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@joe
Indeed. I wonder if anyone’s done a credible survey of histories of complicated human systems becoming simpler and more uniform?

First examples I think of are centralized or lead by a central figure: Spanish and Korean get tidy orthographies, Luther’s bible establishes Hochdeutsch, Dijkstra vs GOTO. But then there are organic movements (European music baroque → classical). Isolation/separation seems to matter (phonemically limited Polynesian languages). What else? hmm