A language border or language boundary is the line separating two language areas. The term is generally meant to imply a lack of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. If two adjacent languages or dialects are mutually intelligible, no firm border will develop, because the two languages can continually exchange linguistic inventions; this is known as a dialect continuum. A "language island" is a language area that is completely surrounded by a language border.
The concept of mutual intelligibility is vague. More important, it can be difficult for non-native speakers to distinguish one language from another similar one. Furthermore, there is no clear definition of what constitutes a language: for instance some languages share writing systems but are spoken differently, while others are identical when spoken but are written using different alphabets. For example, different "dialects" of Chinese use the same characters with the same meanings, but these can be pronounced very differently in different varieties. Japanese also uses large numbers of Kanji characters (of Chinese origin) to mean the same as in Chinese, but they often have different "readings" (yomi) some of which may be pronounced as in Chinese while others are totally different.
There are often also shared terms between two languages even between languages that have nothing to do with each other. [1]
For example, Spanish is spoken in most Central American and South American countries, but also in Spain. There are subtle but recognizable differences between the dialects, but there are different dialects even within the country of Spain. (In many cultures there also slight differences between the versions of the language, both spoken and written ("registers") used in different contexts: for example when talking to one's boss and talking to one's friends.) [2]
There can also be people within a country who speak the "native" language of a different country, some of whom may be bilingual. [1] Also, an inherited language may evolve and perhaps absorb some of the characteristics or terms of the new area's predominant language. In cases such as these, it becomes even more difficult to identify specific languages. [1]
When speakers have a foreign accent, they are often perceived to be less intelligent and are less likely to be hired. [1] [3] It is the same with an accent from a peripheral area, rather than the accent from the urbanized core: a peripheral person is typically perceived as speaking a "less correct" by those who are more educated, [2] [3] [4] while those who are not as educated do not perceive any difference in the "correctness". [3] Colonial histories could also help this phenomenon. [4]
A well-known example of a language border is the border between Romance and Germanic languages that stretches through Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
Language borders do not always reflect political borders; the tendency to correlate language with nationality is a common error [4] that seems to have arisen during the period of 19th century European expansion [1] [4] (e.g., the term Anglo in Mexico and the southeastern U.S., or the term Angrez – literally, "English" – in North India). The usage of a particular language can reflect positively or negatively on its speaker depending upon the situation. For example, there is perception in the USA that only English speakers are American and only non-Americans are non-English-speakers. [1] It is suspected that this assumption began because states would have "official" languages for the purposes of book publishing and therefore for the purposes of education, so intelligence would come to be associated with speaking the language that was written. [1] [4] Because of this idea, there are also often social benefits which result from being able to speak English. [3] A prime example of this is the prevalence of bilingualism near the U.S.–Mexican border, [1] [3] which also indicates the porosity of the border and illustrates the difficulty of drawing a "border" around all speakers of a given language, especially because there is not usually much correlation between ethnicity and language. [3] Such common bilingualism leads to the practice of code-switching, or the changing freely between languages while speaking [1] although this trait is somewhat looked down upon [2] because those living in areas of frequent code-switching seem to develop a sort of language loyalty. [3]
Another example of the difference between language borders and political borders is the spread of languages via colonialism, causing languages to be spoken in multiple, not necessarily adjacent countries. [4]
Although language borders and political borders do not always agree, there have been many instances where political leadership has attempted to enforce language borders. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on the border with the United States, social efforts have been made to curb the amount of American influence taking place—but at the same time, as in other foreign cultures, the class benefits of English proficiency are acknowledged and to this end schools teach in English and many television channels are in English. [2] [3] The use of Breton and Welsh has historically been discouraged by French and British governments respectively. There are also instances of intolerance to the speaking of Native American languages at some schools, thus forcing those students to create small communities in which they can speak their native language, thereby creating "language boundaries" on a very small scale. [1] Examples like these illustrate the impact that language boundaries can have on cultural boundaries, even if they are not necessarily one and the same. [4]
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Dialect refers to two distinctly different types of linguistic relationships.
Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. The United Kingdom has a wide variety of accents, and no single "British accent" exists. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.
Finland Swedish or Fenno-Swedish is a variety of the Swedish language and a closely related group of Swedish dialects spoken in Finland by the Swedish-speaking population, commonly also referred to as Finland Swedes, as their first language.
Spanglish is any language variety that results from conversationally combining Spanish and English. The term is mostly used in the United States and refers to a blend of the words and grammar of the two languages. More narrowly, Spanglish can specifically mean a variety of Spanish with heavy use of English loanwords.
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 42 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about 8 million students. Estimates count up to 57 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers. There is an Academy of the Spanish Language located in the United States as well.
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes. However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. Likewise, code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment one is speaking. Code-switching can happen in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the audience. There are many ways in which code-switching is employed, such as when a speaker is unable to express themselves adequately in a single language or to signal an attitude towards something. Several theories have been developed to explain the reasoning behind code-switching from sociological and linguistic perspectives.
In sociolinguistics, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language that is distinctive to a country, area, social class, or individual. An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside, the socioeconomic status of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, or influence from their first language.
In linguistics, diglossia is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety, a second, highly codified lect is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers but various degrees of fluency of the low speakers. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India, varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages, the Chinese languages or dialects, and parts of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Terms used in older literature include dialect area and L-complex.
West Frisian, or simply Frisian, is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the Frisian languages.
Some of the regional varieties of the Spanish language are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar.
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.
Kutchi or Kachhi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Kutch region of India and Sindh region of Pakistan.
A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several interacting codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, and elsewhere. The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian. In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be elaborated until they become autonomous languages, as happened with Malaysian and Indonesian, and with Hindi and Urdu. The same process is under way in the Serbo-Croatian family.
Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans, particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California, as well as in Chicago. Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with Spanglish, which is a mixing of Spanish and English; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of English, not a "learner English" or interlanguage. It is even the native dialect of some speakers who know little to no Spanish, or have no Mexican heritage.
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally considered by a society to be the most "correct" or otherwise superior. In many cases, they are the standard form of the language, though there are exceptions, particularly in situations of covert prestige. In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to smaller linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or usage of words or grammatical constructs, which may not be distinctive enough to constitute a separate dialect. The concept of prestige provides one explanation for the phenomenon of variation in form among speakers of a language or languages.
Spanish is the most-widely spoken language in Ecuador, though great variations are present depending on several factors, the most important one being the geographical region where it is spoken. The three main regional variants are:
Phonemic contrast refers to a minimal phonetic difference, that is, small differences in speech sounds, that makes a difference in how the sound is perceived by listeners, and can therefore lead to different mental lexical entries for words. For example, whether a sound is voiced or unvoiced matters for how a sound is perceived in many languages, such that changing this phonetic feature can yield a different word ; see Phoneme. Other examples in English of a phonemic contrast would be the difference between leak and league; the minimal difference of voicing between [k] and [g] does lead to the two utterances being perceived as different words. On the other hand, an example that is not a phonemic contrast in English is the difference between and. In this case the minimal difference of vowel length is not a contrast in English and so those two forms would be perceived as different pronunciations of the same word seat.
Chaoshan or Teo-Swa is a Southern Min language spoken by the Chaoshan people of the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province, China, and by their diaspora around the world. It is closely related to Hokkien, with which it shares some cognates and phonology, and the two are mutually intelligible.
