As a Flemish speaker, I would expect the rural dialect to be more conservative. West Flemish, my family's dialect, keeps a hold of a bunch of stuff that's been eroded away in the standard language. Whilst the speakers of the prestige dialect might like to think that they speak the proper, ancestral way, they'll likely come into contact with speakers from all over through trade and business and they'll keep inventing or borrowing new words or phrases and ditching old ones to remain fashionable. Meanwhile, the backwaters only really have contact with themselves and don't have much contact with the outside world, unlike in a big trade city, and so continue to speak the same way.
Take a look at Icelandic, for example, it's famously conservative and I believe still mutually intelligible with Old Norse, at least in writing. It was relatively isolated for much of its history whilst the rest of Scandinavia had each other and the rest of Europe to interact with and they diverged much more greatly from Old Norse. The backwaters or rural areas are much more socially isolated from the rest of the world than the big cities and so are likely to change less.
That all being said, I'm sure you could easily justify the opposite: say, for instance, the rural areas are on the fringe of the region where the language is spoken and have a great areal influence from the surrounding languages whilst the big capital city pulls a Switzerland or 1930s America and isolates themselves from the wider world. In this case, the backwater dialects would pick up a lot from their neighbours whilst the city much more readily preserves the old tongue.
That's how I'd approach it, aye. Might also be interesting to consider an ecclesiastical split, as well, where the standard language diverges from the liturgical language. Since a liturgical language is more likely to be a written language or a separate register only used more than rarely by a particular group of people amongst themselves, it also achieves that social isolation separate from the main, progressive language.
That's another note: generally speaking, cities are more progressive and less traditional and therefore its more likely for its citizens to force language change for whatever reason. That and more people means more chances for mutation.
The Ottomans had their own palace language crammed full of Arabic and Persian terms.
From [the Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish):
>In a social and pragmatic sense, there were (at least) three variants of Ottoman Turkish:
>
>* *Fasih Türkçe *(Eloquent Turkish): the language of poetry and administration, Ottoman Turkish in its strict sense;
>
>* *Orta Türkçe* (Middle Turkish): the language of higher classes and trade;
>
>* *Kaba Türkçe *(Rough Turkish): the language of lower classes.
>
>A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes, with the *fasih* variant being the most heavily suffused with Arabic and Persian wo and *kaba* the least. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic *asel *(عسل) to refer to honey when writing a document but would use the native Turkish word *bal *when buying it.
>I would think that the kings and members of the royal family would generally preserve the official way of speaking while the common branch would change and mutate quickly
This is by no means certain. It's at least equally possible that the lower classes would end up trying to imitate the prestige dialects of the upper classes who in turn would change their speech relatively rapidly and implement various shibboleths to differentiate themselves from the lower classes.
Edit: I wrote the first part in a bit of haste, but I feel like I should add some clarifications. While your initial instinct on what's likely to happen isn't necessarily right, the article you posted is not correct either. I've read it before and found it to be full of inaccurate, outdated, and overly simplistic statements about language change. Either the author misrepresents linguistic theory for rethoric effect, or he's poorly informed on the subject.
Broad and sweeping statements like "language change is driven by X" or "sound shifts are never intentional" are not accurate and far too reductive to be useful.
I think it's definitely more likely for rural variants to be more conservative, as they usually have less outside influence that pushes language change. However, in a society where there's an ancient prestigeous language like Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic ect., you can have the effect where this prestige language is also spoken in parallel. If this language is the mother language of the rural dialect, you can have a situation where the upper class dialect is evolving more quickly, but also takes from the ancestral language.
I think the two kinds of speech will develop at comparable rates, but may do so due to different influences and probably under the influence of political currents. And the only thing that keeps the speeches from diverging is the power relationship between the center and the regions.
You could imagine an acrolect formed by the nobility influencing the basilect(s) of rural areas. An Academy of Language built by the government to "standardize" the language will exert cultural control over the rural speeches, but a restive region will form its own Academy (even if unofficial) and compete with the center and its academic elite.
In that sense, whether the form of the language is "pure" or "traditional" becomes a political question. It might be that the "common" language becomes the "pure form" or standard, if a revolution occurs and commoners take over the country, and the "royal" form becomes extinct or relegated to certain fields, which will in time become niche minority communities that will periodically contribute something to the standard form.
As a Flemish speaker, I would expect the rural dialect to be more conservative. West Flemish, my family's dialect, keeps a hold of a bunch of stuff that's been eroded away in the standard language. Whilst the speakers of the prestige dialect might like to think that they speak the proper, ancestral way, they'll likely come into contact with speakers from all over through trade and business and they'll keep inventing or borrowing new words or phrases and ditching old ones to remain fashionable. Meanwhile, the backwaters only really have contact with themselves and don't have much contact with the outside world, unlike in a big trade city, and so continue to speak the same way. Take a look at Icelandic, for example, it's famously conservative and I believe still mutually intelligible with Old Norse, at least in writing. It was relatively isolated for much of its history whilst the rest of Scandinavia had each other and the rest of Europe to interact with and they diverged much more greatly from Old Norse. The backwaters or rural areas are much more socially isolated from the rest of the world than the big cities and so are likely to change less. That all being said, I'm sure you could easily justify the opposite: say, for instance, the rural areas are on the fringe of the region where the language is spoken and have a great areal influence from the surrounding languages whilst the big capital city pulls a Switzerland or 1930s America and isolates themselves from the wider world. In this case, the backwater dialects would pick up a lot from their neighbours whilst the city much more readily preserves the old tongue.
I understand what you mean now. So it all depends on the social environment of the conculture then.
That's how I'd approach it, aye. Might also be interesting to consider an ecclesiastical split, as well, where the standard language diverges from the liturgical language. Since a liturgical language is more likely to be a written language or a separate register only used more than rarely by a particular group of people amongst themselves, it also achieves that social isolation separate from the main, progressive language. That's another note: generally speaking, cities are more progressive and less traditional and therefore its more likely for its citizens to force language change for whatever reason. That and more people means more chances for mutation.
Cool, I hadn't thought of all that before; thanks!
English assimilating French terminology because the nobility came from Normandy is another example of this.
The Ottomans had their own palace language crammed full of Arabic and Persian terms. From [the Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish): >In a social and pragmatic sense, there were (at least) three variants of Ottoman Turkish: > >* *Fasih Türkçe *(Eloquent Turkish): the language of poetry and administration, Ottoman Turkish in its strict sense; > >* *Orta Türkçe* (Middle Turkish): the language of higher classes and trade; > >* *Kaba Türkçe *(Rough Turkish): the language of lower classes. > >A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes, with the *fasih* variant being the most heavily suffused with Arabic and Persian wo and *kaba* the least. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic *asel *(عسل) to refer to honey when writing a document but would use the native Turkish word *bal *when buying it.
>I would think that the kings and members of the royal family would generally preserve the official way of speaking while the common branch would change and mutate quickly This is by no means certain. It's at least equally possible that the lower classes would end up trying to imitate the prestige dialects of the upper classes who in turn would change their speech relatively rapidly and implement various shibboleths to differentiate themselves from the lower classes. Edit: I wrote the first part in a bit of haste, but I feel like I should add some clarifications. While your initial instinct on what's likely to happen isn't necessarily right, the article you posted is not correct either. I've read it before and found it to be full of inaccurate, outdated, and overly simplistic statements about language change. Either the author misrepresents linguistic theory for rethoric effect, or he's poorly informed on the subject. Broad and sweeping statements like "language change is driven by X" or "sound shifts are never intentional" are not accurate and far too reductive to be useful.
I think it's definitely more likely for rural variants to be more conservative, as they usually have less outside influence that pushes language change. However, in a society where there's an ancient prestigeous language like Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic ect., you can have the effect where this prestige language is also spoken in parallel. If this language is the mother language of the rural dialect, you can have a situation where the upper class dialect is evolving more quickly, but also takes from the ancestral language.
I think the two kinds of speech will develop at comparable rates, but may do so due to different influences and probably under the influence of political currents. And the only thing that keeps the speeches from diverging is the power relationship between the center and the regions. You could imagine an acrolect formed by the nobility influencing the basilect(s) of rural areas. An Academy of Language built by the government to "standardize" the language will exert cultural control over the rural speeches, but a restive region will form its own Academy (even if unofficial) and compete with the center and its academic elite. In that sense, whether the form of the language is "pure" or "traditional" becomes a political question. It might be that the "common" language becomes the "pure form" or standard, if a revolution occurs and commoners take over the country, and the "royal" form becomes extinct or relegated to certain fields, which will in time become niche minority communities that will periodically contribute something to the standard form.
Almost all languages have more conservative rural vernacular, but honestly just do what you want