Languages with no monoglots (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Languages with no monoglots
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Chung
Diglot
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Message 9 of 26

10 February 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged

beano wrote:

What happens to a language when there are virtually no monoglot speakers left and people have to
frequently use another language in order to go about their business? Does the language begin to soak up
more loan words and idioms than normal and take on new grammatical structures?

Your question reminds me of what I've read about Kamas which became extinct in 1989.

When the language was down to its last native speaker, Klavdiya Plotnikova, the researchers noted that what she used showed heavy influence from Russian (In addition, and even though it's not mentioned, Kamas also showed influence from a neighbouring Turkic language, Khakas). It would have been even more interesting if the article had provided some examples of this external influence on her native speech

There's a touching description of the feelings of this last native speaker here

Something about this description really sticks with me but I attribute that to Uralic languages being a pet interest
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geoffw
Triglot
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United States
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Message 10 of 26

10 February 2013 at 9:08pm | IP Logged

This has pretty much always been the case with Yiddish, as I understand it, and thus perhaps it's no surprise that
Yiddish has been characterized by a blatant disregard for linguistic boundaries. IMHO there's no such thing as
foreign words in Yiddish, just loanwords that we don't know about yet.
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Darklight1216
Diglot
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Message 11 of 26

11 February 2013 at 3:44am | IP Logged

Alot of African languages probably fall into this category. Every African that I've ever met, encountered on the internet, or heard of (usually from other Africans) speaks at least a tribal language and a lingua franca or Arabic and French/English/etc.
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songlines
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Message 12 of 26

11 February 2013 at 4:25am | IP Logged

Some of you may already know of Mark Abley's book
Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened
Languages.

Book Depository link,
and also preview-able through Google Books.

Observer review of book.

There are some good excerpts from the book through the above links (the first is a touching one about
Provençal*), but I wholeheartedly recommend the rest of this always fascinating, beautifully written - in turn
sometimes funny, other times poignant - book.

---------

Covered by Abley: several Australian Aboriginal languages, Yuchi (Nth American Indian), Manx, Boro, Provencal,
Mohawk, Yiddish, and Welsh.

------

Quote:

*...There was one more topic I had to broach. I was almost dreading it.

“And do you use Provençal in your daily life?”

“Of course,” he said to my surprise. “But less and less. And partly it’s because I find the words are missing. I
speak Provençal to a certain extent when I go into a village. Sometimes there are meetings where I use it. But
mostly, I speak it at funerals. The women gather together in one group, the men in another, and we speak in
Provençal. The men talk about the harvest and they talk about hunting. It’s curious — at that moment you feel
the weight of tradition, and the tradition rises up again. At funerals, something leads us to speak spontaneously
in Provençal.”

Bec and his black setter walked out into the warm afternoon to see me off. He urged me to take care on the
winding lane back to the main road. I waved goodbye, but I hardly saw the man any longer. There was a vision in
my mind that refused to go away: a little crowd of people, most of them even older than the priest, who stand on
the high steps outside a medieval church and gaze down toward the vineyards and olive groves of a gray-green
valley. Their ears still ring with the music of departure — peace, eternal rest, perpetual light — and their minds
are restless with the past.

.....As they shuffle down the church steps, taking precautions not to fall, they bid farewell to each other one more
time in the language of their youth; they bid farewell to the language of their youth.

Edited by songlines on 11 February 2013 at 4:36am
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Darklight1216
Diglot
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Message 13 of 26

11 February 2013 at 2:21pm | IP Logged

That was a pretty good book. The part that most stood out to me was the story about how the last speaker of a Native American language was a parrot.
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Ogrim
Heptaglot
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Message 14 of 26

11 February 2013 at 3:27pm | IP Logged

Just bought "Spoken here" as an e-book! Thank you songlines, I didn't know about this book until now.

Back to the OP: A language which I am pretty sure has virtually no monoglots is Romansh, the fourth national language of Switzerland. According to the official statistics I have been able to find (the Swiss census of 2000) about 60000 people declared that it is a language they regularly speak, but of them only 35000 indicated that Romansh was their language of "best command". There are still a few villages in Graubünden/Grischun where it is spoken daily by the large majority of people. The flipside is that young people tend to leave their villages to go to study in the cities, where either German or French will be the main language.

Thanks to the Swiss language policy, as well as the dedicated work of Lia Rumantscha, the organisation which promotes the language, Romansh is probably in relatively good health, in spite of the low number of native speakers who use it regularly.

German has had a huge influence on Romansh, both in vocabulary and as far as certain grammar constructions are concerned. However, this is a process that started back in the Old High German period. I am sure that the process continues today with new words for new things being introduced through German.

Edited by Ogrim on 11 February 2013 at 3:28pm
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karpat
Diglot
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Poland
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Message 15 of 26

11 February 2013 at 4:03pm | IP Logged

Hmm... if one of the languages, say the native language, becomes substratum in relation to the language that is generally used (in office, radio, tv and other everyday buisness), which in such case becomes a superstratum language, then it may happen that the natvie/less used language will lose its prestige and usefulness and finally, due to simple practicality of learning the superstratum language (say, the substratum language is no longer taught and learned), it may die. Language contact phenomena, such as borrowing, code-switching, language mixing and others are bound to happen at some point. It's something of an naturall occurence/development of any language which comes into contact with another, especially one of higher prestige.

Edited by karpat on 11 February 2013 at 4:07pm
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Luso
Hexaglot
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Portugal
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Message 16 of 26

11 February 2013 at 6:37pm | IP Logged

I think it depends. I believe that nowadays (in many European countries, at least) it's "cool" to also speak such a language.

Take the example of Mirandese: everyone also speaks Portuguese, but the language is also being revived as a local marketing product. You have local food, local drink, local festivities. Why not a local language? Translate, say, the New Testament, the Constitution and local folks' tales, and voilà: you have something to put on the shelves, alongside handicraft, wine and cheese.

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