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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

If you took a chicken today, and looked at every single one if its direct ancestors down its lineage for the past billion generations, any single ancestor would probably be indistinguishable from their own parents, yet the last ancestor would look nothing like the chicken. It's because the incremental change with each generation is absolutely tiny, but those changes are magnified as they accumulate over countless generations.

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The same is true about the evolution of language. Parents and their own kids can always communicate just fine, but across 5, 10, 20 generations it can be completely unrecognizable (see: Middle English).

Do you think that this will still be the case now that we have the internet? I wonder if the English of 3000 AD will be as different from 2000 AD as 2000 AD is from 1000 AD. I feel like the big players in tech have the capability to direct language evolution somewhat. Consider the pronunciation feature Google offers if you look up the definition of a word (the little speaker icon) -- the pronunciation they provide there could influence learners. I'm not suggesting anything insidious, just recognizing the potential that seems to be there.

You make an interesting point, but I’m not sure I find it entirely convincing. To feel out the limits of your argument, what is it that you see as fundamentally different between the Internet and the dawn of recorded sound? The ubiquity, the geographical homogeneity, and ease of recording? Would the same argument apply to vocabulary and spelling of the written word?

I'm not trying to convince anyone, I myself don't know! Yes all around to your questions though, pretty much. Cheaper, faster, easier, etc. What do you think the effect of spellcheck technology will be on the rate of change of the spelling of words? We increasingly _let computers write for us!_ Google Smart Compose, Grammarly, etc. In my opinion, these things are leading to the homogenization of spelling, pronunciation, and even word choice all across the world.

Whilst I have no doubt that computerised spelling checking is standardising spelling, this has been a trend going back centuries. As writing has becoming more widespread, spelling and grammar has become more fixed. Shakespeare signed his name about a dozen different ways and the spelling we all agree on today only became standardised about a hundred years ago. Essentially, I don’t buy the argument that there’s something special about the Internet, it’s just that as widespread communication becomes more ubiquitous, the variability in that medium reduces - be it languages, vocabulary, grammatical style (I’d be interested to know if anyone has done a study into accent homogenisation).

My gut feeling is that as a species we are reducing the total variability whilst accelerating the change along the increasingly standardised forms I.e. I don’t think a US-UK English split would occur today but we are adding new words faster than ever

Interesting point.

These days I can visit Imgur and appreciate a joke that someone has made using only 4-5 memes. Also language is still evolving, and the Internet of the era forces changes, such as people becoming used to being limited to 140 letter limits etc.

But even then I'm sure change to the core language must be slower overall.

Chickens have 78 chromosomes.

There is nothing incremental about moving from 76 to 78. Or, from 78 to 80 (turkeys).

How is incrementing by 2 not incremental?

It's discontinuous. It's obvious what the post implied... that the changes are gradual and continuous.

Evolution is a feature of populations, not individuals.

If the proto-chickens had 76 chromosomes, and some had a tendency to have offspring with 78 chromosomes, there would be some 78 chromosome chickens born within the population. As long as those chickens bred with each other it would work. Soon they would become a distinct population of individuals breeding with each other.

How often do chicken have offspring with an extra pair of chromosomes?

Do you have data on this?

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