Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 19:31:03 -0700

From: Kim & Rima McKinzey rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET

Subject: Re: science-fictional question



At 11:51 PM 10/18/96, Dan Goodman wrote:

This is the general case: Given someone who claims his native dialect

is one previously unknown, how would you test this claim?



More specifically: The person claims to be from an alternate world

whose history diverged from ours a bit over 200 years ago. His native

language is English. He claims to have grown up in southern

California.



Before we leave for a vacation (yeah!), a few first thoughts. Wouldn't you

question this person on _his_ American history for the last 200 years?

Wouldn't the answers give you some indication of the language influence

differences if any? If he grew up in southern "California," with English

as his native language, the alternate world history didn't seem to change

the statehood and remain Mexican or something completely other.



A start?



Back in a couple of weeks.



Rima