In
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
,
diglossia ' onMouseout='HidePop("92427")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Greek_language">Greek
Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
: διγλωσσία) is a situation where a given language community uses two languages or dialects: the first being the community's present day
vernacularVernacular is the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to lingua francas, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language...
and the second being either an ancestral version of the same vernacular from centuries earlier (e.g.:
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
), a distinct yet closely related present day dialect (e.g.
NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants ...
with
BokmålBokmål , is the more commonly used of the two Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85-90% of the population in Norway, regardless of dialect, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language.Bokmål is regulated by the...
and
NynorskNynorsk or New Norwegian is one of the two official written languages in Norway, the other being Bokmål. Just above 10% of the Norwegian population use Nynorsk as their primary written language...
, or
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
with
Standard MandarinStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
as the official, literary standard and colloquial topolects/dialects used in everyday communication) or another distinct language (such as in English and Maltese in
MaltaMalta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed European country in the European Union. The Southern European island nation is an archipelago that includes the inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a number of smaller, uninhabited islands...
).
Sociolinguistics
As an aspect of study of the relationships between codes and
social structureSocial structure is a term used in sociology and anthropology to refer to relationships or bonds between groups of individuals . Whereas 'structure' refers to "the macro", "agency" refers to "the micro"...
, diglossia is an important concept in the field of
sociolinguisticsSociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language,...
. At the social level, each of the two dialects has certain spheres of social interaction assigned to it and in the assigned spheres it is the only socially acceptable dialect (with minor exceptions). At the grammatical level, differences may involve pronunciation,
inflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language modifies word forms to handle grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect , person, number , gender, case . Beside conjugation and declension there is comparison with its maximum category number of two In...
, and/or
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
(sentence structure). Differences can range from minor (although conspicuous) to extreme. In many cases of diglossia, the two dialects are so divergent that they are distinct languages in the scientific sense of the term "language" used by
linguistsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
, namely: they are not mutually intelligible.
The dialect which is the genuine mother tongue is almost always held in low esteem; it is of low
prestigeIn sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society...
. Its spheres of use involve informal, interpersonal
communication Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules. Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of...
: conversation in the home, among friends, in marketplaces. In some diglossias, the vernacular dialect is virtually unwritten. It may be the case that those who try to give it a literature are severely criticized or even persecuted. The other dialect is held in high esteem and is devoted to written communication and formal spoken communication. Formal spoken communication typically encompasses university instruction, primary education, sermons, and speeches by government officials. It is usually not possible to acquire proficiency in the formal, "high" dialect without formal study of it. As a result, among those diglossic societies which are also characterized by extreme
inequalityIn mathematics, an inequality is a statement about the relative size or order of two objects, or about whether they are the same or not .*The notation a < b means that a is less than b....
of social classes, a large fraction of the population has no proficiency in speaking the high dialect, and if the high dialect is grammatically different enough, as in the case of Arabic diglossia, then these uneducated classes cannot understand most of the public speeches they might hear through television and radio. The high prestige dialect (or language, as the case may be) tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form.
Often, the phenomenon of diglossia is accompanied by numerous controversies and by
polarizationPolarization is a property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. This article primarily covers the polarization of electromagnetic waves such as light, although other types of wave also exhibit polarization....
of opinions of native speakers regarding the relationship between the two dialects and their proper respective
statusStatus is a state, condition or situation. In common usage it may refer to:*Social status*Economic status*HIV status*Legal status*Status quo*Status symbol*Status, a magazine edited by Igor Cassini...
es. In the case where the "high" dialect is objectively not intelligible to those exposed only to the
vernacularVernacular is the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to lingua francas, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language...
, some speakers insist that the two dialects are nevertheless a common language. The pioneering scholar of diglossia, Ferguson, observed that native speakers proficient in the high prestige dialect will commonly try to avoid using the vernacular dialect with foreigners and may even deny its existence, even though the vernacular is the only socially appropriate one for them themselves to use when speaking to their relatives and friends. Yet another common attitude is that the low dialect—which is everyone's native language--ought to be abandoned in favor of the high dialect, which presently is nobody's native language.
Etymology
The
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
term
diglossie was first coined (basically a transliteration of
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
διγλωσσία (
diglōssia), 'bilingualism') by the Greek linguist and
demoticistModern Greek refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features...
Ioannis PsycharisIoannis Psycharis was a philologist, author and promoter of Demotic Greek...
. The
ArabistThis is an article about the western scholars known as Arabists, not the political movement Pan-Arabism.An Arabist is someone who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, and often Arabic literature...
William Marçais used the term in 1930 to describe the linguistic situation in
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
-speaking countries.
Language registers and types of diglossia
In
Charles A. FergusonCharles A. Ferguson was a U.S. linguist who taught at Stanford University. He was one the founders of sociolinguistics and is best known for his work on diglossia. The TOEFL test was created under his leadership at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC...
's article "Diglossia" in the journal
Word (1959), diglossia was described as a kind of bilingualism in a given society in which one of the languages is (H), i.e. has high prestige, and another of the languages is (L), i.e. has low prestige. In Ferguson's definition, (H) and (L) are always closely related.
Joshua FishmanJoshua Aaron Fishman, born July 18, 1926) specializes in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.- Life :...
also talks about diglossia with unrelated languages as "extended diglossia" (Fishman 1967), for example
AlsatianAlsatian is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.-Linguistic family:...
(Elsässisch) in
AlsaceAlsace is the fourth-smallest of the 26 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the sixth-most densely populated region in France , with 222 inhabitants per km²...
as (L) and
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
as (H). Kloss calls the (H) variant
exoglossia and the (L) variant
endoglossia.
In some cases (especially with creole languages), the nature of the connection between (H) and (L) is not one of diglossia but a
continuumThe Post-creole continuum or simply Creole continuum refers to a situation wherein a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language...
; for example,
Jamaican CreoleJamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English–African creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English...
as (L) and Standard
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
as (H) in Jamaica.
(H) is usually the written language whereas (L) is the spoken language. In formal situations, (H) is used; in informal situations, (L) is used. One of the earliest known examples is Latin,
Classical LatinClassical Latin in simplest terms is the sociolinguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
being the (H) and
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin can be defined simply as colloquial Latin.-Origin of the term:...
the (L). The latter, which is almost completely unattested in text, is the tongue from which the
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
descended.
The (L) variants are not just simplifications or "corruptions" of the (H) variants. In phonology, for example, (L) dialects are as likely to have phonemes absent from the (H) as vice versa. Some Swiss German dialects have three phonemes, /e/, and , in the phonetic space where Standard German has only two phonemes, (
Berlin 'Berlin',
Bären 'bears') and (
Beeren 'berries'). Jamaican Creole has fewer vowel phonemes than standard Englishes, but it has additional palatal and phonemes.
Especially in endoglossia the (L) form may also be called "basilect", the (H) form "acrolect", and an intermediate form "mesolect".
Ferguson's classic examples include Standard German/
Swiss GermanSwiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy...
, Standard
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
/
vernacular ArabicThe Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties that diverge widely from one another—both from country to country and within a single country. A distinction is to be made between Classical/Standard Arabic and these "colloquial" variants...
, Standard French/
KréyòlThe word Kreyol may mean:*Liberian Kreyol language*Haitian Creole language *Louisiana Creole language -See also:**Creole peoples*creole language*Kriol*Krio*Kriolu*Criol*Criollo*Crioulo...
in Haiti,
KatharevousaKatharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century by Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais . A graduate of the University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris...
/
DhimotikiModern Greek refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features...
in
GreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
, and
BokmålBokmål , is the more commonly used of the two Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85-90% of the population in Norway, regardless of dialect, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language.Bokmål is regulated by the...
/
NynorskNynorsk or New Norwegian is one of the two official written languages in Norway, the other being Bokmål. Just above 10% of the Norwegian population use Nynorsk as their primary written language...
in Norway. Kréyòl is now recognised as a standard language in Haiti. Swiss German dialects are hardly languages with low prestige in Switzerland; and colloquial Arabic has more prestige in some respects than standard Arabic nowadays (see Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory). And after the end of the
military regimeThe Greek military junta of 1967–1974, alternatively "The Regime of the Colonels" , or in Greece "The Junta", and "The Seven Years" are terms used to refer to a series of right-wing military governments that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974...
in 1974, Dhimotiki was made into Greece's only standard language (1976). Nowadays, Katharevousa is (with few exceptions, e. g. by the Greek Orthodox Church) no longer used. Harold Schiffman writes about Swiss German: "it seems to be the case that Swiss German was once consensually agreed to be in a diglossic hierarchy with Standard German, but that this consensus is now breaking." There is also a lot of
code-switchingCode-switching is a linguistics term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals, people who speak more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
especially in the Arabic world; according to Andrew Freeman this is "different from Ferguson's description of diglossia which states that the two forms are in complementary distribution." To a certain extent, there is code switching and overlap in all diglossic societies, even German-speaking Switzerland.
Examples where the High/Low dichotomy is justified in terms of social prestige include
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
dialects as (L) and Standard Italian as (H) in Italy and German dialects and standard German in Germany. In Italy and Germany, those speakers who still speak dialects typically use dialect in informal situations, especially in the family. In German-speaking Switzerland, on the other hand, Swiss German dialects are to a certain extent even used in schools and to a larger extent in churches. Ramseier calls German-speaking Switzerland's diglossia a "medial diglossia", whereas Felicity Rash prefers "functional diglossia". Paradoxically, Swiss German offers both the best example for diglossia (all speakers are native speakers of Swiss German and thus diglossic) and the worst, because there is no clear-cut hierarchy.
English and the Norman invasion
Prior to the
Norman invasion of 1066The Norman conquest of England began in 1066 with the invasion of the Kingdom of England by the troops of William, Duke of Normandy, and his victory at the Battle of Hastings. This resulted in Norman control of England, which was firmly established during the subsequent few years. The Norman...
, Old English in its various dialects was spoken in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. For some centuries following the conquest, England had diglossia between a
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
-speaking ruling class and commoners who spoke
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
. As French gradually waned, English changed and took over until Modern English was created through the merger of this divide. However, there is still evidence of a division, between "academic" words and "common" words. Many "power" words (such as
bailiffA bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...
) are "academic".
Arabic
In all the
Arab WorldThe Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast...
, standard Arabic is H and local "colloquial" Arabic is L.
The situation with the
Literary ArabicStandard Arabic or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in formal speech...
(الفصحى
al-fuṣ-ḥā) vs spoken
varieties of ArabicThe Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties that diverge widely from one another—both from country to country and within a single country. A distinction is to be made between Classical/Standard Arabic and these "colloquial" variants...
(العامية
al-`āmmiyya or الدارجة
ad-dārija) differs from country to country but every Arab country's official language is "standard Arabic". There is no consensus on which version of Arabic should be taught to foreigners.
The debate continues about the future of the Arabic language, both among Arabic linguists in the Arab world and outside it. Some prefer the status quo (existing diglossia). The other suggestions are:
- Promote Modern Standard Arabic to be used colloquially, outside the formal situations, on an everyday basis by introducing more audio-material, enforcing the usage on mass-media. A lot of cartoons were created in MSA, which help young Arabs master the standard language before they start schooling. There are proposals to simplify the grammar of the standard Arabic a little (the most complicated and seldom used and understood features) and introduce some commonly known colloquial words (known across many dialects or groups of dialects). This idea is similar to the efforts in mainland China
China is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, TaiwanTaiwan , also known as Formosa , is the largest island of the Republic of China in East Asia. Taiwan is located east of the Taiwan Strait, off the southeastern coast of mainland China...
and SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
where Standard MandarinStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
has gained a lot of popularity and the number of speakers is increasing, including those who speak it on a daily basis or the situation with the Hebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
, see Revival of the Hebrew language, especially in IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
.
- Upgrade the individual dialects or merge dialects into possibly one spoken Arabic, thus formalizing spoken Arabic as a standard. Often it is advocated in individual Arabic countries, promoting only the main dialect of the given country. This idea was especially popular in Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
, where spoken Egyptian is often written down and there are works in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language of the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt around the capital Cairo...
(لهجة مصرية lahja Miṣriyya (in formal Arabic) or lahga Maṣreyya (in Egyptian dialect) - "Egyptian dialect") and other countries, e.g. Kateb YacineKateb Yacine was an Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic dialect, and his advocacy of the Algerian Berber cause.-Biography:...
wrote in Algerian ArabicAlgerian Arabic is the variety or varieties of Arabic spoken in Algeria. In Algeria, as elsewhere, spoken Arabic differs from written Arabic; Algerian Arabic has a Berber component, a vocabulary with many new words and loanwords from Berber, Turkish, Spanish, and French, and like all Arabic...
(لهجة جزائرية lahja Jazā'iriyya - "Algerian dialect"). The "formal spoken Arabic" includes more features of the standard Arabic and words are often selected, which are understood across a larger area. One such a version of "Formal Spoken Arabic" (based on Levantine ArabicLevantine Arabic is a group of Arabic varieties spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip known as the Levant, i.e. in western Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Palestine, Israel, and western Jordan...
) is taught at Georgetown UniversityGeorgetown University is a Jesuit private university located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Father John Carroll founded the school in 1789, though its roots extend back to 1634. While the school struggled financially in its early years, Georgetown expanded into a branched university after the...
and Foreign Service InstituteLocated in Arlington, Virginia, the Foreign Service Institute is the United States Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community. It is housed at the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center...
(both in the USA) . This second idea is similar to Evolution from Ancient to Modern Greek in GreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
. Many Arabic scholars are against this idea, as the current standard Arabic is essentially the "classical ArabicClassical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
" - the language of Qur'ānThe Qur’an is the central religious text of Islam...
(القرآن al-qur’ān) and is the literary standard in the Arab worldThe Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast...
.
Both ideas (the Hebrew (1) or the Greek (2) language reforms) have become feasible with the globalization and the increase of the internet and mass-media usage among Arabs but there must be consensus between governments, scholars and the population and the efforts to follow. The Al-Jazeera television and others did a lot to promote standard Arabic among Arabs.
Ibrahim Kayid Mahmoud, College Of Education, King Faisal University, Al-Hassa – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Literary Arabic between Diglossia and Bilingualism (excerpt):
...
- "The study has concluded that both diglossia and bilingualism are the inveterate enemies of literary Arabic; they try to annihilate it. They create a weak, hesitant, indecisive anxious individual, with limited horizons.
- Additionally, they constitute the direct cause of destroying creativity and scientific productivity. It is therefore imperative to protect Literary Arabic from the dangers of diglossia and bilingualism through taking the necessary measures to foster it and to give it due emphasis.Literary Arabic
Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in formal speech...
should be simplified and made more appealing to the younger generations. Educational institutions and mass media should also give it due emphasis. Current educational concepts should be utilized to promote literary Arabic. Arabic teachers should be adequately qualified. It is finally suggested that the teaching of foreign languages should be delayed until after age ten, a time at which Arab children have initially mastered their mother tongue – Arabic."
As mentioned above, the new Western term "Formal Spoken Arabic" (other terms include: "Educated Spoken Arabic", "Inter-Arabic", "Middle Arabic" and "Spoken MSA") is to describe the modern variety of Arabic spoken by educated Arabs, a mix between standard Arabic (
acrolect) and vernacular Arabic (
basilect). It is more common in Eastern Arabs states (Levante and the
GulfA gulf is a large bay that is an arm of an ocean or sea. For example, the Gulf of Mexico is the tenth largest body of water in the world.Gulf may also refer to:In places:* Arab states of the Persian Gulf* Gulf, California, USA...
) but sometimes used to described high-level Egyptian or Maghrebi Arabic. This new term represents a spoken language shared by Arabs from different regions when they have to communicate to each other. The pronunciation may reveal the speaker's origin but nevertheless, this simplified version of Arabic is becoming popular with foreign students who wish to be able communicate with a wide-range of Arabic speakers. As the base for the training, the
Levantine ArabicLevantine Arabic is a group of Arabic varieties spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip known as the Levant, i.e. in western Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Palestine, Israel, and western Jordan...
is often chosen, as the one considered by many as the closest to literary Arabic but teachers and students change according to the knowledge and interest. In Western Arab countries and Egypt the pure colloquial forms of Arabic are more dominant and, generally, knowledge and usage of standard Arabic is limited. Some speakers can easily maintain a conversation in standard Arabic, some prefer to switch to their vernacular dialect even in the formal situations.
Formal Spoken Arabic has been created through the impact of the Arab satellite channels, which are increasingly shaping the region's sociopolitical views, while also affecting the Arabic language itself.
Bengali
Traditionally,
BengaliBengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages....
exhibits diglossia in both written and spoken forms of the language's uppermost registers.
Shadhubhasha (সাধু shadhu = 'chaste' or 'sage'; ভাষা bhasha = 'language') exihibted longer verb inflections and heavily Sanskritized vocabulary. Up to the turn of the 19th century, most Bengali literature took this form.
Cholitbhasha(চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিত cholito = 'current' or 'running'), based on the formal registers of spoken, educated dialects, has much simpler grammatical forms, and has become the modern literary standard.
Brunei Malay
In
BruneiBrunei , officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace , is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia...
, Standard
MalayMalay is a group of languages closely related to each other to the point of mutual intelligibility but that linguists consider to be separate languages. They are grouped into a group called "Local Malay", part of a larger group called "Malayan" within the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the...
(Bahasa Melayu) is promoted as the national language and is the H variety, while Brunei Malay is used very widely throughout society and it constitutes the L variety. One major difference between these dialects of Malay is that Brunei Malay tends to have the verb at the front, while Standard Malay generally places it after the subject. It has been estimated that 84% of core vocabulary in Brunei Malay and Standard Malay is cognate, though their pronunciation often differs very considerably. While Standard Malay has six vowels, Brunei Malay has only three: /a, i, u/.
One complicating factor is that English is also widely used in Brunei, especially in education, as it is the medium of instruction from upper primary school onwards, so it shares the H role with Standard Malay. Another code that competes for the H role in some situations is the special palace register of Brunei Malay, which includes an elaborate system of honorific terms for addressing and referring to the Sultan and other nobles. Finally, although Standard Malay is used for sermons in the mosques (as expected for the H variety), readings from the
Qur'anThe Qur’an is the central religious text of Islam...
are in Arabic.
Catalan
With the exception of
AndorraAndorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of ...
,
CatalanCatalan is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencià , as well as in the city of Alghero on the Italian island of...
as spoken outside of Catalonia may be diglossic in various grades, from highly to barely diglossic. Diglossia in Catalan is typically stronger in metropolitan areas than in moderately to sparsely populated areas.
This phenomenon affects
AlgheroAlghero , is a town of about 42,000 inhabitants in Italy. It lies in the province of Sassari in northwestern Sardinia, next to the sea....
(whose local Catalan dialect remains in severe danger of extinction despite the recent revival in its usage), some areas in the
Balearic IslandsThe Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula....
, so-called "North Catalonia" and, in its
ValencianValencian is the historical, traditional, and official name used in the Valencian Community of Spain to refer to the region's native language....
modality, some areas in the
Valencian CommunityThe Valencian Community is an Autonomous Community located in central and south-eastern Spain. It is divided into three provinces, from south to north: Alicante, Valencia and Castellón....
as well.
Chinese
For over two thousand years, the Chinese used
Classical ChineseClassical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
(Literary Chinese) as a formal standard written language. The standard written language served as a bridge for communication throughout
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
(and other countries in the CJKV area) for millennia.
However, the colloquial
spoken ChineseSpoken Chinese comprises many regional varieties, the primary ones being Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These are not mutually intelligible, but for sociological and political reasons are considered a single Chinese language....
varieties continued to evolve. The gulf became so wide between the formal written and colloquial spoken languages that it was blamed for hindering education and literacy, and some even went so far as to blame it in part for the political turmoil that occurred in China during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This eventually culminated in the adoption of
Vernacular ChineseVernacular Chinese is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. This term is not to be confused with the various present-day vernacular spoken varieties of Chinese...
, which was based on
modern spoken MandarinStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, for all formal communication.
Modern Chinese
After the adoption of Vernacular Chinese as the modern standard written language in the early 20th century, diglossia was no longer a big issue among the majority of Chinese speakers who natively spoke
Mandarin ChineseStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
. However, Vernacular Chinese and its pronunciation in local dialects is still a formal
registerIn linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal In linguistics, a...
in regions where Mandarin is not spoken natively, such as most of
South ChinaSouth China or Southern China can refer to:* An approximate region within China; see Northern and southern China* South Central China* Southwest China* South China , an ancient continent studied in geology-Other uses:...
.
For instance in
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
,
Standard CantoneseCantonese sensu stricto, also known as Canton dialect or Guangzhou dialect, is the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese , especially when pronounced with a Canton City accent...
is the primary language of spoken communication, although all formal written communication is done in Vernacular Chinese. Unique among the other Chinese dialects, Cantonese has its own
written formWritten Cantonese refers to the written language used to write standard Cantonese using Chinese characters.Cantonese is spoken and not usually written since it doesn't enjoy the status of the national language. Literate Cantonese speakers of old often used Classical Chinese, or now Mandarin-based...
, but it is used only in informal contexts and is often inconsistent due to the absence of standardization.
Literate Chinese speakers can read and write in the Mandarin-based standard written language. However because the
graphemeA grapheme is a fundamental unit in a written language. Examples of graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems, although arguably a diacritical mark or ancillary glyph does not...
s in Chinese's
logographicA logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are commonly known also as "ideograms" or "hieroglyphics", which...
writing system are not directly linked to pronunciation (though there are quasi-phonetic hints), Cantonese speakers who do not speak Mandarin will read aloud the
charactersA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
in Cantonese pronunciation only. The resulting speech is Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary pronounced word-by-word in Cantonese. If the same sentence were to be spoken using regular colloquial Cantonese, it might be quite different. Here is an example:
| English Sentence |
Please give me his book. |
| Standard written Chinese rendition (Traditional Chinese character Traditional Chinese characters are the two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century The retronym...
s) |
|
| Standard written Chinese rendition (Simplified Chinese character Simplified Chinese Characters are one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. They are based mostly on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms that were used in printed text for over a thousand...
s) |
|
| Standard Mandarin pronunciation of writing |
Qǐng gěi wǒ tā de shū. |
| Cantonese Pronunciation of Writing |
Chíng kāp ngóh tā dīk syū. |
| Written colloquial Cantonese rendition |
|
| Colloquial Cantonese pronunciation |
M̀h-gōi béi kéuih bún syū ngóh. |
- Note: Mandarin romanized using Hanyu Pinyin
Pinyin , or more formally Hanyu Pinyin , is currently the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu means the Chinese language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"...
. Cantonese romanized using YaleThe Yale romanizations are four systems created at Yale University for romanizing the four East Asian languages of Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese...
. Written CantoneseWritten Cantonese refers to the written language used to write standard Cantonese using Chinese characters.Cantonese is spoken and not usually written since it doesn't enjoy the status of the national language. Literate Cantonese speakers of old often used Classical Chinese, or now Mandarin-based...
shown uses characters not in standard written Chinese.
In the above example, note the switching of the direct and indirect objects and the use of different vocabulary for certain words in the standard Chinese and colloquial Cantonese renditions. In addition,
Cantonese grammarCantonese is an analytic language where, in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning. A basic sentence is in form of SVO, i.e. a subject is followed by a verb then by an object, though this order is often violated because Cantonese is a Topic-prominent language. Unlike...
allows the use of
measure wordIn linguistics, measure words, known more formally as numeral classifiers and also called counters, count words, counter words, or counting words, are words that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate the count of nouns...
s to serve in the place of a
genitiveIn grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
particleA particle, in grammar, is a function word that is not assignable to any of the traditional grammatical word classes . The term is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of elements and lacks a precise universal definition...
.
Cantonese pronunciation of standard written Chinese is generally understandable to Cantonese speakers educated in the standard written language. It is most often used in Cantonese newscasts, albeit with certain substitutions of colloquial Cantonese vocabulary so as to make it not sound as stilted. This form of spoken Cantonese can be considered a higher register compared to the colloquial spoken Cantonese.
Classical Chinese
Before the modern adoption of Vernacular Chinese, the diglossic situation also applied to Mandarin speakers when Classical Chinese was the standard written language.
Continuing the previous example for comparison, using Classical Chinese it would be:
| Classical Chinese rendition (Traditional Chinese character Traditional Chinese characters are the two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century The retronym...
s) |
|
| Classical Chinese rendition (Simplified Chinese character Simplified Chinese Characters are one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. They are based mostly on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms that were used in printed text for over a thousand...
s) |
|
| Standard Mandarin pronunciation of Classical Chinese |
Qiú ěr yǔ wǒ qí shū. |
| Cantonese pronunciation of Classical Chinese |
Kàuh yíh yúh ngóh kèih syū. |
Because Chinese's logographic writing system doesn't indicate exact pronunciation, the pronunciation of Classical Chinese in
Old ChineseOld Chinese , or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty , well into the Former Han Dynasty . There are several distinct sub-periods within that long period of time...
is generally not possible (though tentative reconstructions of the phonology of Old Chinese have been attempted). Instead, Classical Chinese is also generally pronounced according to the local dialect (such as the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations given above), much like how Cantonese speakers pronounce the modern Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese using Cantonese.
Unlike the situation with modern Chinese, however, Classical Chinese spoken according to the pronunciations of the modern spoken Chinese varieties is still largely unintelligible without training due to the syntax and vocabulary changes that Chinese has undergone since Old Chinese. In addition, sound mergers in the modern dialects cause many distinct words in Classical Chinese to sound
homophonousA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
. For one notable example, see
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone DenThe Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is a famous example of constrained writing by Yuen Ren Chao which consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi in different tones when read in Mandarin....
.
Galician
Galicia is a classic example of diglossia, as the majority language
GalicianGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, as well as in small bordering zones in the neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castile and León and in Northern Portugal.Galician and Portuguese...
is regarded by most native speakers as inferior to the State language,
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
, or
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
. Since the sixteenth century the upper layers of the Galician society, i.e. the town gentry, the civil servants and the Church, used Spanish as their main or only language whereas the vast majority of the population, made up of peasants and fishermen, continued to speak Galician. This entrenched a perception of Galician as a language of inferior people that prevented social promotion. Thus, when urbanization spread in earnest in the mid twentieth century the new middle classes and urban blue collar cohorts started to adopt Spanish in a diglossic context, Galician at home and Spanish at work. This is a situation that persists to a slightly lesser degree to this day even as both languages are official and the Galician language now enjoys a relatively strong industrial culture and media.
To make things more complicated a similar relationship exists between spoken Galician or Leonese and the literary standard that was developed when Galician became official language in 1983, as native speakers resent the fact the standard lacks naturality, does not include widely assumed phonetic or lexical features of the spoken language such as
gheadaGheada is a linguistic phenomenon of Galician which consists of pronouncing the phoneme /g/ as /ħ/ or, more commonly, /h/ , similar to the [h] in English house...
(pronouncing "g" as the English "h" as in /halicia/ instead of
Galicia) as well as reintroducing Galician words that have long been replaced in the spoken language by their Spanish and in some cases English equivalents. Therefore it is not uncommon to find native Galician speakers that for instance speak colloquial Galician at home, Spanish at work and standard Galician in public events or when liaising with the Public Administration.
Greek
Until the 1970s, the
Greek languageGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
distinguished between
DimotikiDimotiki or demotic is the modern vernacular form of the Greek language. The term has been in use since 1818. Dimotiki refers particularly to the form of the language that evolved naturally from ancient Greek, in opposition to the artificially archaic Katharevousa, which was the official standard...
, the colloquial language which was used in everyday discussions and the extremely formal and archaic
KatharevousaKatharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century by Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais . A graduate of the University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris...
, which was used in more "educated" contexts, as in school, in court, in law texts etc. Extreme Katharevousa was, in fact, nearly pure
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, and as such, nearly completely unintelligible to children and adults without higher education; however there was a linguistic spectrum, with so-called Simple Katharevousa quite close to Dimotiki, and the emerging urban standard of Dimotiki making more concessions to Katharevousa than its more radical form. The
Greek language questionThe Greek language question was a dispute discussing the question whether the language of the Greek people or a cultivated imitation of Ancient Greek should be the official language of the Greek nation. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries and was finally resolved...
, from the 1890s on, was a heated dispute on which language form was to be the official language of the state: unlike typical diglossic situations, the primacy of the H variant was disputed, and the choice of variant became politicized, with Dimotiki associated with the left wing and Katharevousa with the right; morphological choices could even end up used as political shibboleths. This dispute was eventually settled, and today the single language used in all texts is an educated variant of
DimotikiDimotiki or demotic is the modern vernacular form of the Greek language. The term has been in use since 1818. Dimotiki refers particularly to the form of the language that evolved naturally from ancient Greek, in opposition to the artificially archaic Katharevousa, which was the official standard...
, which was enriched by many expressions from
KatharevousaKatharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century by Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais . A graduate of the University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris...
. This variant is commonly called
Modern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features...
.
The contemporary linguistic situation in
CyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey and west of Syria and Lebanon....
is also diglossic, with
Modern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features...
taking the H role, and
Cypriot GreekThe Cypriot dialect of Greek, known as Kypriaka , Cypriot Greek , or simply Cypriot, is spoken by 750,000 people in Cyprus and hundreds of thousands abroad.-Usage and settings:...
the L role.
Hindi
Hindi has two forms: the H form called
shuddh(a) Hindi and the L form called
Hindustani. Both are based on the same dialect:
Khariboli. Schiffman writes:
When Hindustani was chosen as the national languageA national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
of independent IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
, supposedly because of its wide use as a lingua franca in the area, steps were immediately taken to develop an H variety, highly Sanskritized in vocabulary, since the vernaculars of Hindi then in existence seemed to be too "Low" for many citizens of the country. Of course diglossicization as a value may vary from sub-culture to sub-culture in the region, but it cannot be denied that the overall view in South Asia and peninsular Southeast Asia is pro-diglossic.
The L variety, Hindustani (often simply called Hindi) contains many loanwords from Persian and Arabic (brought by the Muslim rulers in medieval times), along with a massive vocabulary of English loanwords which increase day by day. The L variety is identical with spoken Urdu—except for the fact that the latter is written in Persio-Arabic script. The H variety was standardized in the 1960s during the movement to adopt
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
as national language of Indian Union.
Shuddh (lit., pure) Hindi primarily uses loanwords from Sanskrit to replace not only English loanwords, but also loanwords from
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
and Arabic which had been nativized for centuries. These words are called
tatsam words, and they even replaced many
tadbhav words, i.e. words with Sanskrit origin but having undergone profound phonological changes. The H variety was chiefly (though not exclusively) propounded by the Hindu nationalists (see
HindutvaHindutva is the term used to describe movements advocating Hindu nationalism....
) who frowned upon Persian and Arabic vocabulary because it came from Muslim cultures.
An example is the Hindi version of the sentence: "This morning I read the newspaper but could not study those books."
| Shuddh Hindi |
āj |
prātaḥ |
maĩ |
samāchār-patr(a) |
paḍhā, |
parantu |
un |
pustankõ |
kā |
adhyayan |
nahĩ |
kar |
sakā. |
| Hindustani |
āj |
subah |
maĩ |
akhbār |
paḍhā, |
lekin |
un |
kitābõ |
kī |
paḍhāī |
nahĩ |
kar |
sakā. |
| Gloss |
today |
morning |
I |
newspaper |
read.Perfective |
but |
those |
books |
of |
study |
not |
do |
could.Perfective |
Here,
prātaḥ, samāchār-patr(a) and
parantu are loanwords from Sanskrit used in the H form, versus the Arabic loanwords
subah, akhbār and
lekin which are rather more popular in speech.
Adhyayan is loanwords from Sanskrit which can even replace native
tadhbhav word
paḍhāī (which in turn is derived from Sanskrit
paṭhana after phonological changes). Sanskrit morpho-phonemics is more complex than native
HindustaniHindustani or Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language that spans several closely related dialects in Pakistan and northern India. Although Hindustani is based largely on the Khariboli dialect, it also includes several nonstandard dialects of the Hindi languages...
one, and hence many encounter difficulty in pronouncing phoneme clusters such as word-initial /pr/, word final /t̪r/ and word-middle /d̪ʱj/ as seen in the example above. On the other hand, the H form has highly minimized the use of Persian and Arabic phonemes /z/, /f/, /x/, /ɣ/ and /q/. Partly because they are written in the
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
alphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...
(devanagari, strictly speaking an alpha-syllabary) as a dot beneath traditionally existing alphabets (ज़, फ़, ख़, ग़, क़ ), and the dot is omitted in casual writing, many Hindi speakers mistake them for the
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
phonemes /dʒ/, /pʰ/, /kʰ/, /ɡ/ and /k/.
The L variety is used in common speech, tv serials and Bollywood movies and songs. The H variety is used in official and government writings, scholarly books and magazines, signboards, public announcements and public speaking.
Leonese
Leonese languageThe Leonese language developed from Vulgar Latin with contributions from the pre-Roman languages which were spoken in the territory of the Spanish provinces of León, Zamora, and Salamanca and in some villages in the District of Bragança, Portugal. Close to Mirandese and Asturian, it belongs to...
is a minority language in Spain and Portugal, affected by diglossia in both territories. Leonese language has been recognized in the Autonomy Statute of
Castile and LeonCastile and León , known formally as the Community of Castile and León, is one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain. It was constructed from Old Castile and León in 1983...
(Spain) but is not an official language. Leonese minorities in Portugal have no official recognition, and only Mirandese was recognized officially by the Portuguese Parliament in 1999.In the case of the
Leonese languageThe Leonese language developed from Vulgar Latin with contributions from the pre-Roman languages which were spoken in the territory of the Spanish provinces of León, Zamora, and Salamanca and in some villages in the District of Bragança, Portugal. Close to Mirandese and Asturian, it belongs to...
, Leonese is used by the minority of people, and Spanish or Portuguese the majority. So Leonese language can be used just at home and between parents and relatives, while at work or in public Leonese regional Spanish is the widely used language.
Leonese language was only recognised in 2007, and just 16 schools offer the possibility of learning Leonese language as an out-school activity for children from 10 to 12 years old.
Maltese
MaltaMalta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed European country in the European Union. The Southern European island nation is an archipelago that includes the inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a number of smaller, uninhabited islands...
is officially a bilingual country: both
MalteseMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
and
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
are official languages.
MalteseMaltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
is a Semitic language with extensive Italian influence.
Maltese society has been traditionally quite strongly divided, politically, between the working class and middle and upper classes and this is reflected in their language use. Although all Maltese can speak their native language, the extent to which one uses and is able to speak English often reflects one's background. This is most clearly illustrated by the different newspapers in Malta: the liberal/conservative ones are in English (with names like the
Times of Malta and
Malta Independent) and the more left-leaning ones are in Maltese. Maltese people of a middle- and upper-class background will often speak English or use
code-switchingCode-switching is a linguistics term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals, people who speak more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
extensively in public. There have been warnings from several quarters including a linguistics professor from the
University of MaltaThe University of Malta is the highest educational institution in Malta. It offers undergraduate Bachelor's Degrees, which last between three and five years, and postgraduate Master's Degrees that last two years full-time....
that the Maltese language could become endangered if the government (currently the right of centre Nationalists) does not do more to promote it, in the same way that English displaced
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
in
WalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It is also an elective region of the European Union...
.
Before 1934,
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
was the official language of Malta. Those in higher class positions spoke Italian, and were often associated with the Italian irredenta movement, which promoted the unification of Malta with Italy. It was only those of lower class at the time, whose ancestors came from
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Several much smaller islands surrounding it are considered to be part of Sicily....
too long ago for them to still be fluent in Italian, who spoke Maltese. Today, the influence of the Italian language is still very present in Malta. Not only is it used in the professional workplace but also it is key to Malta's media, such as Television, Radio, and publications .
Before the partitions
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
, with respect to the
Upper classIn sociology an upper class is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area, but only to the extent that the power of the state can intervene in free exchange or distort...
of the Polish
societySociety or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....
within the Kingdom of Poland, most especially landed nobility, was a low language until
Jan KochanowskiJan Kochanowski was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language....
stopped writing in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
, the high language of the time, and decided to use his own native Polish as the literary language during the late sixteenth century. Polish, however, was often, but not always, the high language during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the
Grand Duchy of LithuaniaThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an Eastern and Central European state from the 12th /13th century until 1795. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the pagan Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija...
in spite of the early
BelarusianThe Belarusian language, or Belorussian is the language of the Belarusian people and is spoken in Belarus and abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland...
being the official language.
Between World War One and World War Two
Before World War Two, the Polish Inteligentsia and those trying to emulate them, over-pronounced the words with hard "h" such as "" ("hook" in Polish) to know when to spell a word with "h," and when to spell the soft "h" sound with "ch" as in "" ("bread" in Polish). An example of a person using this method to spell properly is
Jerzy PetersburskiJerzy Petersburski was a Polish pianist and composer of popular music, renowned mostly for his Tangos, some of which were milestones in popularization of the musical genre in Poland and are still widely known today, more than half a century after their creation.Jerzy Petersburski was born April 20...
.
Portuguese
According to some contemporary
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean...
ian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini and most recently, with great impact, Bagno),
Brazilian PortugueseBrazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by virtually all the almost 200 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay.Roughly speaking, the differences...
may be a highly diglossic language. This theory claims that there is an L-variant (termed "Brazilian Vernacular"), which would be the mother tongue of all Brazilians, and an H-variant (standard Brazilian Portuguese) acquired through schooling. L-variant represents a simplified form of the language (in terms of grammar, but not of phonetics) that could have evolved from 16th century
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
, influenced by other European,
AmerindianIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
(mostly
TupianThe Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members, and classification:...
) and
African languagesThere are an estimated 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. The American linguist Joseph Greenberg argued that they fall into six major linguistic families:*Afroasiatic stretches from North Africa to the Horn of Africa and Southwest Asia....
, while H-variant would be based on 19th century
European PortugueseEuropean Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well in the Azores and Madeira islands...
(and very similar to Standard European Portuguese, with only minor differences in
spellingThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
and grammar usage). Mário A. Perini, a Brazilian linguist, even compares the depth of the differences between L- and H- variants of Brazilian Portuguese with those between Standard Spanish and Standard Portuguese. Milton M. Azevedo wrote a chapter on diglossia in his monography:
Portuguese language (A linguistic introduction), published by prestigious
Cambridge University Press, in 2005, parts of which are available freely on Google books.
Russian
Russian, the language spoken in Russia, was the low language from the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
till the
BaroqueBaroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in...
period while Church Slavonic served for all official purposes.
Examples of Old Church Slavonic influence on Russian
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Urdu
In
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
there is a diglossia between the extremely
PersianisedPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
/ Arabicized Urdu (used by the literary elite such as poets, writers, and Government officials), and a colloquial Urdu that is very similar to colloquial
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
(spoken by common people, and known as
HindustaniHindustani or Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language that spans several closely related dialects in Pakistan and northern India. Although Hindustani is based largely on the Khariboli dialect, it also includes several nonstandard dialects of the Hindi languages...
among linguists).
Sinhala
Sinhala (also known as Sinhalese), spoken in Sri Lanka, is a diglossic language. There are several differences between the
literary languageA literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
(also known as Literary Sinhala, LS) and the
spoken languageSpoken language is a form of communication in which words derived from a large vocabulary together with a diverse variety of names are uttered through or with the mouth. All words are made up from a limited set of vowels and consonants. The spoken words they make are stringed into syntactically...
(Spoken Sinhala, SS), especially about verbs:
- different personal pronouns:
- "he, she": LS ; SS (lit. "that one", common);
- lack of inflection of the verb in SS:
- "I do", "you (sing.) do": LS , (inflected); SS , (not-inflected, the same form for all persons)
- lack of future tense in SS, substituted by present tense plus optional temporal adverb:
- LS "I will go"; SS "tomorrow I will go" (lit. "tomorrow I go");
- different verbal forms (e.g. present participle in LS versus reduplicated form in SS);
- different adposition
In grammar, a preposition is a part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. For example, in the sentence "The cat sleeps on the sofa", the word "on" is a preposition, introducing the prepositional phrase "on the sofa". In English, the most used prepositions are "of", "to", "in", "for",...
s:
- "with": LS ; SS
- "from" (temporal): LS ; SS
- "before" : LS ; SS ,
- different vocabulary, e.g.:
- "to help": LS ; SS
- "to touch": LS ; SS
- "to marry": LS ; SS
- "to study": LS ; SS
- "to fight": LS ; SS
Literary or written Sinhala is commonly understood, and used in literary texts and formal occasions (public speeches, TV and radio news broadcasts, etc.), whereas the spoken language is used as the language of communication in everyday life. Children are taught the written language at school almost like a foreign language.
Singapore English
Many analysts regard the use of
EnglishEnglish may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to England, a constituent country of the United Kingdom, especially:* the English people* the English language...
in Singapore as diglossic, with Singapore Standard English (SStdE) forming the H variety and Singapore Colloquial English (SCE, also known as '
SinglishSinglish is an English-based creole used in Singapore. According to the 2000 census, which does not distinguish between Singlish and English, "English" is the lingua franca of Singapore and 71% of Singaporeans are literate in the language...
') constituting the L variety. SStdE is similar to other varieties of
Standard EnglishStandard English is a term generally applied to a form of the English language that is normative for educated native speakers...
in grammar and
lexisLexis may refer to:* Lexis , the total bank of words and phrases of a particular language, the artifact of which is known as a lexicon...
but with some of its own features of pronunciation, particularly the use of full
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s (rather than ) in most function words and also the sporadic absence of
dental fricativeDental fricative or interdental fricative - non-sibilant coronal fricative.There are two basic types: - voiced dental fricative - voiceless dental fricativeA thibilant is a term occasionally found for an dental fricative....
s, while SCE is characterised by a simplified grammar (including the omission of some conjunctions and the
copulaIn linguistics, a copula , also called a "passive verb" or "linking verb", is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate . The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a link or tie that connects two different things.A copula is sometimes a verb or a verb-like part of speech...
verb BE) and regular use of pragmatic particles such as
lah and
ah, as well as frequent inclusion of Hokkien and Malay words.
However, other analysts prefer to see variation in the English spoken in Singapore along a continuum, with the style adopted depending on the education level and circumstances of the conversation. Some proficient speakers who are well-educated have been shown to use mostly SStdE but with lots of pragmatic particles when talking to their friends, and this seems to provide evidence to support the continuum analysis.
It is certainly true that speakers are able to switch quite abruptly, for example as they exit a classroom and start chatting to their friends, so one way or another there are many characteristics of diglossia in spoken Singapore English.
Tagalog
TagalogTagalog is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines by about 22 million people.It is related to Austronesian languages such as Chamorro , Indonesian, Malay, Javanese and Paiwan , Cham , and Tetum...
is the language spoken in the southern part of
LuzonLuzon is the largest and most economically and politically important island in the Philippines and one of the three island groups in the country, with Visayas and Mindanao being the other two...
, the northernmost group of islands in the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
. Southern Luzon covers the provinces around the capital Metro Manila, and includes the capital itself. The language spoken by majority of residents of Luzon, Tagalog, is the basis for the country's
national languageA national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
,
FilipinoFilipino is the national language of the Philippines and, along with English, is an official language; designated in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. Filipino is an Austronesian language that is based on various existing native languages in the Philippines, with a significant number of Spanish...
, which is basically the standardized form of the Tagalog spoken in Metro Manila.
Tagalogs (ethnic group) originating from provinces outside of Metro
ManilaThe City of Manila , or simply Manila or Maynila, is the capital of the Philippines and one of the 17 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila. It is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay, on the western portion of the National Capital Region, in the western side of Luzon...
speak their own
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
of Tagalog. An example is of the province Batangas, which has its own dialect of Batangueño Tagalog. Speakers of Batangueño Tagalog who go to Manila often suppress their dialect and
accent-Speech and language:* Accent , pronunciation common to a certain language dialect* Accent , of a word* Stress , tone levels and emphasis used in many languages to provide information when using the language...
, eventually learning to use the Manila dialect. They would speak their native dialect only when they gather with others of their group. Also, having a regional accent is usually met with amusement, but it is not frowned upon. And although there are some who would maintain their accents, their use is very minimal outside their hometowns and peers.
At the moment, very little is written using any other dialect of Tagalog other than that of Manila.
Tamil
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius and Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world...
is a diglossic language spoken in
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai . Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by Puducherry , Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh...
, a state in southern India and Northern,Eastern Regions of Sri Lanka. The classic form of the language — called "Senthamizh" - is different from the spoken form known since ancient times as
Iyatramizh.
The classic form is preferred for writing, and is also used for public speaking. While the written
Tamil languageTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius and Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world...
is mostly standard across various Tamil-speaking regions, the spoken form of the language differs widely from the written form. The diglossic form of Tamil has held back its development as a language. Therefore, Perunchitthranar, a Tamil nationalist and others of his ilk, advocated that all Tamils speak only the pure form of the language, i.e., Senthamizh.
Tamil fiction-writers use "Senthamizh" for all descriptive writing and use "Iyatramizh" only to narrate conversations between the characters in their works. There have been exceptions to this rule. Noted novelist
Kalki KrishnamurthyKalki was the pen name of R. Krishnamurthy , an Indian freedom fighter, novelist, short-story writer, journalist, satirist, travel writer, script-writer, poet, critic, and connoisseur of the arts.- Life :...
once dismissed "Senthamizh" as "Kodunthamizh" (tortured Tamil) although his novels are written almost entirely in Senthamizh, both description and conversation. Even though all Tamils—no matter how educated they are—always converse in colloquial Tamil, Tamil novels used to depict educated people speaking in the classic form. Several decades ago, most Tamil movies had characters who spoke in classical Tamil.
Regional and caste differences can be distinctly heard in spoken Tamil. Tamil in the state capital Chennai (formerly Madras) is somewhat distinct from that spoken elsewhere. Due to its proximity to
Andhra PradeshAndhra Pradesh , abbreviated A.P., is a state situated on the south-eastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Hyderabad...
, Chennai Tamil has more Telugu loan words than the Tamil spoken in southern Tamil Nadu. Chennai
Iyatramizh also often has more words of
UrduUrdu is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the two official languages of Pakistan. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of five Indian states...
(or Deccani) than do varieties of Tamil from elsewhere in the state.
Throughout Tamil Nadu, there are several varieties of spoken Tamil. Tamil Brahmins speak a sort of "brahmin Tamil". The largely agrarian middle castes converse in their own dialect of
Iyatramizh; this is the 'standard' spoken Tamil of today's Tamil movies and fiction. Similarly, the Scheduled Castes speak forms of Iyatramizh with clear grammatical differences from the varieties of other castes.
However, regional differences are more interesting to note. The Tamil dialects spoken by people in Northern districts of Tamil Nadu like Arcot, Chennai and Southern districts like Tirunelveli and Madurai are somewhat different from each other. Like in other parts of the world, the dialectical differences between various regions are vanishing due to the influence of mass communications. So apparently are the differences between the speech patterns of the various caste groupings in Tamil Nadu. It is important to note that all forms of spoken Tamil have always been mutually intelligible. Also see Tamil for dialectical variations in
Iyatramizh
Kannada
Kannada along with Sinhalese and
TamilTamil people , are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, a state in India, and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. They speak Tamil , with a recorded history going back two millennia. Emigrant communities are found across the world...
communities is diglossic. Translated into the school or the classroom situation, by 'being diglossic' is meant that these communities have accepted norms of linguistic excellence, the teaching of which is the purpose of the language teaching curriculum in the school. This normative variety of language is the one that people are expected to write. It is distinct from the various spoken dialects in
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
, lexis and phonology in spite of the shared features which make them mutually comprehensible to some extent. Similar situations are known in almost all language teaching activities everywhere, but, the
linguisticIn the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
values associated with diglossia are different from the overtones of 'good usage' that all teachers of all languages attempt to inculcate in the learners
http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/diglossia/link1.htm
Ukrainian
Using the
Matched-Guise TestThe Matched-Guise Test is a sociolinguistic experiment technique employed by a method and its most related research in two or more guises, which has been lately known as matched-guise or matched-guise model...
, Laada Bilaniuk (University of Michigan) administered surveys to 2,000 participants in Ukraine. In her article "Diglossia in Flux: Language and Ethnicity in Ukraine", Bilaniuk reports that until now, Russian has been the High language and
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
the Low language. However, her data shows that diglossia in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
is shifting.
Now, both standard
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
and standard
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
are considered the High languages, and the Low category is filled with all non-standard dialects of the High languages.
See also
- Register (linguistics)
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal In linguistics, a...
- Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache
The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework is a tool developed by sociolinguists for analysing and categorising the status of language varieties along the cline between autonomous languages on the one hand and dialects on the other. The terms were coined by Heinz Kloss...
- Standard language
A standard language is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status...
- Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. Dialects separated by great geographical distances may not be...
- Pluricentric language
A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not, or did not, coincide.-English:...
- Bilingualism
- Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language,...
Ukrainian/Russian
- Diglossia in flux: language and ethnicity in Ukraine. Texas Linguistic Forum (1993) 33:79-88.
Yavorska Galyna M. Prescriptyvna lingvistyka yak dyskurs: Mova, kultura, vlada (Prescriptive linguistics as a discourse: Language. Culture. Power). Kyiv, VIPOL, 2000. - 288 p.
Yavorska G. Do problemy naivnoyi linguistyky (On the problem of folk linguistics). - Lingvistychni studii. Cherkassy, 1999, # 3. - 13-20.
Yavorska G. Dejaki osoblyvosti movnykh kontaktiv blyz'kosporidnenykh mov (do kharakterystyky ukrain's'koho puryzmu) (On contacts of closely related languages: some features of Ukrainian purism). In memoria of K. Trofymovych. L'viv, Litopys, 1998.
Other sources for reference (by Bilaniuk)
- The Languages of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. REECAS Newsletter, Russian, East European & Central Asian Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington (Spring).
- A typology of surzhyk: mixed Ukrainian-Russian language. International Journal of Bilingualism 8(4):409-425.
- Gender, language attitudes, and language status in Ukraine. Language in Society. 32:47-78.
- Pidsvidome stavlennia do mov: zerkalo movnoï polityky. (Subconscious language attitudes: a mirror of language politics.) Urok Ukraïnskoï (Ukrainian journal for educators and language planners). Kyiv. 7:5-8. [Based on 1998 "Purity & power" data.]
- Kartyna movnoho svitohliadu v Ukraïni. (Linguistic ideology in Ukraine). Movoznavstvo (major Ukrainian linguistics journal). 4/5:44-51. [Based on 1997 "Matching guises" data.]
- Movna krytyka i samovpevnenist': ideolohichni vplyvy na status mov v Ukraïni. [Linguistic criticism and self-confidence: ideological influences on language status in Ukraine]. Derzhavnist' ukraïns'koï movy i movnyi dosvid svitu: materialy mizhnarodnoï konferentsiï. *Kyiv: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Pp. 131–138.
- Speaking of surzhyk: ideologies and mixed languages. Harvard Ukrainian Studies. 21(1/2):93-117.
- Purity and power: the geography of language ideology in Ukraine. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 13:165-189.
- Matching guises and mapping language ideologies in Ukraine. Texas Linguistic Forum 37:298-310.