Language separation

[asterroc]

Last night T$ and I were watching a cartoon series by Tartakovsky last night, and I assumed he was Polish while T$ told me he was Russian. There ensued a conversation about how Poland had been part of Russia at times in the past, and vice versa, so it makes sense they'd have similar names. Which prompted me to wonder if there is a language that is partway between Russian and Polish, or if there's a pidgin combination of the two (or whatever the appropriate word is instead of "pidgin").

Does this really happen, are there "intermediate" languages when there isn't geographical separation between two regions with different languages? I'm thinking of a comparison between how languages separate and how species evolve, that it'll start with two subspecies that become more and more distinct, and sometimes there'll be a third subspecies that can interbreed with both even when the two extremes can't interbreed with each other. Is it like that?

I am hopeful q10 will reply to this with his expertise, but if anyone has info it'd be interesting.

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

this isn't what i mostly work on, and i'm busy just now, but i'd start here.

remember that in a lot of cases, what's happened has been less that people go off and found different languages and stop speaking to each other, and more that people spread out and keep speaking to their neighbors but not the people a few hundred miles down the road. the consolidation of regions of such a continuum into ‘languages’ is something that often happens for political reasons and in some cases remains little more than a political fiction.

also, note that languages - even unrelated languages will borrow fro each other when they come into contact. even ignoring things we think of as recent foreign borrowings, there are plenty of English names that look like imports from French, Classical Greek, and probably Welsh.