Impact of Colonization on Languages if Printing Press Delayed

So, as the tin says, what would be the impact of colonization on the development and spread of the European languages to the Americas and elsewhere if the Printing Press were delayed for several centuries?
 
I think the first answer is, with the written form being less common and less available, a language is less standardized.

So, the English in Virginia vs. even as little removed as Massachusetts will be more different than in OTL. Now, will the local dialects be fluid enough to incorporate significant local element maybe even significant elements from the local Indians? I don't know.
 
Additionally, wouldn't the time in which the colony is settled and the part of the mother country where the settlers come from have an even greater impact on the dialect spoken?
 
Spanish would have dominated the printing business since - at one point - the Spanish Empire contained the most citizens.
Mailing out Spanish documents - signed by the King - would reduce the number of "we never heard about the new policy" excuses from distant colonies.
Formal, government Spanish would change very slowly, so slowly that it would stagnate into an obscure, legal language only understood by a handful of academics and lawyers ...... kind of like the Canadian Air Regulations are today.
 

Driftless

Donor
Any delay in developing the moveable-type priniting press has a number of impacts. The fact that books and pamphlets could be printed in larger numbers less expensively - and therefore shared more widely was an enormous benefit to the early Reformation - for example.

Several of the early colonies (English mainly) were religious dissidents. If the Reformation is delayed by it's inability to share information, that reduces the pool of colonists. If the Reformation is delayed, or not as widespread, that probably changes the development of England itself (Henry VIII) in some ways.
 
So, as the tin says, what would be the impact of colonization on the development and spread of the European languages to the Americas and elsewhere if the Printing Press were delayed for several centuries?

You end with more of a "Norman French" vs. "French French" situation with the various kinds of English in the European colonies, and with the other languages - verbally unintelligible while perhaps more textual comprehensible. You also have massive butterflies in the religious realm, as its far easier to tamp down on various heresies and translations.
 
Interesting idea.
You wouldn't have so many Europeans waving bibles about- something like the incident with the Inca monarch couldn't happen quite the same way.

I don't think the European languages in the Americas would diverge too much though. It would happen naturally but because of this people would have even more of a recoil against it and try even harder to stick to the prestige dialects of home.
 
My first thought was that no printing press greatly retards economic and technological development compared to OTL, so there would be much less colonization pressure, plus less of a tech advantage for those who do attempt colonization (still a massive advantage compared to the locals, though). Western Europe still colonizes much of the world, but it takes longer and there is slightly more effective local resistance.

The effect on languages? I would expect more local loanwords to make their way into the settler's speech, and possibly even grammatical changes, due to centuries of close contact between local and colonial languages, with little in the way of literature available at the local level to stabilize the settlers' languages.
 
Good point.
We would also hear a greater stratification of local dialects with the only the sons of wealthy families learning how to read and write and speak "high Spanish" while the sons of peasant farmers only speak the local patois.
Borrow words would be rare in ruling households, while they would constitute the majority of the vocabulary of working class people.
 
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