Literary language is the form (register) of a language used when writing in a formal, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. It may be the standardized variety of a language. It can sometimes differ noticeably from the various spokenlects, but the difference between literary and non-literary forms is greater in some languages than in others. If there is a strong divergence between a written form and the spoken vernacular, the language is said to exhibit diglossia.
For much of its history, there has been a distinction in the English language between an elevated literary language (written) and a colloquial or vernacular language (spoken, but sometimes also represented in writing).[3] After the Norman conquest of England, for instance, Latin and French displaced English as the official and literary languages,[4] and standardized literary English did not emerge until the end of the Middle Ages.[5] At this time and into the Renaissance, the practice of aureation (the introduction of terms from classical languages, often through poetry) was an important part of the reclamation of status for the English language, and many historically aureate terms are now part of general common usage. Modern English no longer has quite the same distinction between literary and colloquial registers.[3]
English has been used as a literary language in countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, for instance in India up to the present day,[6]Malaysia in the early 20th century[7] and Nigeria, where English remains the official language.
Written in Early Modern English, the King James Bible and works by William Shakespeare from the 17th century are defined as prototype mediums of literary English and are taught in advanced English classes.[8] Furthermore, many literary words that are used today are found in abundance in the works of Shakespeare and as well as in King James Bible, hence the literary importance of early modern English in contemporary English literature and English studies.[9]
Modern Standard Arabic is the contemporary literary and standard register of Classical Arabic used in writing across all Arabic-speaking countries and any governing body with Arabic as an official language. Many western scholars distinguish two varieties: the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an and early Islamic (7th to 9th centuries) literature; and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the standard language in use today. The modern standard language is closely based on the Classical language, and most Arabs consider the two varieties to be two registers of the same language. Literary Arabic or classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages [clarification needed][citation needed].
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia—the use of two distinct varieties of the same language, usually in different social contexts. Educated Arabic speakers are usually able to communicate in MSA in formal situations. This diglossic situation facilitates code-switching in which a speaker switches back and forth between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which highly educated Arabic-speakers of different nationalities engage in conversation but find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Kuwaiti), they are able to code switch into MSA for the sake of communication.
The Armenian language was a diglossic language for much of its history, with Classical Armenian serving as the "high" literary standard and liturgical language, and the Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian dialects serving as the vernacular language of the Armenian people. Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian were eventually standardized into their own literary forms.
Chôlitôbhasha (চলিত ভাষাcalita bhāṣā), the vernacular standard based on the elite speech of Kolkata.
Shadhubhasha (সাধু ভাষাsādhu bhāṣā), the literary standard, which employs more Sanskritized vocabulary and longer prefixes and suffixes.
Grammatically, the two forms are identical; differing forms, such as verb conjugations, are easily converted from one form to another. However, the vocabulary is quite different from one form to the other and must be learned separately. Among the works of Rabindranath Tagore are examples of both shadhubhasha (especially among his earlier works) and chôlitôbhasha (especially among his later works). The national anthem of India was originally written in the shadhubhasha form of Bengali.
Literary Chinese (文言文; wényánwén; 'written-speech writing') is the form of written Chinese used from the end of the Han dynasty to the early 20th century. Literary Chinese continually diverged from Classical Chinese, as the dialects of China became more disparate and as the classical written language became less representative of the spoken language. At the same time, Literary Chinese was based largely upon the Classical Chinese, and writers frequently borrowed from the classical language into their literary writings. Literary Chinese therefore shows a great deal of similarity to Classical Chinese, even though the similarity decreased over the centuries.[10]
Starting from early 20th century, written vernacular Chinese (simplified Chinese:白话文; traditional Chinese:白話文; pinyin:báihuàwén) became the literary standard. This is mostly aligned with a standardized form of Mandarin Chinese, which however means there exists considerable divergence between written vernacular Chinese and other Chinese variants like Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hokkien and Sichuanese. Some of these variants have their own literary form, but none of them are currently used in official formal registers, although they may be used in legal transcription, and in certain media and entertainment settings.[11]
Finnish
The Finnish language has a literary variant, literary Finnish, and a spoken variant, spoken Finnish. Both are considered a form of non-dialectal standard language, and are used throughout the country. Literary Finnish is a consciously created fusion of dialects for use as a literary language, which is rarely spoken at all, being confined to writing and official speeches.
German differentiates between Hochdeutsch/Standarddeutsch (Standard German) and Umgangssprache (everyday/vernacular language). Amongst the differences is the regular use of the genitive case or the simple past tense Präteritum in written language. In vernacular German, genitive phrases ("des Tages") are frequently replaced with a construction of "von" + dative object ("von dem Tag") - comparable to English "the dog's tail" vs. "the tail of the dog" - likewise the Präteritum ("ich ging") can be substituted with the perfect ("ich bin gegangen") to a certain degree. Nevertheless, the use of neither the Präteritum nor especially the genitive case is totally unusual in daily language, though it is considered rare, and might be dependent on a region's dialect and/or the grade of education of the speaker. People of higher education use the genitive more regularly in their casual speech and the use of perfect instead of Präteritum is especially common in southern Germany, where the Präteritum is considered somewhat declamatory. The German Konjunktiv I / II ("er habe" / "er hätte") is also used more regularly in written form being replaced by the conditional ("er würde geben") in spoken language, although in some southern German dialects the Konjunktiv II is used more often. Generally there is a continuum between more dialectical varieties to more standard varieties in German, while colloquial German nonetheless tends to increase analytic elements at the expense of synthetic elements.
From the early nineteenth century until the mid-20th century, Katharevousa, a form of Greek, was used for literary purposes. In later years, Katharevousa was used only for official and formal purposes (such as politics, letters, official documents, and newscasting) while Dimotiki, 'demotic' or popular Greek, was the daily language. This created a diglossic situation until in 1976, Dimotiki was made the official language.
Hebrew
During the revival of the Hebrew language, spoken and literary Hebrew were revived separately, causing a dispersion between the two. The dispersion started to narrow sometime after the two movements merged, but substantial differences between the two still exist.
Italian
When Italy unified in 1860, Italian existed mainly as a literary language. Different languages were spoken throughout Italy, almost all of which were Romance languages which had developed in every region, due to the political fragmentation of the time. Now, it is the standard language of Italy.
Japanese
Until the late 1940s, the prominent literary language in Japan was the Classical Japanese language (文語, bungo), which is based on the language spoken in Heian period (Late Old Japanese) and is different from the contemporary Japanese language in grammar and some vocabulary. It still has relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect, and fixed form poetries like Haiku and Tanka are still mainly written in this form.
In the Meiji period, some authors started to use the colloquial form of the language in their literature. Following the government policy after the World War II, the standard form of contemporary Japanese language is used for most literature published since the 1950s. The standard language is based on the colloquial language in Tokyo area, and its literary stylistics in polite form differs little from its formal speech. Notable characteristics of literary language in contemporary Japanese would include more frequent use of Chinese origin words, less use of expressions against prescriptive grammar (such as "ら抜き言葉"), and use of non-polite normal form ("-だ/-である") stylistics that are rarely used in colloquial language.
Javanese
In the Javanese language, alphabet characters derived from the alphabets used to write Sanskrit, no longer in ordinary use, are used in literary words as a mark of respect.
Kannada
Kannada exhibits a strong diglossia, like Tamil, also characterised by three styles: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language, a modern literary and formal style, and a modern colloquial form. These styles shade into each other, forming a diglossic continuum.
The formal style is generally used in formal writing and speech. It is, for example, the language of textbooks, of much of Kannada literature and of public speaking and debate. Novels, even popular ones, will use the literary style for all description and narration and use the colloquial form only for dialogue, if they use it at all. In recent times, however, the modern colloquial form has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of the modern literary style: for instance most cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio.
Classical Latin was the literary register used in writing from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, while Vulgar Latin was the common, spoken variety used across the Roman Empire. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia, or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero, and differed from it in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.[12] Some literary works with low-register language from the Classical Latin period give a glimpse into the world of early Vulgar Latin. The works of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, preserve some early basilectal Latin features, as does the recorded speech of the freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter. At the Third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language—either in the rustica lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic vernaculars—since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin.
Malay
The Malay language exists in a classical variety, two modern standard variety and several vernacular dialects.
Maltese
Maltese has a variety of dialects (including the Żejtun dialect, Qormi dialect and Gozitan amongst others) that co-exist alongside Standard Maltese. Literary Maltese, unlike Standard Maltese, features a preponderance of Semitic vocabulary and grammatical patterns; however, this traditional separation between Semitic and Romance influences in Maltese literature (especially Maltese poetry[13] and Catholic liturgy on the island) is changing.
The Mongolian language, based on Khalkha Mongolian, now serves as the high register in Mongolia itself while in Inner Mongolia a standard Mongolian based on Chakhar Mongolian serves as the high register for all Mongols in China. The Buryat language, which is seen by some as part of the Mongolian language, has been turned into a standard literary form itself in Russia.
N'Ko
N'Ko is a literary language devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa. It blends the principal elements of the partially mutually intelligible[14]Manding languages. The movement promoting N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa.[15] N'Ko publications include a translation of the Qur'an, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers.
Persian
Persian or New Persian has been used continually as the literary language of major areas in Western Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and South Asia. The language written today remains essentially the same as that used by Ferdowsi despite variant colloquial dialects and forms. For many centuries, people belonging to the educated classes from the Bosphorus to the Bay of Bengal would be expected to know some Persian. It was once the language of culture (especially of poetry), from the Balkans to the Deccan, functioning as a lingua franca.[16] Until the late 18th century, Persian was the dominant literary language of Georgia's elite.[17] Persian was the second major vehicle after Arabic in transmitting Islamic culture and has a particularly prominent place in Sufism.
Slavonic-Serbian (slavenosrpski) was the literary language of Serbs in the Habsburg monarchy used from the mid-18th century to 1825. It was a linguistic blend of Church Slavonic of the Russian recension, vernacular Serbian (Štokavian dialect), and Russian. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was severely attacked by Vuk Karadžić and his followers, whose reformatory efforts formed modern literary Serbian based on the popular language, known as Serbo-Croatian.
Tagalog
Tagalog was the basis of the Filipino language; both share the same vocabulary and grammatical system and are mutually intelligible. However, there is a significant political and social history that underlies the reasons for differentiating between Tagalog and Filipino.
The 1987 Constitution maintains that Filipino is the country's national language and one of two official languages, alongside English. Today, Filipino is considered the proper term for the language of the Philippines, especially by Filipino-speakers who are not of Tagalog origin, with many referring to the Filipino language as "Tagalog-based". The language is taught in schools throughout the country and is the official language of education and business. Native Tagalog-speakers meanwhile comprise one of the largest linguistic and cultural groups of the Philippines, numbering an estimated 14 million.[18]
Tamil exhibits a strong diglossia, characterised by three styles: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language, a modern literary and formal style and a modern colloquial form. These styles shade into each other, forming a diglossic continuum.[23]
The modern literary style is generally used in formal writing and speech. It is, for example, the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. Novels, even popular ones, will use the literary style for all description and narration and use the colloquial form only for dialogue, if they use it at all. In recent times, however, the modern colloquial form has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of the modern literary style: for instance most cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio.
Now, Standard Tibetan, based on the Lhasa dialect, serves as the high register in China. In Bhutan, the Tibetan Dzongkha language has been standardised and replaced Classical Tibetan for official purposes and education, in Ladakh, the standard official language learned are now the unrelated languages Urdu and English, and in Baltistan, the Tibetan Balti language serves as the low register while the unrelated Urdu is the official language.
Uzbek and Uyghur
The Turkic Chagatai language served as the high register literary standard for Central Asian Turkic peoples, while the vernacular low register languages were the Uzbek language and Eastern Turki (Modern Uyghur). The Soviet Union abolished Chagatai as the literary standard and had the Uzbek language standardized as a literary language for, and the Taranchi dialect of Ili was chosen as the literary standard for Modern Uyghur, while other dialects like the Kashgar and Turpan dialects continue to be spoken.
Standard Yoruba is the literary form of the Yoruba language of West Africa, the standard variety learnt at school and that spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850s, when Samuel A. Crowther, native Yoruba and the first African Anglican Bishop in Nigeria, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on the Ọyọ and Ibadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects.[24] Additionally, it has some features peculiar to itself only, for example the simplified vowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such as calques from English which originated in early translations of religious works. The first novel in the Yorùbá language was Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The Forest of A Thousand Demons), written in 1938 by Chief Daniel O. Fagunwa (1903–1963). Other writers in the Yorùbá language include: Senator Afolabi Olabimtan (1932–1992) and Akinwunmi Isola.
Arabic is a Central Semitic language of the Semitic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes — a precursor to Arabization centuries later — including among the Assyrians and Babylonians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, southeastern Anatolia, Eastern Arabia and Sinai Peninsula, where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over three thousand years.
The Syriac language, also known as Aramaic Language, Syriac Aramaic and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ, is an Aramaic language. The language is a dialect that emerged during the first century AD from a local Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient region of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa. During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac rites. Following the spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India and China. It flourished from the 4th to the 8th century, and continued to have an important role during the next centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages it was gradually reduced to liturgical use, since the role of vernacular language among its native speakers was overtaken by several emerging Neo-Aramaic dialects.
Written vernacular Chinese, also known as baihua, comprises forms of written Chinese based on the vernacular varieties of the language spoken throughout China. It is contrasted with Literary Chinese, which was the predominant written form of the language in imperial China until the early 20th century.
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
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 within the community. 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.
Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad and Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, elevated prose and oratory, and is also the liturgical language of Islam. Classical Arabic is, furthermore, the register of the Arabic language on which Modern Standard Arabic is based.
A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large body of ancient written literature.
Levantine Arabic, also called Shami, is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant, namely in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and southern Turkey. With over 54 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over the Arab world.
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.
Turoyo, also referred to as Surayt, or modern Suryoyo, is a Central Neo-Aramaic language traditionally spoken in the Tur Abdin region in southeastern Turkey and in northern Syria. Turoyo speakers are mostly adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church, but there are also some Turoyo-speaking adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, especially from the towns of Midyat and Qamishli. The language is also spoken throughout diaspora, among modern Assyrians/Syriacs. It is classified as a vulnerable language. Most speakers use the Classical Syriac language for literature and worship. Turoyo is not mutually intelligible with Western Neo-Aramaic, having been separated for over a thousand years; its closest relatives are Mlaḥsô and western varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic like Suret.
Suret, also known as Assyrian refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, namely Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages also the variety of spoken Arabic that approximates this written standard. MSA is the language used in literature, academia, print and mass media, law and legislation, though it is generally not spoken as a first language, similar to Contemporary Latin. It is a pluricentric standard language taught throughout the Arab world in formal education, differing significantly from many vernacular varieties of Arabic that are commonly spoken as mother tongues in the area; these are only partially mutually intelligible with both MSA and with each other depending on their proximity in the Arabic dialect continuum.
Lebanese Arabic, or simply Lebanese, is a variety of North Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and primarily spoken in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages and is in some ways unique from other varieties of Arabic. Due to multilingualism and pervasive diglossia among Lebanese people, it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to code-switch between or mix Lebanese Arabic, French, and English in their daily speech. It is also spoken among the Lebanese diaspora.
The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within the field of Aramaic studies, classification of Neo-Aramaic languages has been a subject of particular interest among scholars, who proposed several divisions, into two, three or four primary groups.
Hokkien is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Varieties of Arabic are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects as well as local native languages and dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be separate languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic.
1 2 Matti Rissanen, History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, 1992, p9. ISBN3-11-013216-8
↑ Elaine M. Treharne, Old and Middle English C.890-c.1400: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pxxi. ISBN1-4051-1313-8
↑ Pat Rogers, The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2001, p3. ISBN0-19-285437-2
↑ R.R.Mehrotra in Ofelia García, Ricardo Otheguy, English Across Cultures, Cultures Across English: A Reader in Cross-cultural Communication, Walter de Gruyter, 1989, p422. ISBN0-89925-513-2
↑ David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p104. ISBN0-521-53033-4
↑ Keller, Stefan Daniel. The Development of Shakespeare's Rhetoric: A Study of Nine Plays. Volume 136 of Schweizer anglistische Arbeiten. Narr Francke Attempto, 2009. ISBN9783772083242. p54
↑ Donaldson, Coleman (2019-03-01). "Linguistic and Civic Refinement in the N'ko Movement of Manding-Speaking West Africa". Signs and Society. 7 (2): 156–185, 181. doi:10.1086/702554. ISSN2326-4489. S2CID181625415.
↑ Oyler, Dianne White (1994) Mande identity through literacy, the N'ko writing system as an agent of cultural nationalism. Toronto: African Studies Association.
↑ Dunaj, Bogusław (1989). Język mieszkańców Krakowa, część I (in Polish). Warszawa-Kraków. p.134.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Harold Schiffman, "Diglossia as a Sociolinguistic Situation", in Florian Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. London: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1997 at pp. 205 et seq.
↑ Cf. for example the following remark by Adetugbọ (1967, as cited in Fagborun 1994:25): "While the orthography agreed upon by the missionaries represented to a very large degree the phonemes of the Abẹokuta dialect, the morpho-syntax reflected the Ọyọ-Ibadan dialects".
Bibliography
Crystal, David (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Cambridge, 2003) ISBN0-521-53033-4
Gould, Rebecca Ruth (2018). "Sweetening the Heavy Georgian Tongue: Jāmī in the Georgian-Persianate World". In d'Hubert, Thibaut; Papas, Alexandre (eds.). Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī's Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/15th-14th/20th Century. Brill. ISBN978-9004386600.
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