spoken vs. written language
I am fairly familiar with a half dozen languages and every one of them has a spoken language which is different from the written language. For the most part, it's a difference in the level of formality; the spoken language tends to take great liberties in the matter of grammar and also in vocabulary. I suspect that this is true of virtually all languages; a language would have to be already simplified not to have a simpler form for informal communication between people who know each other.
My theory is that this is due to the fact that until quite recently on the scale of history, only a very small percentage of any given language population was able to read and write. Literacy was the preserve of a small elite who were familiar with the classical forms of languages, not only their own, but those others which had some prestige or some scholarly value, like Latin and Greek to Europeans, or classical Arabic to other Muslim scholars, or Chinese to the early Japanese and other oriental peoples. Hence a level of formality develops in a language which is written and intended to be read for informational purposes.
Further, the literate scholars tended to be part of a state apparatus or bureaucracy, like the clergy in medieval Europe, or the bureaucracy in the Chinese empire, or the mullahs with their semi-judicial status in Muslim society. This being the case, much of their writing was expected to be taken as judicial pronouncement. In later times, some of the output of scholars was intended for oratorical purposes.
Lastly, at least so far as regards the situation in English and European languages, the scholars were familiar with the classical languages in which texts and works had been subjected to all the classical rhetorical treatment which they then carried over into their own vernacular, so that the written form of English (as well as certain works intended for oratorical use) exhibited all the flourishes and techniques of Demosthenes and Cicero. The verbal form of this, which we call the oratorical style, is now almost dead, having gone out of fashion. The last great practitioner in the U.S. was probably F.D.R. and in English in general, Winston Churchill.
What do the rest of you think?
