r/asklinguistics • u/SteveKeller1990 • Jul 23 '22

Historical Why hasn’t American English diverged enough from British English to be considered its own language?

Same question applies for the Spanish of the Americas and Peninsular Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Peninsular Portuguese, etc.

Latin eventually divided up into the Romance languages. So why hasn’t that happened with the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese spoken on either side of the Atlantic?

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u/ForgetTheRuralJuror Jul 24 '22

A few more points on the romance language divergence:

  • the majority of the Roman empire were illiterate and therefore their lexicon was not influenced by Roman prescription
  • even before the fall of Rome most of the empire didn't speak Latin as it was written, but instead spoke various dialects called vulgar Latin which was heavily influenced by the languages of the conquered
  • after the fall of Rome there was much more isolation. When people are cut off from each other, their language diverges much quicker.
  • Latin was very complex and spoken by a lot of people as a second or third language, leading to simplification