List of diglossic regions
refers to the use of a language community of two languages or dialects, a "high" or "H" variety restricted to certain formal situations, and a "low" or "L" variety for everyday interaction. This page contains a list of nations, cultures, or other communities which sources describe as featuring a diglossic language situation.
Americas
African American Vernacular English
In the United States, Standard English is considered H while AAVE is considered L. Its pronunciation is, in some respects, common to Southern American English, which is spoken by many African Americans and many non-African Americans in the United States. Several creolists, including William Stewart, John Dillard, and John Rickford, argue that AAVE shares so many characteristics with creole dialects spoken by black people in much of the world that AAVE itself is a creole, while others maintain that there are no significant parallels. Many African-Americans do not use AAVE, but those who do not are at risk of being criticized about their identity. Additionally, many non-African-Americans use AAVE, depending on where they live and their socioeconomic status.Brazilian Portuguese
According to some contemporary Brazilian linguists, Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly diglossic language. This theory claims that there is an L-variant, which would be the mother tongue of all Brazilians, and an H-variant acquired through schooling. L-variant represents a simplified form of the language that could have evolved from 16th-century Portuguese, influenced by other European, Amerindian and African languages, while H-variant would be based on 19th century European Portuguese. Mário A. Perini, a Brazilian linguist, even compares the depth of the differences between L- and H- variants of Brazilian Portuguese with those between Standard Spanish and Standard Portuguese. Milton M. Azevedo wrote a chapter on diglossia in his monography: Portuguese language , published by Cambridge University Press, in 2005, parts of which are available freely on Google books.Jamaica
In Jamaica, everyone is able to speak and understand the vernacular patois, a centuries-old English derived creole. Many also understand and can speak "standard" English; however, in common everyday oral usage, people generally use one or the other exclusively, according to social status and formal education. In everyday commerce, business, banking, media and government—in short, the entire private and public sector—acrolect English is used. This has resulted in a diglossia situation. Situational code-switching, style shifting and code-alternation occur continuously, seamlessly in communication between all Jamaicans of all classes and in all situations, in all speech acts. Recently, Jamaican patois has gone through a process of decreolization, similar to that which happened with AAVE due to the basilect creole variety developing alongside the acrolect English. It is important to note that for all practical purposes, English is Jamaica's native language. When the English took over the country from the Spanish in the seventeenth century Jamaica was linguistically a blank slate. The country came under English jurisdiction and the incoming new colonists were English. English became the de facto language because there was no other language there at the time. The native Arawak had long disappeared, and with the arrival of the English in 1655 the few Spanish settlers on the island fled to Cuba. The thousands of West African slaves that would be brought in for labour on the island's notorious sugar plantations of the eighteenth century had not yet arrived. Jamaican patois came into being when the island's burgeoning sugar industry created a large demand for field labour. The incoming African slave labourers—who spoke many various languages themselves—and the English speaking plantocracy communicated through the formation of a contact creole language unique to Jamaica. Today we know this creole as patois, and even those Jamaicans who don't speak it on a daily basis can speak it fluently, and fully understand it. Jamaican patois is sometimes written but because of the lack of standardization, many words may be spelled in many different ways. Standard English is taught in Jamaican schools, although teachers may speak to pupils and their parents in patois outside of the classroom.Paraguay
In Paraguay, both modern-day Spanish and the Guaraní indigenous language are spoken, and both are official and taught in schools. But a great part of the population speak an informal, barely codified variant of the latter, with many Spanish influences, called Jopará.Peru
In Peru, as throughout most of Latin America, Spanish is considered the 'H' language while indigenous languages like Quechua dialects or Ayamara are considered the 'L' language. This has resulted in most Peruvians who do speak an indigenous language using Spanish more and more in everyday life.Africa and Asia
Bengali
Traditionally, Bengali exhibits diglossia in both written and spoken forms of the language's uppermost registers. Shadhubhasha exhibited longer verb inflections and heavily Sanskritized vocabulary. Up to the turn of the 19th century, most Bengali literature took this form. Cholitbhasha or Cholitobhasha, based on the formal registers of spoken, educated dialects, has much simpler grammatical forms, and has become the modern literary standard.Burmese
is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers :- Literary High form : the high variety, used in literature, newspapers, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches
- Spoken Low form : the low variety, used in daily conversation, television, comics and literature
- "this" : i → di
- "that" : htui → hui
- "at" : hnai. → hma
- plural : mya: → twe
- possessive : i. → re.
- "and" : hnang. → ne.
- "if" : hlyang → rang
Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt, a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written contexts, the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use the spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms.
Cape Verdean Creole
Perhaps one of the oldest creoles in existence, the Kriolu/Crioulu/Kabuverdianu/Caboverdiano of the Cape Verde islands has existed alongside the Portuguese brought by slave traders since the 15th century. Inhabiting the island with slaves brought from all along the West African coast, a pidgin developed to allow for communication both between traders and slaves as well as among slaves of different ethnic groups. Today, Kriolu is used mostly in the home and in casual settings, while Portuguese is the language of government and business. More recently, some events and organizations are beginning to conduct business, conferences, and symposiums in Kriolu, while schools debate to what extent Kriolu should be used in the classrooms. Efficiency and international competency are certainly important to consider when making a choice to use Portuguese or Kriolu in institutional settings, but so is the cultural identity for which Kriolu is so essential to maintain.Chinese
For over two thousand years, the Chinese used Classical Chinese as a formal standard written language. The standard written language served as a bridge for communication throughout China and other Sinophone countries and Chinese influenced countries like Japan, the Ryukyus, Korea, and Vietnam for millennia.However, the colloquial varieties of Chinese continued to evolve. The gulf became so wide between the formal written and colloquial spoken languages that it was blamed for hindering education and literacy, and some even went so far as to blame it in part for the political turmoil that occurred in China during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This eventually culminated in the adoption of written vernacular Chinese, which was based on modern spoken Mandarin, for all formal communication.
Modern Chinese
After the adoption of vernacular Chinese as the modern standard written language in the early 20th century, diglossia was no longer a big issue among the majority of Chinese speakers who learn Mandarin Chinese as the standard national dialect. However, standard Chinese and its pronunciation in local dialects is still a formal register in regions where Mandarin is not spoken natively, such as most of South China.For instance in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the primary language of spoken communication, although all formal written communication is done in standard written Chinese. Unique among the other Chinese dialects, Cantonese has its own written form, but it is used only in informal contexts and is often inconsistent due to the absence of standardization.
Literate Chinese speakers can read and write in the Mandarin-based standard written language. However, because the graphemes in Chinese's logographic writing system are not directly linked to pronunciation, Cantonese speakers who do not speak Mandarin will read aloud the characters in Cantonese pronunciation only. The resulting speech is Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary pronounced word-by-word in Cantonese. If the same sentence were to be spoken using regular colloquial Cantonese, it might be quite different. Here is an example:
| English Sentence | Please give me his book. |
| Standard written Chinese rendition | |
| Standard written Chinese rendition | |
| Standard Chinese pronunciation of writing | Qǐng gěi wǒ tā de shū. |
| Cantonese pronunciation of writing | Chíng kāp ngóh tā dīk syū. |
| Written colloquial Cantonese rendition | |
| Colloquial Cantonese pronunciation | M̀h-gōi béi kéuih bún syū ngóh. |
In the above example, note the switching of the direct and indirect objects and the use of different vocabulary for certain words in the standard Chinese and colloquial Cantonese renditions. In addition, Cantonese grammar allows the use of classifiers to serve in the place of a genitive particle.
Classical Chinese
Before the modern adoption of written vernacular Chinese, the diglossic situation also applied to Mandarin speakers when Classical Chinese was the standard written language.Continuing the previous example for comparison, using Classical Chinese it would be:
| Classical Chinese rendition | |
| Classical Chinese rendition | |
| Mandarin pronunciation of Classical Chinese | Qiú ěr yǔ wǒ qí shū. |
| Cantonese pronunciation of Classical Chinese | Kàuh yíh yúh ngóh kèih syū. |
Because Chinese's logographic writing system doesn't indicate exact pronunciation, the pronunciation of Classical Chinese in Old Chinese is generally not possible. Instead, Classical Chinese is also generally pronounced according to the local dialect, much like how Cantonese speakers pronounce the modern Mandarin-based written Chinese using Cantonese.
Unlike the situation with modern Chinese, however, Classical Chinese spoken according to the pronunciations of the modern spoken Chinese varieties is still largely unintelligible without training due to the syntax and vocabulary changes that Chinese has undergone since Old Chinese. In addition, sound mergers in the modern dialects cause many distinct words in Classical Chinese to sound homophonous. For one notable example, see Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den.
Hindi
Hindi has two forms: the H form called shuddha Hindi and the L form called Hindustani. Both are based on the same dialect: Dehlavi.The L variety, Hindustani contains many loanwords from Persian and Arabic, along with a massive vocabulary of English loanwords which increase day by day. The L variety is identical with spoken Urdu—except for the fact that the latter is written in Perso-Arabic script. The H variety was standardized in the 1960s during the movement to adopt Hindi as national language of Indian Union. Shuddh Hindi primarily uses words from Sanskrit to replace not only English loanwords, but also loanwords from Persian and Arabic which had been nativized for centuries. These words are called tatsam words, and they even replaced many tadbhav words, i.e. words with Sanskrit origin but having undergone profound phonological changes.
An example is the Hindi version of the sentence: "This morning I read the newspaper but could not study those books."
| Shuddh Hindi | āj | prātaḥ | maĩne | samāchār-patr | paḍhā, | parantu | un | pustakõ | kā | adhyayan | nahĩ | kar | sakā. |
| Hindustani | āj | subah | maĩne | akhbār | paḍhā, | lekin | un | kitābõ | kī | paḍhāī | nahĩ | kar | sakā. |
| Gloss | today | morning | I-erg | newspaper | read.Perfective | but | those | books | of | study | not | do | could.Perfective |
Here, prātaḥ, samāchār-patr and parantu are loanwords from Sanskrit used in the H form, versus the Arabic loanwords subah, akhbār and lekin which are rather more popular in speech. Adhyayan is loanwords from Sanskrit which can even replace native tadhbhav word paḍhāī. On the other hand, the H form has highly minimized the use of Persian and Arabic phonemes,,, and. Partly because they are written in the Hindi alphabet as a dot beneath traditionally existing alphabets, and the dot is omitted in casual writing, many Hindi speakers mistake them for the Sanskrit phonemes,,, and.
The L variety is used in common speech, TV serials and Bollywood movies and songs. The H variety is used in official and government writings, scholarly books and magazines, signboards, public announcements and public speaking.
Malay
The Malay language exists in a Classical variety, and modern standard variety and several vernacular dialects.In Brunei, Standard Malay is promoted as the national language and is the H variety, while Brunei Malay is used very widely throughout society and it constitutes the L variety. One major difference between these dialects of Malay is that Brunei Malay tends to have the verb at the front, while Standard Malay generally places it after the subject. It has been estimated that 84% of core vocabulary in Brunei Malay and Standard Malay is cognate, though their pronunciation often differs very considerably. While Standard Malay has six vowels, Brunei Malay has only three: /a, i, u/.
One complicating factor is that English is also widely used in Brunei, especially in education, as it is the medium of instruction from upper primary school onwards, so it shares the H role with Standard Malay. Another code that competes for the H role in some situations is the special palace register of Brunei Malay, which includes an elaborate system of honorific terms for addressing and referring to the Sultan and other nobles. Finally, although Standard Malay is used for sermons in the mosques, readings from the Qur'an are in Arabic.
Manchu
Standard Manchu was based on the language spoken by the Jianzhou Jurchens during Nurhaci's time, while other unwritten Manchu dialects such as that of Aigun and Sanjiazi were also spoken in addition to the related Xibe language.Mongolian
was the high register used for religious and official purposes while the various Mongolian dialects serve as the low register, like Khalkha Mongolian, Chakhar Mongolian, Khorchin Mongolian, Kharchin Mongolian, Baarin Mongolian, Ordos Mongolian, and the Buryat language. The Tibetan Buddhist canon was translated into Classical Mongolian. The Oirat Mongols who spoke the Oirat Mongol language and dialects like Kalmyk language or Torgut Oirat used a separate standard written with the Clear script.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 has been turned into a standard literary form itself in Russia.
Sinhalese
, spoken in Sri Lanka, is a diglossic language. There are several differences between the literary language and the spoken language, especially about verbs:- different personal pronouns:
- * "he, she": LS '; SS ' ;
- lack of inflection of the verb in SS:
- * "I do", "you do": LS ', ' ; SS ', '
- lack of future tense in SS, substituted by present tense plus optional temporal adverb:
- * LS ' "I will go"; SS ' "tomorrow I will go" ;
- different verbal forms ;
- different adpositions:
- * "with": LS '; SS '
- * "from" : LS '; SS '
- * "before" : LS '; SS ', '
- different vocabulary, e.g.:
- * "to help": LS '; SS '
- * "to touch": LS '; SS '
- * "to marry": LS '; SS '
- * "to study": LS '; SS '
- * "to fight": LS '; SS
Singapore
Many analysts regard the use of English in Singapore as diglossic, with Singapore Standard English forming the H variety and Singapore Colloquial English constituting the L variety. SStdE is similar to other varieties of Standard English in grammar and lexis but with some of its own features of pronunciation, particularly the use of full vowels in most function words and also the sporadic absence of dental fricatives, while SCE is characterised by a simplified grammar and regular use of pragmatic particles such as lah and ah, as well as frequent inclusion of Hokkien and Malay words.However, other analysts prefer to see variation in the English spoken in Singapore along a continuum, with the style adopted depending on the education level and circumstances of the conversation. Some proficient speakers who are well-educated have been shown to use mostly SStdE but with lots of pragmatic particles when talking to their friends, and this seems to provide evidence to support the continuum analysis.
It is certainly true that speakers are able to switch quite abruptly, for example as they exit a classroom and start chatting to their friends, so one way or another there are many characteristics of diglossia in spoken Singapore English.
Tagalog
is the primary language spoken in the southern half of Luzon, the northernmost group of islands in the Philippines. Southern Luzon covers the provinces around and including Metro Manila.The Manila dialect of Tagalog is the basis for the country's national language, Filipino. Tagalogs originating from provinces outside of Metro Manila speak their own dialects, such as Batangan Tagalog. Additionally, speakers of other Philippine languages originating from different parts of the country, such as Cebuano and Ilokano, will switch to Tagalog when communicating with those outside of their respective regions and in formal settings. Official publications are also written in Tagalog and English, and seldom in a local language.
Tamil
Tamil has 3 forms: Cenkatamizh, modelled on Old Tamil, Centamizh, the style used in modern formal contexts today, and Kotuntamizh, the modern colloquial form. These styles form a continuum, so that some writers use Cenkatamizh words while writing in Centamizh. Cenkatamizh and Centamizh are very different from the various dialects of Kotuntamizh.The classic form is preferred for writing, and is also used for public speaking. While the written Tamil language is mostly standard across various Tamil-speaking regions, the spoken form of the language differs widely from the written form. Perunchitthranar, a Tamil nationalist and others of his ilk, advocated that all Tamils speak only the pure form of the language, i.e., Centhamizh.
Tamil fiction-writers use Centhamizh for all descriptive writing and use "Kotunthamizh" only to narrate conversations between the characters in their works. There have been exceptions to this rule. Noted novelist Kalki Krishnamurthy once dismissed Centhamizh as Kodunthamizh although his novels are written almost entirely in Centhamizh, both description and conversation. Even though all Tamils—no matter how educated they are—always converse in Kotuntamizh, Tamil novels used to depict educated people speaking in the classic form. Several decades ago, most Tamil movies had characters who spoke in Centamizh.
Thai
Standard Thai language has not only two but several social registers with distinct functions: 1. Street or common Thai : informal, without polite terms of address, as used between close relatives and friends; 2. Elegant or formal Thai : official and written version, includes respectful terms of address; used in simplified form in newspapers; 3. Rhetorical Thai: used for public speaking; 4. Religious Thai: used when discussing Buddhism or addressing monks; 5. Royal Thai : used when addressing members of the royal family or describing their activities. Most Thais can speak and understand all of these. Street and elegant Thai are the basis of all conversations; rhetorical, religious and royal Thai are taught in schools as the national curriculum.Tibetan
was the high register used universally by all Tibetans while the various mutually unintelligible Tibetic languages serve as the low register vernacular, like Central Tibetan language in Ü-Tsang, Khams Tibetan in Kham, Amdo Tibetan in Amdo, Ladakhi language in Ladakh, and Dzongkha in Bhutan. Classical Tibetan was used for official and religious purposes, such as in Tibetan Buddhist religious texts like the Tibetan Buddhist canon and taught and learned in monasteries and schools in Tibetan Buddhist regions.Now Standard Tibetan, based on the Lhasa dialect, serves as the high register in China. In Bhutan, the Tibetan Dzongkha language has been standardized and replaced Classical Tibetan for official purposes and education, in Ladakh, the standard official language learned are now the unrelated languages Hindi-Urdu and English, and in Baltistan, the Tibetan Balti language serves as the low register while the unrelated Urdu language is the official language.
Urdu
In Pakistan there is a diglossia between the extremely Persianised/Arabicized Urdu, and a colloquial Urdu that is very similar to colloquial Hindi. Colloquial Pakistani Urdu is also highly influenced by Punjabi. As English is the official language of Pakistan, there is a degree of diglossia between the upper and middle and lower classes. The upper and upper-middle classes tend to be educated in English medium schools whereas the lower class are schooled in either Urdu or one of the regional languages. The language of the bureaucracy and the higher courts is English, but there is a high degree of code switching between Urdu, English and regional languages in the parliament, provincial legislatures and private sector.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. 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.Europe
Catalan
With the exception of Andorra, Catalan as spoken outside of Catalonia may be in various grades, from highly to barely diglossic. Diglossia in Catalan is typically stronger in some metropolitan areas than rural or sparsely populated areas.This phenomenon affects almost all areas in the Valencian Community with its Valencian as well as Alghero, some touristy areas and the main cities in the Balearic Islands—sometimes competing with outside languages, for example English— and most of North Catalonia
English and Anglo-Norman
Prior to the Norman invasion of 1066, Old English in its various dialects was spoken in England. For some centuries following the conquest, England experienced diglossia between a French ruling class who spoke Anglo-Norman and commoners who spoke English. As French gradually waned, English changed and took over until Middle English and Modern English was created through the merger of this divide. However, there is still evidence of a division, between "academic" words and "common" words. Many words for foods use French-derived vocabulary, while the word for the corresponding animal is of Germanic origin: for example, pork and swine, mutton and lamb, or beef and cow.French
Standard French and Walloon have traditionally been a diglossic system in Belgium's southern region, Wallonia. Similar diglossia occurs or has occurred in areas of France where other languages are dominant in the home and daily life, including French and Provençal in Provence and southern France, and, prior to the mid-20th century, French and Alsatian in Alsace-Lorraine.Galician
is a classic example of diglossia, as the majority language Galician is regarded by most native speakers as inferior to the State language, Spanish, or Portuguese. Since the sixteenth century the upper layers of the Galician society, i.e. the town gentry, the civil servants and the Church, used Spanish as their main or only language whereas the vast majority of the population, made up of peasants and fishermen, continued to speak Galician. This entrenched a perception of Galician as a language of inferior people that prevented social promotion. Thus, when urbanization spread in earnest in the mid twentieth century the new middle classes and urban blue collar cohorts started to adopt Spanish in a diglossic context, Galician at home and Spanish at work. This is a situation that persists to a slightly lesser degree to this day even as both languages are official and the Galician language now enjoys a relatively strong industrial culture and media.To make things more complicated a similar relationship exists between spoken Galician or Leonese and the literary standard that was developed when Galician became official language in 1983, as native speakers resent the fact the standard lacks naturality, does not include widely assumed phonetic or lexical features of the spoken language such as gheada as well as reintroducing Galician words that have long been replaced in the spoken language by their Spanish and in some cases English equivalents. Therefore, it is not uncommon to find native Galician speakers that for instance speak colloquial Galician at home, Spanish at work and standard Galician in public events or when liaising with the Public Administration.
German
was almost entirely restricted as a written language until the early 20th century, when Northern pronunciation was accepted as Standard, and the language spread. In fact, in cities such as Hanover and Berlin, the dialect started disappearing with the exception of a small minority of Low German speakers that only make up 5 million people. Austria also experienced the same situation, where less than 1,500,000 speakers of the dialect still remain. In most of Germany, people generally use Standard German, while most people in Austria generally use Austrian Standard German rather than their local dialect in both informal and formal situations. This is the case of language loss, where speakers of German generally started using Standard rather than dialect. This is due to children mastering the Standard language at school and common media use of the Standard language.In German-speaking Switzerland, the Swiss German dialects are used in everyday conversations, as every German-speaking Swiss is diglossic. Unlike Austria and Germany, where Standard German has replaced the local dialects, dialects of Swiss German are in lively use. The Swiss variety of Standard German, aka High German, however is also used to a certain extent in school and church practices. Swiss Standard German is mostly restricted to being a written language, as spoken Swiss Standard German is merely used in more formal situations such as news broadcasts and serious programmes of the public media channels, public speeches, parliamentary sessions, official announcements, school instruction, and interactions with non-Swiss speakers.
Gibraltar
occupies the position of high variety in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar while Andalusian Spanish occupies the position of low Variety, particularly as spoken in its local Llanito variety. Code-switching and Translanguaging are common place in Gibraltarian language practice.Greek
Until the 1970s, the Greek language distinguished between Dimotiki, the colloquial language which was used in everyday discussions and the extremely formal and archaic Katharevousa, which was used in more "educated" contexts, as in school, in court, in law texts etc. Extreme Katharevousa was, in fact, nearly pure Ancient Greek, and as such, nearly completely unintelligible to children and adults without higher education; however there was a linguistic spectrum, with so-called Simple Katharevousa quite close to Dimotiki, and the emerging urban standard of Dimotiki making more concessions to Katharevousa than its more radical form. The Greek language question, from the 1890s on, was a heated dispute on which language form was to be the official language of the state: unlike typical diglossic situations, the primacy of the H variant was disputed, and the choice of variant became politicized, with Dimotiki associated with the left wing and Katharevousa with the right; morphological choices could even end up used as political shibboleths. This dispute was eventually settled, and today the single language used in all texts is an educated variant of Dimotiki, which uses many expressions from Katharevousa. This variant is commonly called Modern Greek.The contemporary linguistic situation in Cyprus is also diglossic, with Modern Greek taking the H role, and Cypriot Greek the L role.
Italian
Throughout most of Italy, diglossia between Italian as H and local indigenous languages – for the most part Romance – as L has long been the normal situation. The local Romance languages, somewhat ambiguously referred to as dialetti 'dialects', are direct descendants of Latin, and until relatively recently were the first languages of most Italians. Today their use is receding, but especially in smaller towns and villages it is still common for natives to use the local variety as home language and amongst themselves, and use Italian with outsiders or in formal situations.A similar situation is registered in areas in which a non-Romance languages are spoken in addition to Italian. Some non-Romance linguistic communities have been recognized by the State since the end of World War II, such as the German speakers in South Tyrol and Slovene speakers in the provinces of Trieste and Gorizia. In these cases, most members of the minorities are fluent in both their native language and standard Italian, resulting in a situation of bilingualism rather than diglossy. In most other cases, there is a diglossic situation between Italian as H, and the non-Romance minority languages as L. Examples include: Molise Croats, the Arberesh communities in southern Italy, Slovene speakers in Friulian Slovenia, the Resian dialect in Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Alemannic German speakers in Valle d'Aosta.
An interesting situation occurs in Valle d'Aosta, where the majority of the population is bilingual French-Italian, but live in a diglossic situation in regards to Franco-Provençal.
Maltese
is officially a bilingual country: both Maltese and English are official languages. Maltese is a Semitic language with extensive Italian influence.Maltese society has been traditionally quite strongly divided, politically, between the working class and middle and upper classes and this is reflected in their language use. Although all Maltese can speak their native language, the extent to which one uses and is able to speak English often reflects one's background. This is most clearly illustrated by the different newspapers in Malta: the liberal/conservative ones are in English and the more left-leaning ones are in Maltese. Maltese people of a middle- and upper-class background will often speak English or use code-switching extensively in public. There have been warnings from several quarters including a linguistics professor from the University of Malta that the Maltese language could become endangered if the government does not do more to promote it, in the same way that English displaced Welsh in Wales.
Before 1934, Italian was an official language in Malta and used in the court system. Those in higher class positions spoke Italian, and were often associated with the Italian irredenta movement which promoted the unification of Malta with Italy. It was only those of lower class at the time, whose ancestors came from Sicily too long ago for them to still be fluent in Italian, who spoke primarily Maltese. Today, the influence of the Italian language is still present in Malta. Not only is it used in the professional workplace but also it is key to Malta's media, such as television, radio and publications.
Polish
, with respect to the upper class of the Polish society within the Kingdom of Poland, most especially landed nobility, was a low language until Jan Kochanowski stopped writing in Latin, the high language of the time, and decided to use his own native Polish as the literary language during the late sixteenth century. Polish, however, was often, but not always, the high language during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in spite of the early Belarusian being the official language.Before World War II, the Polish intelligentsia and those trying to emulate them, over-pronounced the words with hard "h" such as "hak" to know when to spell a word with "h", and when to spell the soft "h" sound with "ch" as in "chleb". An example of a person using this method to spell properly is Jerzy Petersburski.
Ukrainian
Until recently, Russian has been the High language and Ukrainian the Low language. However, data collected recently shows that diglossia in Ukraine is shifting.With the language policy of the Ukrainian government, and the continued use of Russian in many parts of the country, there are many places where people use Russian for everyday speech but Ukrainian for official purposes and street signs. Consequently, Russian is now the Low language and Ukrainian the High, which is a reversal from their relative position before Ukraine's independence.
Middle East and North Africa
Arabic
Throughout the Arab World, Modern Standard Arabic is the "high" standard written language and the many local colloquial dialects of Arabic are the "low" variety. However, every Arabic speaker, no matter how "cultured," is raised speaking a dialect, not MSA.The situation with the Literary Arabic versus spoken varieties of Arabic differs from country to country, but every Arab country's official language is "standard Arabic". Certain dialects have obtained a level of prestige. There is no consensus on which variety of Arabic should be taught to foreigners, although generally MSA is, since nearly all written Arabic texts exist in that variety.
The debate continues about the future of the divided Arabic language, both among Arabic linguists in the Arab world and those outside it. Some prefer the status quo. Many Arab purists, on the other hand, insist that only Modern Standard Arabic should be used, written and taught, believing all dialectical versions to be decadent. Some suggestions are:
- Promote Modern Standard Arabic exclusively, to be used colloquially, outside the formal situations, on an everyday basis by introducing more audio-material, enforcing the usage on mass-media. A lot of cartoons were created in MSA, which help young Arabs master the standard language before they start schooling. There are proposals to simplify the grammar of the standard Arabic a little and introduce some commonly known colloquial words. This idea is similar to the efforts in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore where Mandarin has gained a lot of popularity and the number of speakers is increasing, including those who speak it on a daily basis; or the situation with the Hebrew language, especially in Israel ; or the situation with Standard German in Austria and Germany in where the Standard language gained so much popularity people gave up their dialect in exchange for Standard German.
- "Upgrade" individual dialects to forms closer to MSA or merge dialects into possibly one spoken Arabic, thus formalizing spoken Arabic as a standard. Often it is advocated in individual Arabic countries, promoting only the main dialect of the given country. This idea was especially popular in Egypt, where spoken Egyptian is often written down and there are works in Egyptian Arabic or lahga Maṣreyya and other countries, e.g. Kateb Yacine wrote in Algerian Arabic. The "formal spoken Arabic" includes more features of the standard Arabic and words are often selected, which are understood across a larger area. One such a version of "Formal Spoken Arabic" is taught at Georgetown University and Foreign Service Institute. This second idea is similar to Evolution from Ancient to Modern Greek in Greece. Many Arabic scholars are against this idea, as the current standard Arabic is perceived to be essentially "classical Arabic", the language of Qur'ān, and is the literary standard in the Arab world.
An example of the heated protectionism surrounding MSA and rejection of dialectical Arabic can be seen in this quote by Ibrahim Kayid Mahmoud, College of Education, King Faisal University, Al-Hassa , Saudi Arabia on Literary Arabic between Diglossia and Bilingualism :
The study has concluded that both diglossia and bilingualism are the inveterate enemies of literary Arabic; they try to annihilate it. They create a weak, hesitant, indecisive anxious individual, with limited horizons.
Additionally, they constitute the direct cause of destroying creativity and scientific productivity. It is therefore imperative to protect Literary Arabic from the dangers of diglossia and bilingualism through taking the necessary measures to foster it and to give it due emphasis. Literary Arabic should be simplified and made more appealing to the younger generations. Educational institutions and mass media should also give it due emphasis. Current educational concepts should be utilized to promote literary Arabic. Arabic teachers should be adequately qualified."
The new Western term "Formal Spoken Arabic" is to describe a modern, hybrid-level variety of Arabic spoken by educated Arabs, a mix between standard Arabic and vernacular Arabic. It is more common in Eastern Arab states but sometimes also used to describe high-level Egyptian or Maghrebi Arabic. This new term represents a spoken language shared by Arabs from different regions when they have to communicate to each other. The pronunciation may reveal the speaker's origin but nevertheless, this simplified version of Arabic is becoming popular with foreign students who wish to be able communicate with a wide range of Arabic speakers.