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Esperanto can serve as an interesting object for studies in how a linguistic diaspora handles its language. Somebody, I don't remember who, said that there are native Esperanto speakers but they appearently don't have any influence of the standard language. Could one imagine a similar thing happeneing with English. Imagine that the whole of continental Eurasia learns English and there appears a kind of standard continental English, couloured by the various language substrates. This official English would then be very formalized, and we would have a dicotomy between colloquial Eurasian English and Literary English. Could it possibly evolve without native speakers. Wouldn't it drift away from, say, UK and US English? What about English in India and South Africa? Is there a sensible difference between Esperanto vs native speakers and English vs native speakers in the aforementioned countries? Something to mull over.... Kjell R