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Linguistic Term Question

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Journeyer
Triglot
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 Message 1 of 12
01 December 2006 at 3:26pm | IP Logged 
What is the name of the phenomenon when there is a language spoken while being surrounded by a language or languages of a totally different family, etc?

The example I can think of is Hungarian surrounded by Indo-European languages. I suppose that perhaps Basque, Navajo, and Lakota, just to name a few, would also count.

I believe the word is a German term, Sprach something or the other, but I haven't been able to find it again.
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lady_skywalker
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 Message 2 of 12
01 December 2006 at 4:47pm | IP Logged 
I was going to suggest the term 'isolate' but that really refers to languages that seem to be unrelated to *any* language family (Basque being an example).
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 3 of 12
01 December 2006 at 5:03pm | IP Logged 
I think of the Swedish "språk-ö" which in English would be "language island" (however, I've never heard that word before).
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Paul
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 Message 4 of 12
01 December 2006 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
I don't know either...i can't find a word anywhere, nor have i ever heard of
one.

But you could also include Romanian in your list. I've sometimes heard it
refered to in french: 'comme une île de latinité dans un océan slave'.
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Sir Nigel
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 Message 5 of 12
01 December 2006 at 6:03pm | IP Logged 
If you're adventurous you could just invent a word for it. Borrow a couple Latin-based words and Anglicise them. j/k
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 6 of 12
01 December 2006 at 6:17pm | IP Logged 
I searched for the expression which seemed to be quite OK:
Quote:
A language island is a language area that is completely surrounded by a language border.

Examples for language islands:

Saterland
Brussels
Islenos
Palenquero
Alghero
Swabian Turkey


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-island
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andee
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 Message 7 of 12
01 December 2006 at 6:19pm | IP Logged 
Language-island does refer to that. A country/area that it's borders become a language border. Eg: Hungary.

It doesn't have to be the difference between like Indo-European and Semitic, it can also refer to the difference of Germanic and Romance.

There probably is a German word that is used linguistically as well, but we were just told about the English.
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RogueRook
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 Message 8 of 12
01 December 2006 at 7:27pm | IP Logged 
You might be looking for Sprachinsel?

One could say: Ungarisch bildet eine Sprachinsel im Indo-Europäischen Sprachgebiet.


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