Quote:
Originally Posted by Logseman
Well... The Qu'ran pretty much is the base for the language today known as Arabic, the first printed Bibles were the foundation of modern German...
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I'd like to see some quotes on that, please.
A language has to exist before you write a book in it, otherwise nobody would be able to read the book (not to mention write it).
I can admit a very influential book, such as the Bible or Koran, can help generalize a particular variant of a language, or fix some forms that were more fluctuating before, but that's hardly creating a language. More like an early form of globalization. People who spoke different dialects, more or less related, come to use a more common language.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Why? Dante's works created modern Italian, if you want another example, and Caxton's choice of which English dialect he printed his books in was enormously influential in determining which of those (pretty mutually unintelligible) dialects did win out. There are all sorts of examples of books determining the path that the evolution of language has taken; you really shouldn't be skeptical about it.
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See, that's what I meant. It's not inventing a language or creating it. It's selecting which variant of the language will become global. That's totally different, even though I agree that it can have a big influence on the evolution of the language.