Some countries designate one or more languages as official. In other places, languages arise through informal combining of two or more other languages.
Key Issue 3: Why Do Languages Vary Among Places?
Official Languages Some countries designate one or more official languages. The official language is used by the government to enact legislation and conduct other public business. In some countries, the official language is the only one used in public schools. A working language is selected by an international corporation or organization as its primary means of communication for daily correspondence and conversation. The United Nations has six official and working languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The European Union recognizes 24 official and working languages.
In 56 countries, English is an official language, more than any other language. More than 2 billion people live in a country that has designated English as an official language, whether they can speak it or not. Even though English is the predominant language in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, it does not hold official status in these countries.
Informal Languages New languages are being created through the combination of English and other languages.
Franglais is mixture of French and English; Spanglish combines Spanish and English; and Denglish is an amalgamation of German and English.
In order to communicate with speakers of other languages a pidgin language mixes words and grammar rules from a lingua franca with elements of another language. A pidgin language has no native speakers—it is always spoken in addition to one’s native language.
A dialect is a regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. Generally, speakers of one dialect can understand speakers of another dialect. A subdialect is a subdivision of a dialect. Two subdialects of the same dialect have relatively few differences, primarily in pronunciation and vocabulary. These dialects and subdialects are of keen interest to geographers, as they generally reflect distinctive features of the environments in which groups live.
American and British English Due to its widespread diffusion around the world, English has an especially large number of dialects and subdialects. The colonists from England who settled along the Atlantic Coast in the seventeenth century established English as the dominant language of North America. Isolation from one another allowed British and U.S. English to develop differences in three key ways—vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Vocabulary New objects and experiences spurred the development of a unique vocabulary in U.S. English. The settlers named new landforms and incorporated many Native American words such as raccoon, moccasin, and canoe into the language. As technological advances occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, they were given different names—an elevator in the U.S. is referred to as a lift in England.
Pronunciation Many words with unaccented syllables are pronounced more clearly in the United States as compared to England. For example, “necessary” is four syllables long in U.S. English, while it contains only three in British English.
Spelling Differences in spelling between British and U.S. English can largely be attributed to Noah Webster, who with his first comprehensive American dictionary, set out to establish a unique national identity with his work (by dropping the u from many words, and substituting an s for c in many words).
Dialects in the United Kingdom Dialects are also present within individual countries—in both the United States and England, distinct northern and southern dialects exist. In a language with multiple dialects, one dialect may be designated as the standard language, which is a dialect that is well established and widely agreed upon as the most acceptable for government, business, education, and mass communication.
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the standard language in England, and is commonly used by elected officials, broadcasters, and actors. Three main dialects are spoken today in England—Northern, Midland, and Southern. The boundaries between these dialects shift due to migration patterns.
U.S. Dialects The distribution of dialects is examined through the regional use of particular words. Every word that is not used nationally has some geographic extent within the country and therefore has boundaries. Such a word-usage boundary is known as an isogloss. An isogloss can be constructed for each word.
Origin of U.S. Dialects The four major dialects of the United States are reflected in individual regions: North, Midland, South, and West. The three eastern dialect regions can also be divided into several subdialects. The current distribution of U.S. dialects can be traced to differences in the origin of the English colonists along the East Coast. The early colonies were home to three dialects: North, South, and Midland. The diffusion of particular English dialects across the United States is a result of the westward expansion of colonists from the three East Coast dialect regions. The American West was settled primarily by people from the Midland dialect region which then set the pattern for standard pronunciation. The Northern and Southern accents are viewed as different from the standard pronunciation.
American Sign Language, originated by Thomas Gallaudet in Connecticut in 1817 is based on methods he had observed in France. Approximately one-half million use American Sign Language.
Appalachian English Appalachian English, spoken in areas such as rural West Virginia, is a distinct
American English dialect. It uses the double negative, and the adding of “a” in front of verbs ending in “ing” (e.g. a-walking). Some speakers of Appalachian English are “bidialectic,” in that they can speak both their regional dialect and the “standard” English dialect.
African American English The forced migration of enslaved Africans to the United States during the eighteenth century influenced the development of a distinctive dialect. This dialect was created partially to communicate in a code that could not be understood by their white masters. Black dialect words such as jazz and gumbo have since diffused into the standard English language. After many African Americans migrated to the large cities of the Northeast in the twentieth century, they preserved this dialect known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Some in the African American community see this as a boon to preserving their cultural heritage, while others see it as an obstacle to success in the United States.
Changing Distribution of U.S. Dialects Many distinctive regional words are now national in their distribution because of the influence of mass media. However, regional dialect differences persist such in the use of various words to refer to a soft drink.
Creole Languages A creole, or creolized language, is a language that results from the combination of a colonizer’s language with the language of the indigenous people. A creole language forms when the colonized population adopts the languages of the colonizer, but makes some changes, such as simplifying the grammar and adding words from their native language. These creole languages are considered separate languages because of major differences from the languages of the original colonizers. Examples include French Creole in Haiti and Papiamento in Netherlands Antilles.
Dialect or Language? Global-local tensions contribute to the difficulty in characterizing dialects and distinct languages. Geographic concepts such as migration, increased interaction (connections), and other globalization processes can be used to analyze the relationship between standard languages and dialects. In most cases of this scenario, the standard language strengthens while regional dialects are suppressed. In some instances, the drive for cultural identity has resulted in the development of distinct languages that were once characterized as dialects.
Dialects Become Languages Many linguists consider mutual intelligibility when distinguishing between two different languages and a dialect. If two people speaking differently can understand each other, then a dialect is probable as two different languages would not be understood by both individuals. There are some exceptions to this test.
Catalán-Valencian-Balear Catalán was once considered a dialect of Spanish, but is now recognized as a separate Romance language by linguists. Catalán is the official language of the country of Andorra, and the highly autonomous Catalonia province in Spain. Linguists have also identified distinct dialects of Catalán, such as Balear, spoken in the Balearic Islands of Majorca and Ibiza. Most linguists consider Valencian a dialect of Catalán, while many others consider it a language unto itself.
Galician Whether Galician, which is spoken in northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, is a dialect of Portuguese or a separate language remains a point of debate among speakers of Galician. Some, such as the Academy of Galician Language, view it as a separate language, while others, such as the Galician Association of the Language, see it as a dialect of Portuguese.
Moldovan Moldovan is generally recognized as a dialect of Romanian. Upon independence from the Soviet Union, the government changed the name of the language to Moldovan. In 2013, a Moldovan court ruled the language’s official name is Romanian based on their constitution.
Italy’s Languages Many regional dialects of Italian, such as Lombard, Napoletano-Calebrese, Piemontese, Sicilian, and Venetian are now recognized by Ethnologue as different enough to be recognized as separate languages.
Occitan Occitan is a language spoken in southern France and neighboring countries, derived from the name of the French region of Aquitaine. The French government has set up bilingual elementary and high schools called calendretas, teaching both French and Occitan.
Standardizing Languages In efforts to promote a unified cultural identity, many governments have designated a single dialect as the official or standard language.
French In France, the Francien French dialect became the standard form of French as Francien was spoken in the Île-de-France region, where Paris, the largest city of the country, is located.
Spanish In an effort to standardize Spanish in the Western Hemisphere with European Spanish, a Spanish Royal Academy meets weekly to clarify rules for vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. The official dictionary includes words introduced to the language from both locations.
Portuguese Brazil, Portugal, and some Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa agreed in 1994 to standardize the written language. Some are upset because the changes more closely reflect Brazilian Portuguese.
Gender Differences in Languages Languages vary by gender to two main ways: the grammar may distinguish between masculine and feminine words, and word choice and the content of men and women’s conversations. One analysis of Facebook messages concluded that women used words associated with compassion and politeness while men used words that were more hostile and impersonal.
Multilingual Places Multiple languages coexist in some countries, with varying levels of success. Some countries are relatively segregated concerning the geographic distribution of language, while others see speakers of multiple languages intermingle. In some countries language is a centripetal force and in others a centrifugal force.
Switzerland: Institutionalized Diversity The boundary between the Romance and Germanic language families runs through Belgium and Switzerland. The government of Switzerland recognizes four official languages (German, French, Italian, and Romansh), and delegates power to the local level, helping to preserve this linguistic harmony.
Belgium: Barely Speaking Belgium is roughly divided in half by language—Southern Belgians, (Walloons) speak French, while northern Belgians (Flemings) speak Flemish, a dialect of Dutch. Within Belgium, the northern region of Flanders is more economically prosperous than the southern region of Wallonia. These cultural, linguistic, and economic differences are further underscored by the creation of autonomous regional governments. Some residents of Flanders even advocate for full independence.
Nigeria: Spatial Compromise Ethnologue recognizes 529 distinct languages in the country, but only three of those languages are used by more than 10 percent of its population: Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. Religious differences further divide the country with Muslims concentrated in northern Nigeria and Christians in the south. In order to reduce regional tensions, the government moved the capital from Lagos to Abuja, where no one culture or language predominates.
Canada: Bilingual Autonomy Canada recognizes two official languages, French and English. French speakers are most concentrated in the province of Québec, where they were once governed by an Englishspeaking minority. In recent years tension between English and French speakers (Québécois) within the province have decreased and neighborhoods in Montréal have become more linguistically mixed.
5.3
African American Vernacular English (ANE) A dialect used by some African Americans.
Creole or creolized language A language that began as a combination of two other languages and is spoken as the primary language of a group of people
Denglish A combination of Deutsch (the German word for German) and English.
Dialect Different forms of the same language used by groups that have some different vocabulary and pronunciations
Franglais A combination of français and anglais (the French words for French and English respectively).
Indigenous language A language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people
Isogloss A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.
Mutual intelligibility The ability of people communicating in two ways to readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort.
Official language The language adopted for use by a government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.
Pidgin language A form of language that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages.
Received Pronunciation (RP) The dialect of English commonly used by politicians, broadcasters, and actors in the United Kingdom.
Spanglish A combination of Spanish and English spoken by Hispanic Americans.
Standard language The form of a language used for official government, business, education, and mass communication.
Subdialect A subdivision of a dialect.
Working language A language that is used by an international organization or corporation as its primary means of communication for daily correspondence and conversation.