tokillthedragon replied to your post: the real question is did Arnorian Sind...
I think Tolkien would’ve loved you.
*blushes* Thank you! His approach to writing certainly speaks, erm, very strongly to me :D
squirrelwrangler replied to your post “the real question is did Arnorian Sindarin evolve along the same...”
I know what I *want* (and distinctive to the point of nearly incomprehensible Westron between them by end of Third Age and something for the isolated Hobbits)
hmmm
I maaaaay have just written a paper on the tie between politics and language use among the Edainic peoples, so this is actually pretty fresh in my mind. Here's what we know:
1) The spread of Westron across western Middle-earth was due to the influence of Númenor and then Arnor and Gondor. The influence of the latter in this is mentioned at least twice.
2) The hobbits adopted Westron under the influence of the Northern Dúnedain.
3) Westron is spoken ¨after some fashion" by pretty much everyone, either a second language or a native one (in some cases a sole language though not generally).
4) The difference between Gondorian Westron, hobbit Westron, and orc Westron is considerably more dramatic than is actually represented in the text (for the sake of readability).
My personal opinion is that there is clearly a ton of dialectical variation, which could be roughly categorized as Northern or Southern dialects (ie, spread by Arnor or Gondor); Shire Westron would be an offshoot of the Northern family. I would guess that, say, Umbar Westron (to whatever extent it's spoken there) is much closer to ~standard~ Southern than Shire and Bree Westron are to Northern (and iirc there are noticeable differences between the Shire and Bree, and possibly even between Buckland and say Hobbiton).
(Now I'm wondering if, say, there's a Langstrand accent that people read as backwater. I think Tolkien remarked on Minas Tirith Westron as the sort of RP accent of Middle-earth.)