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OP Bob
I am not very familiar with my nominal mother tongue - Malayalam - but from what little I know of it, it demonstrates greater diglossia (is that the word?) than any other language I know of. My mother is the only one in our family who is literate in it, and when she reads out a letter written to us (from say a relative back in the home state), it sounds like a different language. She reads it phonetically, as one is supposed to do with most Indian languages, and I cannot recognise most of the words she says until she 'converts' them into the spoken versions.
As far as oratory is concerned, I suspect we have lost the old rhetorical flourishes for good. But it is possible that the new, sound-bite generation may eventually create something of lasting worth?
As for your citation of FDR and Churchill, you are probably right as far as classical forms go, but I have to confess a fondness for the rhythmic flourishes in the speech of one Martin Luther King. You may have heard of him - he had a dream?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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