Language interference
Encyclopedia
Language transfer refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching
, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language.
When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer — "correct" meaning in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates. Note, however, that language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages. Within the theory of contrastive analysis
(the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities), the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected.
The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed, and thus are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have a large effect. Generally speaking, the more similar the two languages are, and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. For example, an Anglophone
learner of German
may correctly guess an item of German vocabulary from its English counterpart, but word order
and collocation
are more likely to differ, as will connotations. Such an approach has the disadvantage of making the learner more subject to the influence of "false friend
s".
The most obvious and used proactive interference and negative transfer paradigm from the 1950s and 1960s was the use of AB-AC, or AB-DE lists. Participants would be asked to learn a list of paired associates in which each pair consists of a three letter consonant vowel consonant, nonsense syllable (e.g. DYL), used because it was easy to learn and lacked pre-learned cognitive associations, and a common word (e.g. road). In this paradigm two lists of paired associations are learned. The first list, (commonly known as the AB list) would consist of nonsense syllables as a primer (which constituted the ‘A’ term), followed by a word (which constituted the ‘B’ term). The second list would consist of either the same nonsense syllable primer and a different word (A-C list) or a different nonsense syllable primer and a different word (D-E list). The AB-AC list was used because its second set of associations (A-C) constitutes a modification of the first set of associations (A-B), whereas the AB-DE list were used as a control.
Shortly afterwards proactive interference was demonstrated with the Brown-Peterson paradigm. A single Brown-Peterson trial consists of a study list, a retention interval and then a recall period. Each list may consist of a handful of related items and are presented individually every few seconds. For the duration of a short retention interval, subjects are then asked to perform an engaging distractor task such as counting backwards in sevens, or thinking of an animal with every letter in the alphabet to minimize rehearsal. Subjects are then asked to recall the items from this second list. Although the lists from previous trials are now irrelevant, the fact that they were studied at all makes it difficult for subjects to recall the most recent list.
Negative transfer was examined by researchers in the 60s and found differential learning between trials. Specifically, differences in the learning rates of list 2 provided clear evidence of the negative transfer phenomenon. Subjects learned an A-C paired association list to a criterion of all associations correct, following learning a list of A-B paired associations to criterion. Ultimately, it was found that those subjects took an increased amount of trials to complete the learning task compared to subjects who didn’t learn the A-B list or from subjects who had to learn a D-E list.
. Consciously, learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage. Unconsciously, they may not realize that the structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different. Such users could also be aware of both the structures and internal rules, yet be insufficiently skilled to put them into practice, and consequently often fall back on their first language.
individuals when comprehending verbal utterances or written language. For instance, German
and English
both have relative clauses
with a noun
-noun-verb
(=NNV) order but which are interpreted differently in both languages:
German example: Das Mädchen, das die Frau küsst, ist blond
Word by word this German relative clause translates
to
English example: The girl that the woman is kissing is blonde.
The German and the English examples differ in that in German the subject
role can be taken by das Mädchen (the girl) or die Frau (the woman) while in the English example only the second noun phrase
(the woman) can be the subject. In short: The German example is syntactically
ambiguous
because it can be the girl or the woman who does the kissing. In the English example it can only be the woman who does the kissing.
The ambiguity of the German NNV relative clause structure becomes obvious in cases where the assignment of subject
and object
role is disambiguated. This can be because of case marking if one of the nouns is grammatically male
as in Der Mann, den die Frau küsst… (The man that the woman is kissing…) vs. Der Mann, der die Frau küsst (The man that is kissing the woman) because in German the male definite article marks the accusative case
. The syntactic ambiguity of the German example also becomes obvious in the case of semantic disambiguation. For instance in Das Eis, das die Frau isst… and Die Frau, die das Eis isst… (both: The woman that is eating the ice cream) only das Eis (ice cream) is a plausible object.
Because in English relative clauses with a noun-noun-verb structure (as in the example above) the first noun can only be the object
, native speakers
of English who speak German as a second language
are more likely to interpret ambiguous German NNV relative clauses as object relative clauses (= object-subject-verb order) than German native speakers who prefer an interpretation in which the first noun phrase is the subject (subject-object-verb order). This is because they have transferred their parsing
preference from their first language English to their second language German.
, depending on the speaker’s first language. Some examples, labeled with a blend
of the names of the two languages in question, are:
Similar interference effects, of course, also involve languages other than English
, such as French
, and Spanish
(Frespañol
), Portuguese
, and Spanish
(Portuñol
)or Catalan
and Spanish
(Catanyol).
These examples could be multiplied endlessly to reflect the linguistic interactions of speakers of the thousands of existing or extinct language
s.
Such interfered-language names are often also used informally to denote instances of code-switching
, code-mixing, or borrowing (using loan words).
, Canada
, and predominantly Spanish-speaking regions in the U.S. For details on the latter, see the map of the hispanophone world and the list of U.S. communities with Hispanic majority populations.
English language learning and teaching
English as a second language , English for speakers of other languages and English as a foreign language all refer to the use or study of English by speakers with different native languages. The precise usage, including the different use of the terms ESL and ESOL in different countries, is...
, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language.
Positive and negative transfer
Contrastive analysis
Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies....
(the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities), the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected.
The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed, and thus are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have a large effect. Generally speaking, the more similar the two languages are, and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. For example, an Anglophone
English-speaking world
The English-speaking world consists of those countries or regions that use the English language to one degree or another. For more information, please see:Lists:* List of countries by English-speaking population...
learner of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
may correctly guess an item of German vocabulary from its English counterpart, but word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
and collocation
Collocation
In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation is the expression strong tea...
are more likely to differ, as will connotations. Such an approach has the disadvantage of making the learner more subject to the influence of "false friend
False friend
False friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning....
s".
Proactive interference and negative transfer in psychology
During the 1950’s, memory research began investigating interference theory. This refers to the idea that forgetting occurs because the recall of certain items interferes with the recall of other items. Throughout the 1950s, researchers provided some of the earliest evidence that the prior existence of old memories makes it harder to recall newer memories and he dubbed this effect, proactive interference. During the same time, researchers, began investigating negative transfer. Negative transfer concerns itself with a detrimental effect of prior experience on the learning of a new task, whereas proactive interference relates to a negative effect of prior interference on the recall of a second task.The most obvious and used proactive interference and negative transfer paradigm from the 1950s and 1960s was the use of AB-AC, or AB-DE lists. Participants would be asked to learn a list of paired associates in which each pair consists of a three letter consonant vowel consonant, nonsense syllable (e.g. DYL), used because it was easy to learn and lacked pre-learned cognitive associations, and a common word (e.g. road). In this paradigm two lists of paired associations are learned. The first list, (commonly known as the AB list) would consist of nonsense syllables as a primer (which constituted the ‘A’ term), followed by a word (which constituted the ‘B’ term). The second list would consist of either the same nonsense syllable primer and a different word (A-C list) or a different nonsense syllable primer and a different word (D-E list). The AB-AC list was used because its second set of associations (A-C) constitutes a modification of the first set of associations (A-B), whereas the AB-DE list were used as a control.
Shortly afterwards proactive interference was demonstrated with the Brown-Peterson paradigm. A single Brown-Peterson trial consists of a study list, a retention interval and then a recall period. Each list may consist of a handful of related items and are presented individually every few seconds. For the duration of a short retention interval, subjects are then asked to perform an engaging distractor task such as counting backwards in sevens, or thinking of an animal with every letter in the alphabet to minimize rehearsal. Subjects are then asked to recall the items from this second list. Although the lists from previous trials are now irrelevant, the fact that they were studied at all makes it difficult for subjects to recall the most recent list.
Negative transfer was examined by researchers in the 60s and found differential learning between trials. Specifically, differences in the learning rates of list 2 provided clear evidence of the negative transfer phenomenon. Subjects learned an A-C paired association list to a criterion of all associations correct, following learning a list of A-B paired associations to criterion. Ultimately, it was found that those subjects took an increased amount of trials to complete the learning task compared to subjects who didn’t learn the A-B list or from subjects who had to learn a D-E list.
Conscious and unconscious transfer
Transfer may be conscious or unconsciousUnconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
. Consciously, learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage. Unconsciously, they may not realize that the structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different. Such users could also be aware of both the structures and internal rules, yet be insufficiently skilled to put them into practice, and consequently often fall back on their first language.
Language transfer in comprehension
Transfer can also occur in polyglotPolyglot (person)
A polyglot is someone with a high degree of proficiency in several languages. A bilingual person can speak two languages fluently, whereas a trilingual three; above that the term multilingual may be used.-Hyperpolyglot:...
individuals when comprehending verbal utterances or written language. For instance, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
both have relative clauses
Relative clause
A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
with a noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
-noun-verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
(=NNV) order but which are interpreted differently in both languages:
German example: Das Mädchen, das die Frau küsst, ist blond
Word by word this German relative clause translates
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
to
English example: The girl that the woman is kissing is blonde.
The German and the English examples differ in that in German the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
role can be taken by das Mädchen (the girl) or die Frau (the woman) while in the English example only the second noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
(the woman) can be the subject. In short: The German example is syntactically
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
ambiguous
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
because it can be the girl or the woman who does the kissing. In the English example it can only be the woman who does the kissing.
The ambiguity of the German NNV relative clause structure becomes obvious in cases where the assignment of subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
and object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
role is disambiguated. This can be because of case marking if one of the nouns is grammatically male
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
as in Der Mann, den die Frau küsst… (The man that the woman is kissing…) vs. Der Mann, der die Frau küsst (The man that is kissing the woman) because in German the male definite article marks the accusative case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
. The syntactic ambiguity of the German example also becomes obvious in the case of semantic disambiguation. For instance in Das Eis, das die Frau isst… and Die Frau, die das Eis isst… (both: The woman that is eating the ice cream) only das Eis (ice cream) is a plausible object.
Because in English relative clauses with a noun-noun-verb structure (as in the example above) the first noun can only be the object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
, native speakers
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
of English who speak German as a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
are more likely to interpret ambiguous German NNV relative clauses as object relative clauses (= object-subject-verb order) than German native speakers who prefer an interpretation in which the first noun phrase is the subject (subject-object-verb order). This is because they have transferred their parsing
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
preference from their first language English to their second language German.
Examples
Language transfer produces distinctive forms of learner EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, depending on the speaker’s first language. Some examples, labeled with a blend
Blend
In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.-Linguistics:...
of the names of the two languages in question, are:
- ChinglishChinglishChinglish refers to spoken or written English language that is influenced by the Chinese language. The term "Chinglish" is commonly applied to ungrammatical or nonsensical English in Chinese contexts, and may have pejorative or deprecating connotations, reflecting the attitudes of those who apply...
(ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
) - CzenglishCzenglishCzenglish, a portmanteau of the words Czech and English, is a poor or 'broken' English spoken by native Czech speakers. Examples include confusing verbatim translations , incorrect word order in a sentence and use of inappropriate prepositions and conjunctions because of the...
(CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
) - DenglischDenglischDenglisch or Denglish is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch. Used in all German-speaking and Dutch-speaking countries, it describes an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language through travel and the widespread usage of English in...
(GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - DunglishDunglishDunglish or Dutch English are the mistakes native Dutch speakers make when speaking English....
(DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
) - EngrishEngrishrefers to unusual forms of English language usage by native speakers of some East Asian languages. The term itself relates to Japanese speakers' tendency to inadvertently substitute the English phonemes "R" and "L" for one another, because the Japanese language has one alveolar consonant in place...
or "Japlish" (JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
) - FinglishFinglishThe term Finglish was introduced by professor Martti Nisonen in 1920s in Hancock, Michigan to describe a linguistic phenomenon he encountered in America. As the term describes, Finglish is a mixture of English and Finnish. In Finglish the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the...
(FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
) - FranglaisFranglaisFranglais , a portmanteau combining the French words "français" and "anglais" , is a slang term for an interlanguage, although the word has different overtones in French and English....
(FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) - HinglishHinglishHinglish, a blending of the words "Hindi" and "English", means to combine both languages in one sentence. This is more commonly seen in urban and semi-urban centers of the Hindi-speaking states of India, but is slowly spreading into rural and remote areas of these states via television, mobile...
(HindiHindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
) - KonglishKonglishKonglish is the use of English words in a Korean context. The words, having initially been taken from the English language, are either actual English words in Korean context, like 모터사이클 , or are made from a combination of Korean and/or English words which are not used in English-speaking...
(KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
) - ManglishManglishManglish is an English based creole spoken in Malaysia.The vocabulary of Manglish consists of words originating from English, Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, and to a lesser extent various other European languages, while Manglish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese...
(MalaysianMalaysian languageMalaysian or Standard Malay is the official language of Malaysia and a standardized form of the Malay language of the Austronesian family. It is over 80% cognate with Indonesian and is spoken natively by over 10 million people...
) - PoglishPoglishPoglish, Polglish or Ponglish , a portmanteau word combining the words "Polish" and "English," designates the product of mixing Polish- and English-language elements within a single speech production, or the use of "false friends" and of cognate words in...
(PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
) - PorglishPorglishPorglish or Portuglish refers to various types of language contact between Portuguese and English which have occurred in regions where the two languages coexist. These range from improvised code-switching between bilingual speakers of each language to more or less stable dialects...
(PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
) - RunglishRunglishRunglish, Ringlish, Ruglish or Russlish , are terms for describing the Russian-English pidgin language. They were popularized in 2000 as a name for one of the languages aboard the International Space Station...
(RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) - SerblishSerblishSerblish or Anglo-Serbian, a portmanteau of the words Serbian and English, is the arbitrary usage of Serbian and English, combining both, in one sentence. This is more commonly seen in the Serbian diaspora, but can also be noticed in Serbian-speaking countries...
(SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
) - SpanglishSpanglish.Spanglish refers to the blend of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of...
(SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) - SwenglishSwenglishSwenglish is a colloquial term meaning either:*English spoken with a heavy Swedish accent*English spoken or written as heavily influenced by Swedish vocabulary, grammar, or syntax- English heavily influenced by Swedish :- Pronunciation :...
(SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
) - TaglishTaglishTaglish is a portmanteau of the words "Tagalog" and "English" which refers to the Philippine language Tagalog infused with American English terms. It is an example of code-switching....
(TagalogTagalog languageTagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
) - Tanglish (TamilTamil languageTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
) - TinglishTinglishTinglish or Thaiglish is the imperfect form of English produced by native Thai speakers due to language interference from the first language...
(ThaiThai languageThai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
) - TurklishTurklishTurklish refers to the language contact phenomenon that occurs primarily where native Turkish speakers frequently communicate in English, such as in Turkish expatriate communities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, among the students of the many English speaking...
(TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
) - YinglishYinglishYinglish words are neologisms created by speakers of Yiddish in English-speaking countries, sometimes to describe things that were uncommon in the old country...
(YiddishYiddish languageYiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
)
Similar interference effects, of course, also involve languages other than English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, such as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(Frespañol
Frespañol
Frespañol , is a portmanteau of the words "Français" and "Español", which mean French and Spanish. This "language" is a mixture between French and Spanish, almost always in speech, but may be used in writing occasionally...
), Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(Portuñol
Portuñol
Portuñol or Portunhol is the code-switching of Portuguese and Spanish.The word portunhol is a portmanteau of the words Portugués/Português and Español/Espanhol ....
)or Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(Catanyol).
These examples could be multiplied endlessly to reflect the linguistic interactions of speakers of the thousands of existing or extinct language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s.
Such interfered-language names are often also used informally to denote instances of code-switching
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is 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...
, code-mixing, or borrowing (using loan words).
Broader effects of language transfer
With sustained or intense contact between native and non-native speakers, the results of language transfer in the non-native speakers can extend to and affect the speech production of the native-speaking community. For example, in North America, speakers of English whose first language is Spanish or French may have a certain influence on native English speakers' use of language when the native speakers are in the minority. Locations where this phenomenon occurs frequently include QuébecQuebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and predominantly Spanish-speaking regions in the U.S. For details on the latter, see the map of the hispanophone world and the list of U.S. communities with Hispanic majority populations.
See also
- Second language acquisitionSecond language acquisitionSecond-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the name of the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process...
- InterlanguageInterlanguageAn interlanguage is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language , or overgeneralizing target language rules in speaking or...
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- Code-switchingCode-switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is 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...
- Macaronic languageMacaronic languageMacaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages, sometimes including bilingual puns, particularly when the languages are used in the same context . The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid words, which are in effect internally macaronic...
- Multi-competenceMulti-competenceMulti-competence is a concept in second language acquisition formulated by Vivian Cook that refers to the knowledge of more than one language in one person's mind. From the multicompetence perspective, the different languages a person speaks are seen as one connected system, rather than each...
- LoanwordLoanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
- CalqueCalqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
- Phono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root....
- Mixed languageMixed languageA mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
- TranslationTranslationTranslation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...