Questions tagged [diachronic]

This question involves the commonest languages still used in 2015. Prof. John McWhorter and this answer argue different rates of language change, e.g. the language change from Old Norse to Icelandic2015 < the language change from Old English to…

Do some languages change more slowly or quickly than others? If so, what factors slow or accelerate the rate of change? (For this question, let's forget about the possible effects of modern mass media and concentrate on factors that might have…