>I don't know exactly, but I doubt that in an oral (verbal and direct
>based) community, accents matter as much as in our Real World (written
>and indirect based) community. I mean: many dialects are an obstacle
>in our world because we don't strive to comprehend our neighbors. We
>have TV, email, telephone, written papers a lot of other means of
>different communication which is not dependent on dialects. In an
>oral world (like the ancient Earth or Glorantha) I suspect dialects
>are less an obstacle because people are trained from their childhood
>to overcome this small but grevious problem. When you have no
>alternative to contact neighbors except using intermediaries
>(specialized communicators) or war, you make substantial more efforts
>before saying "I don't understand your dialect".
Quite the reverse, dialects are gradually disappearing in the modern world due to radio, TV and greater travel. Accents have lasted better but are also less common than they were.
Neigbours rarely have widely varying dialects, it's travellers such as merchants who find the language changes as they move round the countryside. When you have never travelled more than a day's walk from your birthplace the language you use is the correct one. That a neigbour calls uses shippon for cowshed is something you get used to. Even when you don't know the word you can often get the meaning from the context.
I'm not suggesting dialects often form a barrier to communication, just an obstacle. Part of the job of Issaries is to learn the local variations sufficently well to avoid mistakes and confusion. At the worst extreme of accent and dialect both parties have to concentrate to express themselves clearly and get the other's meaning.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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