Andreas Johansson wrote:
> This gave me the skeleton of a conculturing idea: In some holy, or otherwise
> unquestionably authoritative, text it is stated that, say, 300 languages are
> spoken in the world.
>
> Centuries later, the bearers of the culture in question have developed a global
> reach, and run into a thousand or more speech varieties that they'd normally
> consider separate languages, but, because the authority of that text, they can't
> accept the implication, and instead lump more and more different 'dialects' as
> the same 'language' the farther away the speakers live, all the way to the
> antipodes, where completely unrelated languages are considered "the same" to
> squeeze under that limit of 300. Each time some trader or missionary runs into a
> new language, he must classify it as a dialect of one of the 300 accepted languages.

Hmm ... interesting idea.  :-)  Of course, one would suppose that the
number 300 would be reached pretty soon, even before they discover an
immense new continent.  :-)  Thus, perhaps they'd analyze the various
languages of that continent as "dialects" of languages on their home
continent, and construct elaborate theories to explain how the speakers
of those home-continent languages arrived on the new continent.  :-)

> I do not have any intention ATM of actually using this idea, but I thought
> someone might like it, if not for incorporation in a coniverse, perhaps simply
> as an amusing anecdote.

It's certainly a good idea.  I just may have to steal it for my
conculture.  Or a variation, like some text referring to the "144 false
faiths", causing vastly different religions to be called "sects" of
various "false faiths"