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French diglossia- thoughts for discussion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 38 31 March 2015 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess I'm coming at it from quite a different perspective - all written languages, or those that have a proper
form taught in schools and a casual form that is actually spoken (in proper linguistic terms, a High and a Low variety) - are diglossic. The question isn't: is there diglossia in French (or English, German, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, etc)? There absolutely is. It's a question of degree; its how much diglossia is there? ----------------- I don't know enough to argue on where French sits on the continuum. I picked the examples off the top of my head as things I learned in person rather than at school - they're probably not the best ones. As for English, eyðimörk, some regions in the US are highly diglossic. Where I'm at pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) is huge, Black English (African American Vernacular English) is common among the military, and standard English is still the common form. All have their own grammars and vocabularies. It's politics and racism that stop these varieties from being recognized as proper varieties rather than just bad English. Edited by kanewai on 31 March 2015 at 7:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4096 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 10 of 38 31 March 2015 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
There is a word for all the ranges from "street slang" to "high literature", but that word isn't "diglossia". It's "register", which is defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "any of the varieties of a language that a speaker uses in a particular social context". EDIT: None of the examples you've mentioned, such as saying "ouais" instead of "oui", or "on" instead of "nous", are examples the kind of "high" and "low" languages mentioned in definitions of diglossia, in which you'd see sound shifts, some separate grammar, and separate vocabulary. I might agree with you that some speakers of African American Vernacular English and speakers of English Creole could be considered diglossic, but it's not diglossic to speak a different register than one foreigners learn in school. EDIT 2: Screw it, I'm cutting the examples because this headache is giving me tunnel vision and I can't make the sentences turn out the way I want them to. Edited by eyðimörk on 31 March 2015 at 8:28pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 11 of 38 31 March 2015 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are some interesting discussions on Language Log on whether English or French is
more diglossic. Neither side makes a totally winning case, but there's some good stuff in the arguments they make: Bushisms to la langue François Comparative diglossia 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5006 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 38 01 April 2015 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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From my understanding of what I read about diglossia, the main argument seems to be
that quite everyone uses two standards and that the secondary (newer, colloquial) standard is more or less common to a large region of speakers or even to all of them. There is no doubt about the Arabic diglossia. By the sources (unfortunately, I cannot speak Arabic so my experience is fairly limited), every Arabic native uses a dialect that is common to a larger region, which is often one country, and uses MSA in a set of situations. Or Latin in Europe in the Middle Ages is an interesting exemple. Noone spoke it at home yet it was the normal language in many situations and in literature. However, French or Czech, that is as well sometimes falsely accused of being diglossic, doesn't have such a second standard and the natives, as Arnaud25 confirms, do not feel like speaking two languages :-) I think a very common source of diglossia suspicions is a too limited sample of natives you listen to. For exemple, I can imagine a foreigner who listens only to czechs from Prague without university education and sitting in a pub. Such a foreigner might find Czech diglossic as everyone will speak in a similar manner with clear differences from the standard. However, anyone who listens to much more varied sample will soon understand it is not diglossia, it is just an exemple of variety, and that large part of the native speakers speaks quite standard Czech. I think it might be similar for French. I'd say you need three things to develop a real diglossia: 1.huge amount of speakers. (not sure where approximately lies the border, perhaps hundreds of millions?) 2.lots of time 3.rigid standard variant of the speech that resists the natural changes happening in the streets I'd say no normal european language of today qualifies. French as we know it is fairly young, there are reforms of the language that incorporate some of the changes at times, the number of european natives is still lower than for exemple the number of Arabic natives. Another question are the Quebec natives (really, emk, where are you? You are missed). And the African natives. Some time ago, I read a great article about the African French. It came to the consclusion that, due to surviving collonialistic and rasist prejudices, the differences of african dialects are still being seen as "making mistakes" while such differences made in Quebec are considered a dialect. So, some of the francophone african regions may already be diglossiac or not far from it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6656 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 13 of 38 01 April 2015 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Mayan hiegoglyphs, Classical chinese.. Okay, the latter is a lot of
people, but diglossia does not need a lot of people. It needs prestige and frozen standards... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4556 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 14 of 38 01 April 2015 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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A language in itself can't really be diglossic; diglossia is a property of a speech community. It is the situation where speakers in the community use one language or variety in certain situations and another in other situations. There need to be set contexts in which the languages are used; I wouldn't consider Catalonia to be diglossic, for example, because Spanish and Catalan are both used in a wide variety of overlapping of contexts.
While diglossia doesn't have to occur with two separate languages, usually the varieties have to be more different than typical registers of English or French. So regarding French, communities in Niger might be diglossic because they use French at school and Hausa at home (just an example, I have no idea about the language situation in Niger), or communities in Belgium might be diglossic with standard French and Walloon. But even if Quebec French is really different from European French, there wouldn't necessarily be diglossia "in" French or in Quebec, if speakers in Quebec don't use European French at all. Some examples of diglossia would be: - German-speaking Switzerland (standard German spoken in formal situations, Swiss German spoken elsewhere) - other German-speaking areas where the 'dialect' is particularly strong (although I'm not sure where this may be) - Malta (I believe Maltese and English are both spoken in concrete, separate situations) - Greece until the 1970s (this is a classic example of diglossia that's often given; apparently people used to use something close to Ancient Greek in schools and formal situations) - Many minority communities around the world, such as Arabic speakers in Cyprus or Amish in the eastern US Some of these are with two completely separate languages; some are two varieties of (arguably) the same language. Edited by anamsc2 on 01 April 2015 at 7:55pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 15 of 38 01 April 2015 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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The more I read, the more I think there isn't a consensus among linguists about what diglossia is. Some favor a stricter definition (the one Cavesa argues for); others a broader one (which I first heard from John McWhorter, and which I favor). It almost reminds me of all the disagreements over the differences between language and dialect.
You get some interesting conclusions either way. There's another thread talking about Venetian. If Venetian is a dialect (per the Italian government), then I guess we'd say that the people in Veneto are diglossic. If Venetian is a separate language (per the Veneto government), then the people in Veneto would be bilingual.
I just listened to two fascinating audio books that touched on this. I'm going from memory, so this is going to be a rough and basic history: In the 4th Century literacy was still high in Roman Europe. Standard Latin was used in politics, literature, the church, and education. Vulgar Latin was spoken at home, and varied widely by region. I think we'd all agree that this would be a case of classic diglossia - it reminds me of the case with Arabic today. In 410 Alaric sacked Rome, and in 476 Odoacer deposed the last Western Emperor. The subsequent kingdoms in the West, the Lombards, Goths, Vandals, Merovingians, et al., still considered themselves as culturally "Roman," and still believed that they spoke Latin. However, literacy plummeted - and the vulgates began to diverge more and more. Many priests conducted mass in their local vulgate while fully believing that they were actually reading and speaking proper Latin. The ironic exception was in the British Isles. Rome had formerly pulled out of Britain, the islands largely reverted to paganism, and native Celtic and Saxon speakers actually had to study Latin in order to speak it - they couldn't fake it the way people on the continent could. They ended up preserving standard Latin in a purer, more academic, form than in the other kingdoms. Flash forward to Charlemagne's era, circa 800. Many illiterate priests were conducting the sacraments in gibberish. There were some theological scandals - were infants really saved if the priest who baptized them was speaking nonsense words? There was a push to reinforce 'proper' Latin in the Church. This attempt to save Latin killed it as a living language, as the various forms of vulgate became recognized as separate languages rather than Latin dialects, and proper Latin was only spoken in the Church. This turned out to be a longer tangent than I intended. Sorry, Jeffers! Sources: Professor Phillip Daileader, The Early Middle Ages Professor John McWhorter, The Story of Human Language 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4556 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 16 of 38 02 April 2015 at 7:57am | IP Logged | ||
I was unable to find McWhorter's definition of diglossia, so I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a broader definition. However, I think there's still some confusion about diglossia applying to a language as a whole. No definition of diglossia that I'm aware of restricts it to two varieties of the same language; a situation can be diglossice with two separate languages as well. So whether or not Venetian is a separate language has no bearing on whether the Veneto is diglossic. A community can be diglossic and bilingual, diglossic without being bilingual, bilingual without being diglossic, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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