Not Just One Language (Diglossia)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video I discuss "diglossia", and give some examples of this linguistic phenomenon.
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Dave Chappelle describes diglossia in the black American community: "Every black American is bilingual. We speak street vernacular and we speak job interview."
frzferdinand72 (is bidialectal a word? Oh cool it is)
frzferdinand72 Lmao!
LOL! it's not just black americans there are several vernaculars depending on where you live! Imagine if our attorney general learned the "job Interview" English :P
@@Louisianish In linguistics, dialect and language mean the same thing, it is only in common usage where a distinction exists.
Tariq they do know, they don’t have any reason to speak «job interview»
In Hong Kong, there is diglossia too. Cantonese is called "the spoken language" and written Mandarin (Standard Chinese) is "written language". Once i wrote a dialogue from a movie in my writing, my teacher said no spoken language was allowed in writings and homework.
On
I am italian. I watched the first minutes of this video thinking about diglossia as a strange thing, I was thinking about far away societies, as in Africa... Then i got flashed: diglossia is my everyday life! And it is so natural I can't even feel I'm using it....
haha, it's funny)
+BraneBrain
The exactly same thing happens in Italy! and I can add that, for this reason, it is often difficult for a lombard to understand a neapolitan, even if they're both speaking the official language... nevertheless, we all think our dialect is the easiest one, so similar to Italian... but in fact, it isn't. Even if you move a few kilometers, e.g. 50kg, if you speak the raw dialects you'll find some trouble in understanding each other...
stessa reazione ahah :)
Yeah!!!That's fokin it! I'm Brazilian and i think there is it here too
I am Arab and that what happend to me too 😂. We use it every single day and as you mentiined "Naturaly" .
In my day-to-day life I have found this thing where both me and my friends both speak English and Dutch (I'm Dutch) and sometime we use English words and "Dutchified" English words and sentences mixed in with the Dutch that we speak. So much that I've gotten used to it and when in more formal situations or speaking to my parents for example I have trouble explaining things.
EpreTroll same here, But with my sister. We speak Russian and English, we mostly fight in English, tell stories in both. Sometimes we too ‘Russianize’ English words by adding Russian suffixes.
Treurig
Be careful you might have been using code-switching instead, diglossia is when you and your fellow group both know the same high variety you are speaking.
@@kameliyaoppal this definitely not diglossia
Literally the same just i speak english but with friends we speak an Afrikaans+English dialect and a lot of word are basically shortened from afrikaans are maid up, such as "awe" pronounced 'Ah weh' which means hello and thanks so i honestly think Cape Townian dialect is almost a Morph language
I'm from Italy, and I can say that's true, but to a certain extent. The reality is that - at least where I live (Apulia) - young people tend to use standard Italian most of the times. I, for example, would rarely use dialect except for a few words and phrases here and there. I understand it, in fact my grandparents almost exclusively speak in their dialect with each other, but they know Italian as well. I believe it's a shame dialectal varieties are disappearing in Italy, I know that I probably will hardly ever speak dialect with my children, also because I'm way more proficient in standard Italian. Dialect is just something that I would say every now and then, but if I were to try and use it all the time, it would be quite hard for me. The other day I found out someone translated the Little Prince in my region's dialect, so I bought it! I can understand most of it, but for the words I don't know there's not even a dictionary ahaha but I love it, I think dialects are awesome.
A few examples, if you want them:
Italian: Che stai facendo qui?
Barese: Ce sté a ffè ddo?
English: What are you doing here?
Italian: Possiamo andarcene?
Barese: Ce ne putimme scé?
English: Can we go away?
+Flavio Spadavecchia wow, those are not just little differences! Nice comment by the way!
Some words look more different than others, they're all romance languages, so clearily they have a lot in common xD
sure... I guess I didn't expect to find bigger difference than the ones you can find between Spanish (my native tongue) and Portuguese. That really blew my mind 8O
+Flavio Spadavecchia it's interesting to read you all that.
I'm from Leon, in north-western Spain, where really old people in the countryside still speak a distinct language called Leonese. I can recall having the same thoughts as you. I think that you shouldn't abandon just because it's hard. I started learning Leonese and now I have a decent skill, I'd have to say that my Spanish dialect helped a lot!
I'll give you my own translations to your examples ;)
Leonese: Quéi tas fazendu eiquí?
Spanish: Qué estás haciendo aquí?
Leonese: Podemos marchar?
Spanish: Podemos irnos?
+Javain Javakain Thank you for the examples! I think it's the same way with Catalan, only that they started encouraging more and more people to use it, unlike here. I wonder how it was a 100 years ago... I bet very different.
Been watching your videos these days. I am a teacher and teaches Mandarin, Cantonese and sometimes English. Watching your videos give me a better understanding of languages, and it's beneficial for my teaching, since all of my students are from foreign countries. But all in all, your videos are very very interesting!!! Thank you very much!!
Thank you! I'm happy to hear that!
@@Langfocus I have a very serious question for you. What is the difference between Jesus and Jé' şus. It would mean a lot if you have the understanding. Thank you
Good lesson about diglossia. My language, Tamil, is also diglossic. Learning spoken and written Tamil separately is not difficult at all. We start with spoken language, master the conversation skill in spoken language, and then learn written Tamil in school. When we learn written Tamil it does not look different at all since there is so much similarity among the two. As you said there are so many different dialects in the spoken form. But they all converge into a single written language system. It is really fun. Why we have two forms? We need to look at the history to understand this. Languages as old as Tamil have lots of history in it that can explain the emergence of diglossic nature.
In Pakistan's Punjab region, here's how diglossia often comes into practice for me: On the streets, I speak Punjabi because it makes it easy to converse with shopkeepers and common folks. Within the household and friends, I speak Urdu because it's the lingua franca of the country. At my office, I speak English, which is sometimes interspersed with Urdu, making it an entirely different language.
Being from a country with English as their native tongue it's such a shame how there is very little incentive in schools to learn another language.
I'm trying to develop my French, it's barely conversational and I'm struggling with what good first steps would be. Do you have any tips to help me?
Why don't you use Punjabi only in the educational institutions and the Legislative Assembly of the State? Punjabi is a separate language from Urdu. Hence diglossia is absent in Pakistan. English comes no where near it.
@@bijoydasudiya Urdu and Punjabi are not too different for Pakistanis at least. The Punjabi spoken in Pakistan is light and easy to understand, not that thick, word barrage spoken in Indian Punjab. English in offices, schools and universities is very common. We're not talking about the Pakistan shown in Bollywood where everyone is saying "adaab", spitting paan and wearing kohl in eyes. Lol.
@@frozendilemma äiti
@@frozendilemma paikkaa
This is informative. When I was young we were told we were code switching when we switched between our southern Appalachian, or Mountain Talk, to standard English. With friends or family, in informal situations, we always spoke, still speak, our variety. At school, work, professional settings, or with visitors, most of us, but not all, switch to standard English. This occurs without thinking about it. After watching the video, I would assume that this is an example of diglossia as opposed to code switching.
I'm from southern Appalachia, too, and have learned several languages. Generally whenever someone asks me what my first foreign language was, I tell them "English" with a big grin.
diglossia is the overall phenomenon. codeswitching is just what you specifically can do in communities or societies with such situations
In Canada, we call the low version of French "joual". Very much looked down upon.
"Joual" is how the word "cheval" is pronounced, or mispronounced as some would say
Thank you for this excellent explanation of the phenomena. We who live in diglossian environments often do not realize that these are universal situations and not local exceptions of which we should be a bit ashamed of.
I would be cool a video about Catalan. You could talk about the different dialects in zones which are close to each other, its history... etc.
This is also very much the case in Iran, where there are many ethnic groups with their own local languages but the only accepted official language is Persian (farsi). This is however different from, say, Italy. In Iran there is a systematic attempt to kill local languages, and any political request to want your language taught in school is put down with violence or arrests. Situation is even worse in Turkey, where a language like Kurdish was banned to be even used even privately for decades. And to this day, anything else than turkish is forbidden for be taught as first language according to the constitution.
So diglossia can often be the outcome of state oppression of minorities.
Dude, you are awesome! :D
+Иван Алексиев Thank you :)
+Langfocus Tamizh is a diglossic language!
Norway has the same diglossia situation as Switzerland :D, also it's sad to see the local Italian languages dying off.
Dialects are less used that in the past, but, expecially in the South, they are still used in informal situations.
+Ivar Kich It is really uprising to me as a Norwegian how normal it is around the world that people stop using their dialects and start speaking the official language. If people where I live(third largest city in Norway) for some reason started speaking how we write they would be laughed at. Would be interesting to know why Norway is this way.
+GreenFors does the government recognise and support the dialects? And there are many areas in Norway that are more isolated so that would stop it from changing. Idk
+Lucy Hunt I think a major reason why Norwegian dialects are still so prevalent is that news anchors and other TV hosts are encouraged to speak their local dialect, instead of adhering to some "standard" form of Norwegian.
So you write Danish but speak another language?
In Bangladesh you'll find 3 tiers of variety:
1. Hundreds of dialects of Bengali distinct from each other. (কিরে, কিল্লাই etc.)
2. One spoken version that can be understood by everyone all over the country. (ক্যান)
3. One written version used in formal speeches and books. (কেন)
Your channel is fantastic and a breath of fresh air for anyone involved in linguistics. Keep up the good work!
Hey, Paul! First of all, congratulations for the channel!
It fills the big gap of good content about languages and linguistics in TH-cam.
Speaking of diglossia, I'm a native speaker and teacher of Brazilian Portuguese and many Brazilian linguists advocate that Brazil is a diglossic society, since the high and low varieties are very different. I personally agree with them. Maybe the difference is not as big as in the Arabic case, but it undoubtedly exists.
Keep the great job!
+Daniel Germano Yep. Brazilian here and I totally agree with that. There is a noticeable difference between spoken and written Brazilian Portuguese, and the differences are even greater when you compare the spoken language with European Portuguese, which most Brazilians don't even recognize as being the same language as theirs. Sometimes I think Brazilian Vernacular was not made an independent language simply because many grammarians make loads of money by publishing books to teach people how to write proper portuguese so they can pass government exams and have public jobs.
Sure, our diglossic situation was held back thanks to advancements of mass media, which helps holding the language together (I wouldn't say it's due to any sort of progress in our society), but the changes made thus far cannot be reversed. No one will start speaking proper Portuguese in Brazil over the span of a fortnight, and the government turns a blind eye to this fact.
+Emmanuel A. But the case for Arabic (the classical example of diglossia) is basically like that. As the high variety you have the Modern Standard Arabic, taught and learned in schools and mainly written and as the low variety you have one of the many vernacular varieties, learned at home and mainly spoken.
I think you're talking about the distance between the pronunciation and the orthographic representation of them in writing (''août" pronounced ['u] in French, for example) and THAT's what diglossia isn't about.
What happens in Brazil is that we have a variety learned only at school, mainly written and expected in formal situations ("Você acha que conseguirão/irão conseguir/vão conseguir tirá-la do poder?") and another variety learned at home, frequently seen as not proper language, mainly spoken and used in informal situations ("Cê acha que vão conseguir tirar ela do poder?"). Notice that the first sentence would sound very artificial in a casual oral conversation between friends while the second would be unthinkable in a written interview in a magazine. That's the difference we're talking about.
As the guys said, though, the media is making this distance shorter, so, for example, if the interview (formal situation) were spoken the second sentence would probably pass unnoticed.
Yep, exactly. Written and spoken English either of the American or British varieties are not much different from the standard language. In Brazil, however, no one would say things such as: "onde ela está?" as it's taught in schools and written in printed media. Instead, the usual utterence would be "Cadê ela?"
Also, no one uses enclisis, mesoclisis or 3rd person object pronouns in Brazil anymore in the spoken language, nor do we make a three way distinction for demonstrative pronouns as imposed by prescriptive grammarians (isto, isso and aquilo) based on the proximity between listener, speaker and object. We only make a two way distinction between 'isso' and 'aquilo' as in English. Instead, Brazilians have to commit a set of formal rules to memory because we don't know Portuguese Grammar by heart as native speakers of a given language usually do.
Thus, it's not possible to make simple sentences like "I love her" in a way that fits both the standard and the spoken language. Formally it would be "eu a amo", but everybody would say "eu amo ela". This brings us some problems regarding functional illiteracy, because people who had little access to formal education but are otherwise able to read would never interpret that 'a' in "eu a amo" as an object pronoun, but rather as the definite article "a" which renders the sentence into gibberish. They can't interpret sentences like this because, to them, grammar constructions like the one above don't make any sense whatsoever.
+Emmanuel A. Haha I don't have a low linguistic self-esteem AT ALL! The low variety is just as valid as thr high one. They're just different and serve different purposes in our society. I teach Portuguese as a second language and I always show students the formal and informal forms and make it clear to them i which cases to use them. Don't know why you concluded that... But I must confess Brazilians in general indeed have a very low linguistic self-esteem and see the low variety as not proper language.
Nope, 'cadê' is a contraction of "por causa de quê" ('what for?') which lost its original meaning and is now used as a 'where + copula' clause in Brazil. It also enjoys widespread use by speakers all over the country and thus, it is by no means regional or restricted to a certain area in Brazil like 'howdy' is in American English.
About 'cê' and 'você', I totally agree with you. It's just a harmless contraction and there is nothing diglossic about it,
"Isto" is not used at all in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. If you hear Brazilians using it, chances are they are adapting their speech so as to make themselves understood by non native speakers, much like educated Arabs employ MSA in business to speak to non native speakers or to speakers of other Arabic dialects. When we Brazilians go to school, we have to commit all the rules to memory through silly mnemonic cues such as drawing an arrow pointing to the left below the first "s" in "esse" and another pointing to the right above the 't' in 'este' following the upper stroke. It's akin to having native speakers of English being forced to learn the distinction between "this", "that" and "yonder", when the latter is not used by virtually anyone.
About 'amo ela' (I love her), my example was somewhat inaccurate because, in the spoken vernacular, this utterance is analogous to the cacophonic "a moela" (the gizzard), and therefore, such sentences are commonly avoided in speech, so educated speakers may resort to formal grammar to avoid the ambiguity. The same thing applies to "vi ela" (I saw her) which sounds like "viela" (small street).
That being said, object pronouns for the 3rd person are hardly ever used in oral communication. "Eu conheço ele", "ele encontrou ela", "mataram ele" are the preferred forms in the spoken language in spite of being utterly agrammatical as anyone who is familiar with Portuguese grammar can assure you.
I hereby reassure that my statement cannot by any means be labeled as false. I used to have a mother in law who had no access to formal education in Brazil and she could not interpret written Portuguese seeing as she did not think of 'o'(him) and 'a'(her) as referring to 'ele' (he) or 'ela' (she) as object pronouns. She was, for all intents and purposes, functional illiterate for this very reason.
There are many more differences between spoken Brazilian Vernacular and proper Portuguese, I could spend the whole day listing them all and write a whole book on the matter (as some highly regarded linguists such as Marcos Magno had already done).
Paul, huge thank for your videos, I am so happy to find your channel!
TY Paul! Great for a brief, plug-and-play definition. You nailed the sociolinguistic situations, as that for Arabic. Big problem for pupils, even college students because many - most? - never get a clear grasp of Fus'ha (I know you've got another video about Arabic - thx 4 that 2). By far most of my students in German as a Second Language (well, a long shot) with Arab language background (some are Kurds) falter. Part of my favorite explanation is that they CLING to LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE THROUGH TRANSLATION - the weaker they are the more extreme. They need Arabic as a classroom language - that is Syrian Everyday Arabic. The same time they need written translations - vocabulary lists, annotations in a German text. I never see complete sentences in Arabic. Among women, word-lists are circulating, for those do do not write themselves. It seems that they have to fix their Arabic and the connection of spoken and written first. Those with really some background start from English or, for example Moroccans, from French. - Starting from the Moon to Mars is much easier than from Earth.
Paul also nailed the Swiss situation. The German sociolinguistic reflex "that's low, dialect, uneducated" is fascinatingly not at work there, maybe Schwyzerdütsch is at the core of Swiss-German identity. The more South you get in Germany, as a rule of thumb, the weaker the above reflex gets. Seems that the Hochdeutsch from our "Integration Courses" for immigrants does not work "on the street" anyway.
Loving your honesty about how you like to be "in complete control" of the "Langfocus" channel! Good...and right on!!!!
It’s interesting that you responded to that today. I’d forgotten about what I said in this video. I’m actually planning to reboot GEOgraphy Focus after a five year hiatus. After I made this video, one person did help write a video (about Hong Kong), but then I paused the channel. I’m going to be looking for writers again pretty soon, after I write a few videos myself and standardize the format.
@@Langfocus Didn't mean to be snarky. Relatively new to your channel, I'm slowly pulling up the archives...all of which have interesting and important information. I just couldn't resist commenting on that one. LOL!
Thank you Paul for devoting so much time to teaching. I appresiate it very much.
In Asturies (Northwestern Spain), we have the clear example of diglossia. My mother tongue is Asturian, but I was never taught that language in school. I learnt it from speaking with my family and friends.
We want to make it official before it disappears, but there are some stupid people who live here and are against it.
I truly believe that the more languages you learn and speak, the merrier.
Asturian is also my mother tongue, but also Castillian. Let's hope we get oficialidá as soon as possible, young people don't speak Asturian at all nowadays, not even amestau
It's totally right!!!
For us Moroccans it is the same: even though we study classical Arabic at school we do not use it only in formal situation instead we use what we call "darija" as the diglossia.
PS: I would love to give my help to the geofocus channel
Wow I learn something new everyday! There's diglossia with the Cantonese language, and it's especially the case with Hong Kong. The spoken language is so different that sometimes we can sound out words that don't have a written form and have to use English to spell out the sound. Very interesting indeed
Very true in Ukraine. We don't learn Russian at school at all, but I believe a half of our population uses it in casual chat, but Ukrainian is used only in some formal situations by many people.
Russian is actually taught along with Ukrainian in some of the schools like the one I graduated, but the rest is correct
Also, Ukrainian and Russian are quite mutually understandable, so one person can speak Russian and the other Ukrainian and they will mostly understand each other
Your videos are so insightful, thank you! Greeting from a new subscriber :D
I use Indonesian as a formal language and Indonesian mixed with Javanese as a daily-usage language. Which can be said Indonesian is the 'high variety' and mix Indonesian-Javanese is the 'low variety'. But then it feels weird since Javanese itself is much more complex and difficult than Indonesian. And the problem with my diglossia, sometimes i can't find the correct word to translate from Javanese to Indonesian, sometimes i can't make sure one word is actually limited to Javanese or it can be Indonesian slang or even formal Indonesian, often mixing Javanese-Indonesian suffix/prefix/etc. And i also have this difficulty in learning formal Javanese because i always see it as the 'low variety' that is used only for the sake of communication, i even talk to my parents in rough Javanese despite the distinct rough-polite Javanese because Indonesian has no rough-polite leveling.
Me: "Lha jare Ibu aku disuruh belikne adik mimik" (Because Mom told me to buy drink for my sis)
Informal indonesian: "Kan kata Ibu aku disuruh belikan adik minum"
'Lha' is a unique Javanese word with the nuance of accusing/blaming someone (depend on the context). 'Jare' is also Javanese word, a rough one, means 'say' (the polite one is 'ngendhika'). Both words can't ne used to talk about elders (in this case, the 'Ibu'/'Mom') but i did so anyway and my mom knows i just can't speak Javanese properly.
'Disuruh' is a completely normal Indonesian word.
'Belikne' is an Indonesian word with Javanese suffix (the proper Javanese word is 'tuku'->'tukokne' for the rough and 'tumbas' for the polite one)
. And the last 'mimik' is a Javanese language for little kids (the normal Javanese word is 'ombe' for the rough one and 'unjukan' for the polite one. Normally one stops using 'little kids's language' when growing older, but i keep using that).
So, yeah....with that kind of speaking, i end up being 'medok' (leaning too much to regional language's manner) when speaking Indonesian, but unable to properly speak Javanese in correct manner. I can't even translate that sentence in proper Javanese!
Sorry for the long comment, just wondering that maybe my case is a bit rare among other bilingual speakers. 😂
There's quite a bit of diglossia in China as well. Mandarin is the formal language, but there are hundreds of regional dialects.
Kind of surprised you didn't mention that example. It's probably the largest one of them by far.
Regional languages.
you're a great guy
+Exoh. your* ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
+Exoh. Thank you, sir! :)
***** *whoosh!* right over the head
Nice video, Paul, you capture the concept of diglossia quite well and your description of the Italian situation is accurate.
I'm a native Italian speaker from Switzerland and I've always spoken a dialect at home and with many of my friends. It's true that, compared to previous generations, dialects are spoken less and less. I have some friend whose parents never used their dialect when speaking to their children, even though they had themselves acquired it when growing up. They probably thought acquiring a dialect was pointless. That's a part of who you are and where you come from, yet some parents probably think having only one language will help their children improve their school results by making language less confusing - and that's some bollocks.
Still, I've always thought it would be strange if we all started speaking our dialect the way our fellows the other side of the Alps do.
Päivän
Always making good videos, I'm never disappointed.
Wtf how did I not see this video until now?
These "quick videos" about linguistic concepts don't seem to get seen as much as my other videos. They probably have a lower click through rate than other videos because the title seems kind of dry, and because of the low initial click through rate, TH-cam stops showing them in the recommended box.
I personally realy like them! These videos are really nice if you want to learn something more about language but you sometimes get lost in the swamp of linguistical jargon. (I get lost all the time) Maybe you can do some video about how sounds in languages are described like "pallatised"? Those sounds come much better across in a video than in a wiki article.
In finland most swedish speakers have a high and low variety. This was also common in sweden until the introduction of television and radio. Northern swedish dialects were really simular to finnish-swedish low-swedish dialects.
It"s a pleasure to find this video I badly need this for my oral reporting on my masters program . Thank you so much sir . I wish I can present and explain it to my classmates accurately . 😊😍
I'm from switzerland. And we speak our dialect in the familiar room but also to peolpe I didn't know (for example when I ask someone for the way).
And we also use dialect for informal written things (Text messages, private emails and letters...). Standard german we just use in school and for more formal written things.
Ihr bruuchts chold an iegine Rachtsschriebig
Just wanted to add that I enjoyed this video, like I enjoy all your videos, they are very well done!
Thanks, Reuven!
English is very much like this, depending on where you live. Like the way teenagers and kids talk to each other, and even within families, but then they speak formally in school and when writing essays.
You are such a knowledgeable of the linguistic science, that I have not found anyone like you.
You never cease to amaze me!
Paul! I love your channel! I wish I could show it to all my friends but I'm Brazilian and I only have a few friends who speak english. I'm super into languages, I speak portuguese and English fluently, I can also easily understand Spanish but I am not fluent and I'm learning frech and japanese (the only reason I wanna learn japanese is because I like anime stuff XD)
Paul, this is great... you are setting new interesting standards here. Keep pushing.
Liked and subscribed!
+Claudio Briones Thanks Claudio! This is only the beginning! :)
In cape town a lot of people use a mix of English and Afrikaans slang words in speech and its incredible because we use like 25-30% Afrikaans/Slang words and its categorized as english
I've known diglossia ,hearing two different languages ,french and breton and not knowing about the fact ,there were two different languages,which word was for each : brezhoneg (breton) or galleg (french) ,I mixed both until then , now I'm trying to remember those great moments when all people around me were speaking our old keltic language ,the one of my heart.
This exists in English, to a certain level. Though not to the extent that Italian or German.
It's called pigeon English. Found very often in former British colonies.
+Kyriacos Stavrinides I meant in the difference between formal English (recieved pronunciation, for example) and common English. The former tends to use a lot more French-derived words, the latter uses Germanic words.
Which "common" English do you mean? Estuary? Yorkshire? Lancashire? West country? What about Scots, the American dialects, Australian, New Zealander? Each of those have distinct vocabularies, less so nowadays of course, and each is distinct from received pronunciation. So in that way, it does (or did) exist in English too.
Many years ago I heard bits & pieces about Ebonics. Was this real and an example of a "low" langage?
He's talking about things like gonna vs going to I'm guessing
Can you please make a video about the Italian language?
Dante Alighieri father of the Italian language, Sicilian, something along the lines?
Thanks.
Subbed.
+Lucas M Yes, I plan to do one on the Italian language sometime.
Thanks for subscribing!
+Langfocus cool, I didn't expect you to talk about the various languages spoken in Italy. If you need help or info for your future video about italian just tell me, I'm Italian
Few I might do two different videos, one on Italian (ie. Standard Italian) and another on Languages of italy.
+Langfocus Hey, will you make a video about Albanian one day? It's really interesting since the two main dialects (Gheg and Tosk) have are pretty different and there are older forms of Albanian, Arbëresh and Arvanitika that are still being spoken in Italy and Greece.
Not so unusual, like you said. In fact, one of your videos (I believe it was on the differences between Hindi and Urdu) is pretty close to the mark.
Hindi has it's own High version (known as "Shuddh" or Pure Hindi) and a low version (known as "Khadhi Bolli" or Extempore Hindi). The pure version of Hindi is rarely used by people in the normal day-to-day and is considered arcane - it would be like using Shakespeare's English in everyday speech (you'd get a lot of funny looks, and some might just not understand you at all).
Same goes for Urdu - the high flown version of Urdu (the "Zabaan-e-Urdu-i Muhallah" or Language of the Great Camp) is something like a language of poetry. Very flowery and beautiful to listen to, of course, but completely impractical for everyday usage. For that, you have what they call "Rekhta" or Mixed Language.
You are the man! I litteraly just love your videos! Thank you from France
In Dubrovnik (Ragusa), Official language was Latin, but spoken language was Slavic.
It went as far to a point that people had Latin and Slavic names:
House of Basiljević (Bassegli)
House of Benešić (Benessa)
House of Binčulić (Binciola)
House of Bobaljević (Bobali)
House of Bunić (Bona)
House of Bundić (Bonda)
House of Buća (Bucchia)
House of Crijević (Cerva)
House of Đurđević (Giorgi)
House of Getaldić (Ghetaldi)
House of Gradić (Gradi)
House of Gučetić (Gozze)
House of Gundulić (Gondola)
House of Kabužić (Caboga)
House of Karlović
House of Lukarević (Luccari)
House of Menčetić (Menze)
House of Ortika
House of Palmotić (Palmotta)
House of Proculo
House of Prodanelli
House of Pucić (Pozza)
House of Ragnina
House of Rastić (Resti)
House of Saraka (Saraca)
House of Sorkočević (Sorgo)
House of Tudišević (Tudisi)
House of Džamanjić (Zamagna)
+Mladen Milić The name Medic is found in Bosnia;, is it related to the Medici?
I came across your channel today and been bingewatching for hours :D just since I`ve started watching the number of subscribers grew by a hundred people :D
I think people like you deserve way more attention, you are really helpful, smart and it's easily tangible that you put a lot of effort into your content. I hope you will one day capitalize your good work. Keep it up man. ;)
Or more like will people ever pay more attention to the very matter of learning languages the proper way, not just 49$ books each year and stupid exercises. 4 of 5 English teachers at my school are utterly awful at speaking English, they might have a glimpse of grammar rules and things like that, but the tip of the tongue syndrome gets to them even when they're trynna pull off a simple A2 vocab rant to us, gotta pass the CAE these holidays so maybe I'll be able to evade these kindergarten classes.
Thats right, In Saudi Arabia, every city has its own phonetic dialect, and every tribe has vocabulary that distinguishes their dialect from other tribes, and all Arab regions have the same thing.
So African Americans are Diglossic, since they speak AAVE and General American English?
Nice example! I guess it depends on how big the split is, because it differs
Libya4LY yeah for me I my AVEE spills out when im more hyperbolic while for my mother and younger sister(to a lesser extnt my older sister) they speak AAVE around family and speak general american publically
A photographe from Sudan! Much appreciated 🤗
Diglossia is also a pretty big thing in China.
Mandarin is basically only spoken in a small region of China, around the capital city of Beijing. There are countless dialects and regional languages in China, and these are used in informal speech among family and friends.
Standard Mandarin Chinese is used in formal communication.
Nearly all Chinese are bilinguals, fluent in their local dialect or language, and also fluent in Standard Mandarin Chinese.
Emmanuel A. And you would be correct. The Chinese government officially recognizes all regional languages and dialects north of the Yangtze to be Standard Mandarin Chinese, though in reality the linguistic diversity is truly astonishing, even at the outskirts of Beijing.
I'm from Northeast China and we speak pretty much the same as Standard Mandarin aside from some minor pronunciation differences
Bob Jones That's true. In the large cities the language is pretty much uniform throughout northern China. The villages have still local dialects persisting though. The communist regime and the nationalistic regime before that did a very good job at assimilating the north and central China to Standard Mandarin. In 1911 only about 10% spoke Mandarin and by 1980 the number rose to 50-60% and today is 70% (80% of Han Chinese speak Mandarin). But there are still many dialects in the countryside, they're just not different enough from Standard Mandarin to be classified as another language.
Paul, I love your channel ! Keep on going
Ok Paul, I do not have any dollar for your channel, but here you got my like and at the same time share yours vídeos. They are really interesting and keep fit our brain. All the best for you, greetings from Lima, Perú.
:)
I have an expose in my studies about this subject so I would like to thank you for that video it really helps me
i just learned about diglossia in sociolinguistics class just now. Thank you for posting this video.
The way you propose for learning languages is in my opinion the both most natural and rational way of learning. It is the method I intuitively I adopted for learning six languages. Of course it requires an effort, but it pays. A solid knowledge of GRAMMAR is absolutely necessary. Not the grammar of a particular language but considering that discipline as a structure of every language: All of them have the same elements (nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc) The first thing to do is to establish the role that each word plays in a sentence.
Castillian - and not ''Spanish'' - as you may have noticed, is my mother language. You are doing a great work, Paul. Thank you.
Your all videos are extremely helpful !!!
Diglossia is also very common in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta.. In daily, casual conversation the Jakartans tend to use "bahasa gaul", but when they met someone from different province, especially from different island or in formal situation, like presentation, they tend to switch to formal Bahasa Indonesia..
Thank you so much sir... It was really helpful.... thanks to you I pass the exam successfully
Same goes to Malay language spoken in Malaysia. Regional dialects and also slangs spoken by specific groups of youths and adults are considered as low varieties.
Impresssssssssssssive, I like your way of discussing. You are amazing
Arabic is one of my native languages and you are correct. I am in a minority who consider Modern Standard Arabic to be inferior (in the sense that it seems rather dead) to all the current varieties, and of course inferior to Classical Arabic on which it is based. Aside from being nobody's language, it is stripped down and politically contrived, in an attempt to be more 'modern'. I personally call it 'Zombie Arabic'. One of my favorite authors, Ghassan Kanafani, is actually criticized for writing down the Palestinian dialect. Most people imagine the local, living dialect to be non-existent, yet the few of us who actually go as far as studying its grammar will be delighted to discover that we have a living Semitic language with all the features unique to that language family. In the case of the Levantine variety, there is a fascinating Aramaic component to the grammar.
In what way is it "natural" exactly ? MSA is a learned language the same way Latin is learned by Romance language speakers until recently. Were you aware that some regions/movements in the MENA were advocating to standardize their spoken languages ? And I'm not even speaking of Lebanon. The only reason why we're using MSA currently has to do with politics.
I'm also a speaker of Levantine Arabic. While I agree that the linguistic issue is disastrous and it seems to be artificially kept alive for ideologically motivated reasons (Not that these political movements have any influence today anymore) I'm not sure what decision should be taken in this regards. I'm giving it a big thought to decide what is the right decision.
@WketDZ
His name Alex and he Arab 😂😂😂😂
I heavily disagree with saying that Fusha is 'inferior'. Just because it is dead (google 'language death' if you dispute this) that doesn't make it 'inferior' to living languages.
The situation is weird here where people don't want to join in one strong country (e.g. A Kuwaiti will never accept being the same nationality as an Egyptian) but at the same time, they don't want to accept that they're linguistically different nations and usually fight vigorously against any call for standardising the vernacular languages. Indeed, linguistics isn't a known science in MENA.
It's weird, why do you fight any call for standardising our vernacular languages (also called dialects) when you don't actually want one strong country based on that artificial language? It's been a few decades since the last attempt to create a pan-Arab country..
It's not that the vernaculars will easily replace MSA; MSA vocabulary is an integrated part of the vernaculars existence (e.g. Modern Syrian Arabic can't exist without MSA vocabulary and phrases) but we'll be able to accept them as spoken languages instead of viewing our daily languages as being corrupted and this will have very positive consequences for language teaching and for our view of the world.
I am against fighting 'MSA' and against the unrealistic view that the vernaculars should be eradicated (it's funny that those who call to this nonsense don't speak MSA to their children); we need to accept AND standardise both. We don't even teach modern Fusha but instead an old variety of it not used nor is very useful today.
I agree that it’s a dead language, but if all Arab countries were to abandon the use of MSA, then they would all have significantly less access and ease of communication with each other. MSA is also a huge part of education in the Arab world, therefore making any decisions or changes on its degree of importance or education just doesn’t make sense especially from the cultural, economic and political aspect
Thank you for your helpful information.
Diglossia was indeed much more common in many parts of Germany until a few decades ago. Mass media and the low reputation that most dialects had, with active discouragement for decades, led to the severe decline of many in everyday usage. To my grandparents (who are from Northern Germany), Standard German was almost like a foreign language, they almost never used it in everyday communication until they entered school. Before WWII, the situation in Northern Germany (and many other German regions) was pretty similar to present-day Switzerland. Back then, Standard German was limited in daily usage to formal situations, administrational functions, education and media (newspapers, advertising, movies and radio; TV starting in the 50s). Its usage was more common, to varying degrees, in larger cities. In many areas of Germany this diglossia lasted well until the 60s/70s and even longer, depending on the area. For common rural folk Standard German had a somewhat awkwardly distanced, formal, almost "snobbish" and "alien" feel to it.
Would you consider doing a video on Irish? I have just begun studying it and it's a difficult language (for me). Also, there is a movement to save the language which I think is very interesting.
Thank a lot sir ! You have saved me with your illustration 🤝
Hey! Thanks for this. I didn't know the term for it, but it's certainly a familiar phenomenon in Slovakia, where I live. There are a lot of dialects and linguistic minorities here (Hungarian, Romany, and Ruthenian are different languages entirely).
I wouldn't say it was a difficult concept to get my head around in itself, but there were some surprising things about it. For example, if I go to say London for a job interview, I could speak with my Northern Ireland drawl and still stand much the same chance of getting the job. If you use a dialect in a job interview in Bratislava--even if you speak with a strong accent--you are extremely unlikely to be hired! It seems so unfair!
Another thing, one of my best friends speaks a certain Western dialect of Slovak that is basically unintelligible to me (a speaker of standard Slovak only). When you ASK him to speak it, he can't! He just slips into when he's at home or with his friends from home. Bizarre!
+GraemeMarkNI WOW! I am Moroccan and I can totally relate to your friend's experience with his native tongue when it comes to speaking it with others. I , for example -and since my earthliest youth- switch immediately to the dialect of my interlocutor. And from what I have observed, a significant percentage of people do this too (while not being the majority).
I think this happens mainly to people who speak non-dominant/minority dialects in their countries, but the astonishing part consists of situations when even if speakers of dominant dialects manage to understand them, they just can't speak their native dialect. I forced myself at multiple occasions to speak in my native dialect with people from other parts of the country who could comprehend to a certain extent my Northern one, but always ended up with a funny and messy mix.
I suppose that further research on this subject, considering social, neurological and psychological elements may reveal some remarkable facts.
Irish accents
Aké nárečie to je? Ja napríklad záhoráčtine v pohode rozumiem, tak neviem ktoré nárečie myslíš, jediné nárečie ktorému rozumiem ťažko je východniarčina a gemerčina.
Áno záhoračtina. Ale ja som cudzinec a neviem napríklad po česky, čiže nerozumiem ani po záhorsky :/
+GraemeMarkNI A myslíš, že my sa česky či záhorácky učime? Samozrejme, že nie. Začni trochu sledovať české filmy, prípadne si zvykaj na nárečia a porozumieš rýchlo, moja mama je ukrajinka a slovenčina nie je jej rodný jazyk ale po česky aj záhorácky rozumie 100 percent. Chce to zvyknúť si na inú výslovnosť ako náš štandard a pár odlišných slov. Inak záhoráčtinu by som sa nezrozumiteľnú rozhodne nepovažoval, to skús východniarčinu :D tá je viac iným jazykom než čeština.
I confirm everything said about Italy, although I am not italian because I have visited the country more than 15 times. People, particularly the younger generations, do not speak their "dialects" even in informal situations. I always heard standard italian being spoken, in places as diverse as Como, Turin, Verona, Ferrara, Palermo, Catania etc etc. The only two places when you could clearly hear the dialect spoken on the street, were Naples (and surrounding areas like Salerno and Amalfi and Venice).
A country that is a classic example of diglossia is Cyprus. All cypriots use the cypriot dialect in every instant of informal communication but standard greek in formal situations, newspapers, most TV programs and when communicating with other greeks. The interesting fact here is that cypriot is the purest form of the language as, due to Cyprus' isolation as an island, is believed to be closer to ancient greek that modern greek, even in its distinct pronunciation.
Ohhh where u when I was studying linguistic during Master preparation year. many of these linguistic concepts would look much easier! !!
Could you make a video about the Greek language?
:)
Great channel!!!
*In Greek "diglossia" is written this way: διγλωσσία and it is the combination of the word "δύο" = two (thìo, as the "th" in "the") and the word "γλώσσα" = language or tongue (ylòssa, as the "y" in "yours" or "yellow")
I`m a finnish speaker from helsinki(southern finland), and i met two guys from kilpisjärvi (northwest). Couldn`t understand the other guy. Can`t tell if he was speaking finnish or sami but neither of us could understand each other. Maybe we both should`ve spoke standart finnish.
I live in Calabria, in the south of Italy. In the southern Italy Dialects are spoken a lot and (at least in Calabria) they're different for each small town. But, anyway we understand each other. For example, if I live in Cosenza, I understand Reggio Calabria's dialect.
This is an example of my dialect, and it's not a normal dialect because its pronounce is so hard and people from other towns can't pronounce it
"Stamatina signu iutu alla scola culla m'china"
which means
"This morning I've gone to school by car".
OK. ANYWAY... Your videos are so interesting, and I like you so much😂
I'm from Kerala (a state in south India) and different districts or towns have their own dialects of Malayalam (official language and most spoken language in Kerala), but when formally communicating the high variety is used. The difference in dialects of Malayalam are huge.
The same here in TN. Coimbatore “kongu” dialect and Kanyakumari dialect are hardest to understand lol
And nowadays people mix English words as well, so our literary language is quite different from the spoken one
i am from algeria and your totally right about arabic
Diglossia is a topic that was interesting to learn because here in Jamaica the Low language Jamaican Creole is now being used In domains that were in the past only associated formal domains and English usage.
in a way, every language have signs of diglossia. In my language, brazilian portuguese, when i am talking to my peers i use different rules than when i am talking to a superior or writing. At first i thought it was just acceptable mistakes, but then i realized that it is actually a whole new set of rules, like "put the 'not' at the end of a sentence, but only if the sentence is short" or "only conjugate the plural on the article, instead of article and noun" (in portuguese we have the plural form for "the" or "a/an").
+MrMamfbr Finnish is similar: In a casual conversation nobody speaks Finnish like it's formally written (except maybe some weirdos).
What you guys are referring to is not diglossia, it's just one language and its slang. In French there's so much slang that you could study standard French for ten years yet you wouldn't understand a word of slang, not just because of the vocabulary but also because the grammar is so all over the place. It's not considered a separate language, though, as it's nothing more than a tool for casual conversation.
melv douc lets say that slang french start to diverge more and more from standard french, to a point that it becomes a whole new language. Could you point to the exact moment when it became a new language?
my argument is that when you have two different ways of communicating, even though they are under the same label, they are already two different languages. In my case, the differences are not enough to say that we have two portugueses, but still they are already showing the starting signs of diversion that you would expect in two different situational language.
My dear, I am an absolute fan of your page.
I really thank you for all your valuable work.
I want to signal that the correct italian
form of the title should be "Cos'è LA diglossia".
It wants article. I really don't know why though.
The translations are added by viewers, so you correct it and I’ll approve it. You can click on the wheel icon on the video and look for captions/subtitles.
I grew up in the North of England, close to the Scottish border, and thus the Geordie accent was always very difficult for me, as I speak "posh" English. But while people used Geordie for everyday situations, when it came to formality, an accented proper English was used. Thus the concept of Diglossia makes perfect sense to me.
Diglossia is also found in Greek. Formal Greek, and Pontiaka Kritika Kypreïka Hpeirotika. From the Regions of Pontos (Black Sea) the island of Crete, the island of Cyprus and the Epirus province. All has substancial phonetic differncies with modern official greek as they evolved in remote either islands or mountein isolated regions.
But as the word litery means double tonge in Greek, we use this word for the politicians, as they promish and act differntly before and after the general elections .... 😎
Isn't karthevousa still used by the church.
In Belgium the low variety is Flemish! Love it :)
+Nina And Flemish can be divided even further into dialects (?) like West Flemish, Limburgish, etc. :)
So helpful thank you
This helped me study. Thanks!
Even here where I live in the US this happens a lot. There are also many families here who are "grammar Nazis" ,even when speaking, but they're also the people who are generally avoided because of other dislikes. I rarely have problems because my family was exposed to most of the dialects here (and yes there are fairly big differences) but it does create big confusions when people don't know one of the dialects and try to listen in. It does make life interesting when people start communicating with me through text then talk because of the many differences especially because in text it's easier to avoid accidentally using non english or non standard words for ease of understanding.
In Finnish, diglossia is a pretty big thing. If you speak in the formal language for example to your friends, they'll say something like "Why are you talking like that?". So we have "puhekieli" which literally means 'speaklanguage" but it's the informal form of Finnish and we speak it with our friends and family and even with our teachers and they speak it too. Then, there's "kirjakieli" which literally means booklanguage and it's used in newspapers and books and news on the TV. Here's an example in my area's "puhekieli" and "kirjakieli" (Yes, there are many MANY dialects of Finnish and even more minor ones) EXAMPLE: I made dinner for you. In "kirjakieli": Minä tein päivällistä sinulle. In "puhekieli": Mä tei(n) sul päivällist. See? The words in "puhekieli" are shorter and often when speaking the N-letters in the end of the words disappear and are not pronounced like in the "kirjakieli".
where I come from
its 3 languages
our casual language I called Isnag, which is a very small language that very little people speak
while we use Tagalog or English as a formal language, it's usually optional
Yeah and you probably know some Ilocano too?
you should do a video analyzing a sentence on every language you can. And then compare the vocabulary, the structure and everything. You can ask to your subscribers to translate.
One could maybe say that there is diglossia in Brazil. In many different states, common changes have happened in the spoken variety, like simplified verbal conjugations, contracted pronouns and the loss of the plural in words, being marked only by the article. But in formal situations, we are expected to use the "correct" portuguese. It's a quite interesting situation.
You're totally right, I use diglossia and never knew about it
I hadn't heard of diglossia until watching this video. I think Cantonese is another example, where the vocabulary in spoken and written Cantonese is different.
Thank you so much for teaching us, I wish you the best.
شكراً :)
That's what happens in Sardinia, most people speak both italian and sardinian, I'm glad to see you put a picture of traditional sardinian costumes! :D
I'm not really sure if it's to be called Diglossia, but I live in Tatarstan Republic, one of Russia's federal subjects, where there is two languages in use: Russian and Tatar. They're generally both considered official languages, so almost all inscriptions and signs are bilingual. Thus, for example, if you go in the metro, you see a station's name and different infos in Russian and Tatar both. This two is also taught to everyone in all schools of Tatarstan, so there's like no high/low distinction between the languages. However, in the times of USSR Tatar was taught only to Tatars, ethnically. Still, nowadays a major part of children born in Tatar families speak both Tatar and Russian almost since birth because their parents do so. I find this really fascinating, especially when they mix languages up in their speech!P. S. As always, a one more great video! :)
Would you consider African American Vernacular English or Ebonics to be a low variety firm of English?
Yes, absolutely. “Low” meaning “vernacular” as opposed to the “high” language (the formal standard variety).
Thanks for the video. Yes, Arabic is a very good example of diglossia.
In Indonesia, diglossia is huge. Even, some Indonesians believe that it is strange to use standard indonesian in casual situation and even in some formal situation too.
There is Diglosia in Spain (Galicia, Cataluña, Basque country) and you often end up messing the words and expressions of a language with the other :P
Swiss Standard German is different from German Standard German. They have slightly different grammar (Swiss keyboards have no eszett key because most people don't use it) & some different words. Austrian German has many words which end in a consonant then -l or -i, these also appear in German German but are mostly colloquial abbreviations or grammatical exceptions. They are much more common in Austrian German.
Can you do a video on the languages of India and South Asia in general? It's a very diverse area and of course, I'm from India, so I want to see them covered.
I really like these phenomena videos. When you talked about Italy, it begged the question: What's the difference between a language variety and a dialect? I mean, I know some quotes like "A language is a dialect with an army behind it" or "A language is a dialect that's been lucky", but since you emphasized that they are languages and not dialect I'd love to see you explain why.
+Zwerggoldhamster language variety is more broad and accurate term which describes any particular linguistic variety, i.e. any aprticular codified way o speaking, that includes jargons, sociolects, dialects, languages, In linguistics is usually the prefer term, since it doesn't have a negative connotation and has a very clear definition.
Dialects is more of a nebolous cocnept, it usually referrs to a particular set of linguistic apttern that are common in a geographical zone, but that are included in other language. The distinction beetween language and dialect is a tricky one, because the main linguistic criteria are similarities and inteligibility (how much a group of dialects are similar in their gramamr and vocabulary beetween them and how much a speaker of one can understand a speaker of othesr), and both are gradual and because of that there isn't a clear frontier (like there isn't a clear moment when white isntantly becomes black, but an almost infinite numbers of grey tonalities), so for example it could be perfectly argued that norwegian and swedish are at the same times both dialects and languages. That being said the Italian language are sometimes as different beetween them as german is to dutch.