NOT ITALIAN
it was MUCH EASIER for these parents to encourage their children to learn English instead of a language they never fully spoken,
Italian. English was the vehicle to get from one generation to the next. Now..the English they speak is their best attempt at transferring the English, from generation to generation. This leads to accents and some carry over of their previous generation's spoken language.
Now what about English..Yes! even the form of English we speak TODAY is drastically different than how it was spoken in the 1600s. the 1700s, the 1800s and the various eras in the 1900s. Both our words, cadence, sayings and slogans are different. This is true even in England. Someone from London today would have difficulty speaking to a Shakespeare era Londoner..the language was merely a vehicle to get from Generation to generation and thus it evolved each generation.
I found an interesting video on the English that immigrated to the Southern Colonies and within a generation, or two, their spoken language transitioned from "English" to "American English"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqY6ftqGq0
Now...that brings us to the huge
Spanish speaking pockets and probably the best comparison is
German.
Believe it or not, but
German was once the primary, or secondary language of a sizable portion of America. It was so prevalent that there was even consideration of making
German our official language.
Well, that didn't happen and the two World Wars led to families passing on American English to their future generations.
Back to
Spanish..we will have to see how this is passed on but it could be one of three outcomes.
Outcome 1- Current generation allows the vehicle of English to future generations allowing them to have the highest opportunity to speak the dominant language in their country.
Spanish is slowly phased out as with the Italians, Germans, etc.
Outcome 2-
Spanish speaking parents speak Spanish at home 100% of the time and Reject the dominant language vehicle idea instead assuming their children will "pick up " English in school or through friends. Often time, this significantly handicaps the current generation because they have neither an upper level grasp of either language since the version of
Spanish their parents speak is often times not high
Spanish either. These linguistical handicapped generations are often left to work in the service industry OR work in pockets of like minded individuals who also reject the English vehicle notion ( I.e. Miami)
Outcome 3-
Spanish speaking parents stress that English is the language to pass down form generation but they allow
Spanish to remain as a secondary English but NEVER at the expense of being a high quality English speaker because their parents know that is a necessary ingredient for economic and social success in a country where English in the dominant language in academia and in the business/professional world.
And honestly, I do not know enough about the variation of Spanish among Mexico and the South American countries to know how far they've drifted from the
Spanish language spoken in Spain.
I imagine it's drifted quite far a away in the 500+ years since Colombo landed ashore.
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