Language shift, also known aslanguage transfer,language replacement orlanguage assimilation, is the process whereby aspeech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived to be ofhigher-status stabilize or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be of lower-status. An example is the shift fromGaulish toLatin during the time of theRoman Empire.[1][2][3]
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Forprehistory, Forsteret al. (2004)[4] and Forster and Renfrew (2011)[5] observe that there is a correlation of language shift with intrusive maleY chromosomes but not necessarily with intrusive femalemtDNA. They conclude that technological innovation (the transition fromhunting-gathering tofarming, or fromstone tometal tools) or military prowess (as in theabduction of British women byVikings toIceland) causes immigration of at least some men, who are perceived to be of higher status than local men. Then, in mixed-language marriages, children would speak the "higher-status" language, yielding the language/Y-chromosome correlation seen today.
Assimilation is the process whereby a speech-community becomesbilingual and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of the speech-community that speaks the second language more often at home. The data are used to measure the use of a given language in the lifetime of a person, or most often across generations. When a speech-community ceases to use their original language,language death is said to occur.
In the context of the Indo-European migrations, it has been noted that small groups can change a larger cultural area.[6][7]Michael Witzel refers to Ehret's model[note 1] "which stresses theosmosis, or a "billiard ball," orMallory'sKulturkugel, effect of cultural transmission."[6] According to Ehret, ethnicity and language can shift with relative ease in small societies, due to the cultural, economic and military choices made by the local population in question. The group bringing new traits may initially be small, contributing features that can be fewer in number than those of the already local culture. The emerging combined group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of ethnic and language shift.[6]
David Anthony notes that the spread of the Indo-European languages probably did not happen through "chain-type folk migrations", but by the introduction of these languages by ritual and political elites, which are emulated by large groups of people.[8][note 2] Anthony explains:
Language shift can be understood best as a social strategy through which individuals and groups compete for positions of prestige, power, and domestic security ... What is important, then, is not just dominance, but vertical social mobility and a linkage between language and access to positions of prestige and power ... A relatively small immigrant elite population can encourage widespread language shift among numerically dominant indigenes in a non-state or pre-state context if the elite employs a specific combination of encouragements and punishments. Ethnohistorical cases ... demonstrate that small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations.[9]
Anthony gives the example of the Luo-speaking Acholi in northern Uganda in the 17th and 18th century, whose language spread rapidly in the 19th century.[10] Anthony notes that "Indo-European languages probably spread in a similar way among the tribal societies of prehistoric Europe", carried forward by "Indo-European chiefs" and their "ideology of political clientage".[11] Anthony notes that "elite recruitment" may be a suitable term for this system.[11][note 3]
In urban settings, language change occurs due to the combination of three factors: the diversity of languages spoken, the high population density, and the need for communication. Urban vernaculars, urban contact varieties, and multiethnolects emerge in many cities around the world as a result of language change in urban settings. These factors lead to phenomena such as dialect levelling,koineization, and/or language shift toward a dominant language.[13]
Historical examples for status shift are the earlyWelsh andLutheran Bibletranslations.[14]
Until the mid-19th century, southernCarinthia inAustria had an overwhelmingSlovene-speaking majority: in the 1820s, around 97% of the inhabitants south of the lineVillach-Klagenfurt-Diex spoke Slovene as their native language.[15] In the course of the 19th century, this number fell significantly. By 1920, a third of the population of the area had already shifted toGerman as their main language of communication. After theCarinthian Plebiscite in the 1920s, and especially afterWorld War II, most of the population shifted from Slovene to German. In the same region, today only some 13% of the people speak Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speak German. The figures for the whole region are equally telling: in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene; by 1910, this number had fallen to 15.6% and by 2001 to 2.3%.[16] These changes were almost entirely the result of a language shift in the population, with emigration and genocide (by the Nazis during World War II) playing only a minor role.
Despite the withdrawal ofBelarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, use of theBelarusian language is declining.[17] According to the 2009 Belarusian population census, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home,[18] and Belarusian is used by only 11.9% of Belarusians.[18] 52.5% of Belarusians can speak and read Belarusian. Only 29.4% can speak, read and write it.[18] One in ten Belarusians do not understand the Belarusian language.[18]
In the last two centuries,Brussels has transformed from an exclusivelyDutch-speaking city to a bilingual city withFrench as the majority language andlingua franca. The language shift began in the 18th century and accelerated asBelgium becameindependent and Brussels expanded out past its original city boundaries.[19][20] From 1880 on, more and more Dutch-speaking people became bilingual, resulting in a rise of monolingual French-speakers after 1910.
Halfway through the 20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers began to predominate over the (mostly) bilingual Flemish inhabitants.[21] Only since the 1960s, after the establishment of the Belgianlanguage border and the socio-economic development of Flanders took full effect, could Dutch use stem the tide of increasing French use.[22] French remains the city's predominant language, while Dutch is spoken by a minority.
Historically, one of the most important language shifts in China has been the near disappearance of theManchu language. When China was ruled by theQing dynasty, whose Emperors were Manchu, Chinese and Manchu had co-official status, and the Emperor heavily subsidized and promoted education in Manchu, but because most of the ManchuEight Banners lived in garrisons with Mandarin-speaking Han Bannermen located across Han Chinese civilian populated cities, most Manchus spoke the Beijing dialect of Mandarin by the 19th century and the only Manchu speakers were garrisons left in their homeland ofHeilongjiang. Today there are fewer than 100 native speakers of Manchu.
At the current time, language shift is occurring all across China. Many languages ofminority ethnic groups are declining, as well as the many regionalvarieties of Chinese. Generally the shift is in favour ofStandard Chinese (Mandarin), but in the province ofGuangdong the cultural influence ofCantonese has meant local dialects and languages are being abandoned for Cantonese instead.[23]
Languages likeTujia andEvenki are also disappearing due to language shift.
InHong Kong, Cantonese has become the dominant language spoken in society since widespread immigration to Hong Kong began in the 1940s. With immigrants of differing mother tongues, communication was hard without a dominant language. Cantonese originated from the capital of neighboringCanton province, and it became the dominant language by extension, and other similar dialects started to vanish from use in Hong Kong. Original residents, or aboriginals, of Hong Kong used their own languages including theTanka,Hakka andWaitau dialect, but with a majority of Hong Kong's population being immigrants by the 1940s and 50s, these dialects rapidly vanished. Most of Hong Kong's younger generation does not understand, let alone speak, their ancestral dialects.
Beginning in the late 1990s, since Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty, Mandarin Chinese has been more widely implemented in education and many other areas of official society. Though Mandarin Chinese has been quickly adopted into society, most Hong Kong residents would not regard it as a first language/dialect. Most Hong Kong residents prefer to communicate in Cantonese in daily life.
Speakers of Mandarin Chinese and of Cantonese cannot mutually understand each other without learning the languages, due to vast differences in pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure and terminology. Furthermore, cultural differences between Hong Kong and China result in variations between the Cantonese used in Hong Kong and that in Canton Province.
InEgypt, theCoptic language, a descendant of theAfro-AsiaticEgyptian language, has been in decline in usage since the time of theArab conquest in the 7th century. By the 17th century,[24] it was eventually supplanted as a spoken language byEgyptian Arabic. Coptic is today mainly used by theCoptic Church as a liturgical language. In theSiwa Oasis, alocal variety ofBerber is also used alongside Arabic.[citation needed]
InEthiopia, various populations ofNilotic origin have shifted languages over the centuries, adopting the idioms of their Afro-Asiatic-speaking neighbors in the northern areas. Among these groups are theDaasanach or Marille, who today speak theDaasanach language. It belongs to theCushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. However, modern genetic analysis of the Daasanach indicates that they are more closely related toNilo-Saharan andNiger-Congo-speaking populations inhabitingTanzania than they are to the Cushitic andSemitic Afro-Asiatic-speaking populations of Ethiopia. This suggests that the Daasanach were originally Nilo-Saharan speakers, sharing common origins with thePokot. In the 19th century, the Nilotic ancestors of these two populations are believed to have begun separate migrations, with one group heading southwards into theAfrican Great Lakes region and the other group settling in southern Ethiopia. There, the early Daasanach Nilotes would have come into contact with a Cushitic-speaking population, and eventually adopted this group's Afro-Asiatic language.[25]
Finland still has coastalSwedish-speaking enclaves, unlikeEstonia where the last coastal Swedes were decimated or escaped toSweden in 1944. As Finland was part of the Sweden realm from the Middle Ages until 1809, the language of education wasSwedish, withFinnish being allowed as a medium of education at theuniversity only in the 19th century, and the first thesis in Finnish being published in 1858. Several of the coastal cities were multilingual;Viipuri had newspapers inSwedish,Finnish,Russian andGerman. However, the industrialization in the prewar era and especially the postwar era and the "escape from the countryside" of the 1960s changed the demography of the major cities and led to Finnish dominating.[citation needed] WhileHelsinki was a predominantly Swedish-speaking city prior to the turn of the 20th century, theSwedish-speaking minority is now about 6% of the population.[26]
InAlsace,France, a longtimeAlsatian-speaking region, the native Germanic dialect has been declining after a period of being banned at school by the French government after theFirst World War and theSecond World War. It is being replaced by French.[27]
French Flanders, which gradually became part of France between 1659 and 1678, was historically part of theDutch sprachraum, the native dialect beingWest Flemish (French Flemish). This is corroborated by the Dutch origin of several town names in the region, such as that of 'Dunkerque' (Dunkirk) which is a French phonetic rendition of the original Dutch name 'Duinkerke' (meaning 'church in the dunes'). The linguistic situation did not change dramatically until theFrench Revolution in 1789, and Dutch continued to fulfill the main functions of a cultural language throughout the 18th century.[28] During the 19th century, especially in the second half of it, Dutch was banned from all levels of education and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. The larger cities had become predominantly French-speaking by the end of the 19th century.
However, in the countryside, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch untilWorld War I, and theRoman Catholic Church continued to preach and teach thecatechism in Flemish in many parishes.[28] Nonetheless, since French enjoyed a much higher status than Dutch, from about the interbellum onward, everybody became bilingual, the generation born after World War II being raised exclusively in French. In the countryside, the passing on of Flemish stopped during the 1930s or 1940s. Consequently, the vast majority of those still having an active command of Flemish are older than 60.[28] Therefore, complete extinction ofFrench Flemish can be expected in the coming decades.[28]
TheFrench Basque Country has been subject to intense French-language pressure exerted over the Basque-speaking communities. In the late 1800s, theBasque language was both persecuted and excluded from administration and official public use during the takeover of theNational Convention, during theWar of the Pyrenees, and during theNapoleonic period. The compulsory national education system imposed early on a French-only approach (mid-19th century), marginalizing Basque, and by the 1960s family transmission was grinding to a halt in many areas at the feet of the Pyrenees.
By the 2010s, the receding trend has been somewhat mitigated by the establishment of Basque schooling (theikastolak) spearheaded by the networkSeaska, as well as the influence of theBasque territories from Spain.
According toFañch Broudic,Breton has lost 80% of its speakers in 60 years.[29] Other sources mention that 70% of Breton speakers are over 60. Furthermore, 60% of children received Breton from their parents in the 1920s and only 6% in the 1980s.[30] Since the 1980s, monolingual speakers are no longer attested.
On the 27 October 2015, theSenate rejected the draft law on ratification of theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages driving away the assumption of Congress for[clarification needed] the adoption of the constitutional reform which would have given value and legitimacy to regional languages such as Breton.[31]
Corsican was long employed as a conglomerate of localvernaculars in combination withItalian, the official language in Corsica until 1859; afterwards Italian was replaced by French, owing to the acquisition of the island by France fromGenoa in 1768. Over the next two centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by theLiberation in 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. The 20th century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65 percent of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican,[32] and a small minority, perhaps 10 percent, used Corsican as a first language.[33]
InSouthern Schleswig, an area that belonged to Denmark until theSecond Schleswig War, there was a language shift from the 17th to the 20th centuries fromDanish andNorth Frisian dialects to Low German and later High German. Historically, most of the region was part of the Danish and North Frisian language area, adjacent in the south to the German-speaking Holstein. But with theReformation in the 16th century German became the language of the Church, and in the 19th century also that of schools in the southern parts of Schleswig. Added to this was the influence of German-speaking Holsatian nobility and traders. German was (occasionally) also spoken at the royal court in Copenhagen. This political and economic development led gradually to a German language dominating in the southern parts of Schleswig. Native dialects such as theAngel Danish[34] andEiderstedt Frisian vanished. In theFlensburg area, there arose the mixed languagePetuh combining Danish and German elements. As late as in 1851 (in the period of nationalization) the Danish government tried to stop the language shift, but without success in the long run. After the Second Schleswig War the Prussians introduced a number of language policy measures in the opposite direction to expand the use of (High) German as the language of administration, schooling and church services.[34][35][36]
Today, Danish and North Frisian are recognized as minority languages in the federal state ofSchleswig-Holstein.
Cumans, seeking refuge from theMongols, settled in Hungary and were laterMagyarized. TheJassic people of Hungary originally spoke the Jassic dialect ofOssetic, but they fully adoptedMagyar, forgetting their former language. The territory of today's Hungary was formerly settled bySlavonic tribes, which gradually assimilated to Magyar. Also, language shift may have happened in Hungarian pre-history, as the prehistoric culture of Magyars shows very little similarity to that of speakers of otherUralic languages.
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In India, many languages are assimilated into standard language likeHindi, Bengali and other administrative languages.[37][38] For example, theAustroasiatic-speakingBhumij tribe for over two centuries nearly abandoned their native language and adoptedBengali andOdia instead. Today, theBhumij language is one of theendangered languages of India.
Indonesia is one of the most multilingual and multiethnic nations in the world.[39] There is language shift of first language intoIndonesian from other language in Indonesia caused by ethnic diversity than urbanicity. Regardless of urbanicity, Indonesian speakers are more prevalent in urban areas than rural ones. The study found that language shift is mainly occurring amongJavanese people and in districts whereJavanese is the dominant language, which is not what was expected.[13] Another study suggests Javanese youths do not value Javanese language and culture as much as the national Indonesian language and culture because they perceive them as outdated and incompatible with modern society.[40]
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An example is the shift from Canaanite and Phoenician and Hebrew to Aramaic in and around Jerusalem during the time of Classical Antiquity. Another example is during the Middle Ages, when shifting from Aramaic to Arabic through the advent of Islam. A third shift took place in Modern times, under the influence ofZionism, fromJewish languages such asYiddish,Ladino and various dialects ofJudeo-Arabic toModern Hebrew.
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TheItalian peninsula, thePo river basin and the nearby islands are home tovarious languages, most of which are Latin-derived. Italy would be politically organized into states until the late 19th century.
Since the times of theRenaissance, a trans-Italian language was developed incentral Italy, based onFlorentineTuscan; in light of its cultural prestige, it was used for formal, literary and written purposes among the literate classes from the various states of mainland Italy,Sicily and Corsica (France), sidelining the other dialects in education and formal settings. Thus, literaryFlorentine was established as the most representative dialect of Italy long before itspolitical unification in 1861, Tuscan having been officially adopted by the preunitarian states. Italian further expanded as a common language for everyday use throughout the country after World War II.
Most other languages, with the exception of those spoken byspecific ethno-linguistic groups, long served as local vernaculars alongside Italian; therefore they have been mislabelled "dialects" by their own speakers, but they are still usually spoken just as much as standard Italian in adiglossic spectrum with little conflict.
For instance, the localVenetian dialects inNortheast Italy are widely used and locally promoted in the region; after all, Italian had been an integral part of theRepublic of Venice since the 14th century, whose elites used to revere the most prominent Tuscan authors and tuscanize their own speech as well.[41] On a survey made byIl Gazzettino in 2015, 70% of respondents told they spokeVenetian "very or quite often" in the family, while 68% with friends. A much lower percentage reported to use it at work (35%); the local language is less used in formal situations. However, the frequency of use within the family networks and friendship stopped respectively at -4 and -11 percentage points, suggesting a slow morphing to Italian, while the use in the workplace dropped to -22 percentage points. A visible generational gap has also been noted, since the students and young people under the age of 25 are the social group where the use of dialect fell below the threshold of absolute majority (respectively 43 and 41%).[42] Nonetheless, despite some tendencies signalling the slow advancement of standard Italian, thelocal dialects ofVeneto and theProvince of Trieste are still widely spoken alongside Italian; like in much of Italy, the presence of Italian inNortheast Italy does not seem to take anything away from the region's linguistic heritage.[43][44]
Like the aforementioned case of Northeast Italy, even inSouthern Italy andSicily the local dialects from theItalo-Dalmatian family are widely used in combination with standard Italian, depending upon the social context. More specifically, Italian as the prevalent language spoken among family members is spoken the least inCampania (20.7%),Calabria (25.3%) andSicily (26.6%), contrary to frequency of use of the local dialects (Basilicata, 69.4%; Calabria 68.6%; Campania, 75.2%; Sicily, 68.8%).[44]
Trentino'sCimbrian, aGermanic language related toBavarian, was spoken by at least 20,000 people in the 19th century, with 3,762 people in 1921 and fewer than 300 in 2007.[45] The same scenario goes forMòcheno andWalser.
Unlike the neighbouring island of Corsica[46] (France) and elsewhere in today's Italy, where Italian was the standard language shared by the various local elites since the late Middle Ages, Italian was first officially introduced to Sardinia, to the detriment of bothSpanish andSardinian (the only surviving Neo-Latin language from theSouthern branch), only in 1760 and 1764 by the then-rulingHouse of Savoy, fromPiedmont.[47][48][49][50] Because of the promotion and enforcement of the Italian language and culture upon theSardinian population since then, the majority of the locals switched over to such politically dominant language and no longer speak their native ones, which have seen steady decline in use. The language has been in fact severely compromised to the point that only 13% of the children are able to speak it,[51] and today is mostly kept as aheritage language. With the exception of a few sparsely populated areas where Sardinian can still be heard for everyday purposes, the island's indigenous languages have by now been therefore largely replaced by Italian; thelanguage contact ultimately resulted in the emergence of aspecific variety of Italian, slightly divergent from the standard one.
Due to language shift, ethnographic borders ofLithuanian language from the Middle Ages to the late 1930s shrank sharply to the north and west from the territory what is nowGrodno oblast inBelarus, giving way to the spreadingPolish andBelarusian languages, while inPrussian Lithuania out of 10 administrative units with prevailing Lithuanian language in the early 1800s, only the extreme northern part –Klaipėda region had still relative Lithuanian language majority in the 1910s with all the eastern and southern territories in some hundred or so years almost fullyGermanized. These processes were happening both because of the perception of population as Lithuanian language was seen as of lower status by its peripheral speakers as well as deliberate policy byGerman andRussian imperial administrations, notably –a 40-year ban on Lithuanian language and press by theTsarist government. InLithuania Minor, where Lithuanian culture began to decline afterThe Great Plague between 1708 and 1711,Kristijonas Donelaitis' poem –The Seasons addressed this issue. InNorthern Poland during the Middle Ages, the territory ofLithuanian language was reaching vicinities ofŁomża,Tykocin andBiałystok, but shrank to the north – to the rural outskirts ofSejny,Punsk andWiżajny before the 1900s as a consequence ofacculturation.[52] The Polish-speaking island to the north ofKaunas and south ofPanevėžys almost fully disappeared between the 1920s and the 1940s, as the local Lithuanian population, who increasingly began to speakPolish on a daily basis and at home during the 19th century (especially after the 1831November Uprising and the 1863January Uprising) gradually returned back to the Lithuanian language.
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Before the 1930s,Italian was the only official language of Malta, although it was spoken only by the upper class, withMaltese being spoken by the lower class. Even though English has replaced Italian as a co-official language alongside Maltese, the Italian-speaking population has since grown, but the growth of English in the country now threatens the status of Maltese.[citation needed] A trend among the younger generations is to mix English and Italian vocabulary patterns, inmaking new Maltese words. For example, the Maltese wordbibljoteka has been overtaken bylibrerija, formed fromlibrary with an Italian ending. In addition to mixing English with Italian,Maltenglish involves the use of English words in Maltese sentences. Trends show that English is becoming the language of choice for more and more people, and is transforming the Maltese language.[citation needed]
Urdu, the lingua franca of South AsianMuslims and the official and national language of Pakistan since its independence, is spoken by most educatedPakistanis.[53] Despite positive attitudes towardsPunjabi in the urban areas ofPakistani Punjab, there is a shift towards Urdu in almost all domains.[54]Pashtuns and other minorities in northern Pakistan use Urdu as a replacement for former native languages.[55]
Guarani, an indigenous language ofSouth America belonging to theTupi–Guarani family[56] of theTupian languages, and specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guarani (endonymavañe'ẽ[aʋãɲẽˈʔẽ]; 'the people's language'), is one of the official languages ofParaguay (along withSpanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual.[57][58] Guarani is one of the most-widely spokenindigenous languages of the Americas and the only one whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This represents a unique anomaly in the Americas, where language shift towards European colonial languages has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker ofmestizos (people of mixedSpanish andAmerindian ancestry), and also ofculturally assimilated, upwardly mobile Amerindian people.
Paraguayan Guarani has been used throughout Paraguayan history as a symbol of nationalistic pride.Populist dictators such asJosé Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia andAlfredo Stroessner used the language to appeal to common Paraguayans, and uponthe advent of Paraguayan democracy in 1992, Guarani was enshrined in the new constitution as a co-equal language along with Spanish.[59]Jopara, the mixture of Spanish and Guarani, is spoken by an estimated 90% of the population of Paraguay.Code-switching between the two languages takes place on a spectrum where more Spanish is used for official and business-related matters, whereas more Guarani is used in art and in everyday life.[60]
Instances of language shift appear to have occurred twice in the history of theParthian Empire: once before its foundation, when theParni invadedParthia, eventually losing theirEastern Middle Iranian language and adoptingParthian instead;[61][62] secondly, after the fall of the Parthian Empire, Parthian speakers shifted toMiddle Persian orArmenian.[63]
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In thePhilippines,Spanish-speaking families have gradually switched over toTagalog orEnglish since the end ofWorld War II, so Spanish has ceased to be a practical everyday language in the country and is on the verge ofextinction.[64]
Another example would be the gradual death of theKinaray-a language of Panay as many native speakers especially in the province ofIloilo are switching toHiligaynon or mixing the two languages together.Kinaray-a was once spoken in the towns outside the vicinity ofIloílo City, whileHiligaynon was limited to only the eastern coasts and the city proper. However, due to media and other factors such as urbanization, many younger speakers have switched fromKinaray-a toHiligaynon, especially in the towns ofCabatuan,Santa Barbara,Calinog,Miagao,Passi City,Guimbal,Tigbauan,Tubungan, etc. Many towns, especiallyJaniuay,Lambunao, andSan Joaquin still have a sizeableKinaray-a-speaking population, with the standard accent being similar to that spoken in the predominantlyKaray-a province ofAntique. Even in the province ofAntique, "Hiligaynonization" is an issue to be confronted as the province, especially the capital town ofSan José de Buenavista, undergoes urbanisation. Many investors fromIloílo City bring with themHiligaynon-speaking workers who are reluctant to learn the local language.
One of the problems ofKinaray-a is its written form, as its unique "schwa sound" is difficult to represent in orthography. As time goes by,Kinaray-a has disappeared in many areas it was once spoken especially in the island of Mindoro and only remnants of the past remain in such towns asPinamalayan,Bansud,Gloria,Bongabong,Roxas,Mansalay, andBulalacao in Oriental Mindoro andSablayan,Calintaan,San Jose, andMagsaysay inOccidental Mindoro, asTagalog has become the standard and dominantly recognised official language of these areas.
Palawan has 52 local languages and dialects. Due to this diversity, internal migration and mass media, Tagalog has effectively taken over as the lingua franca on the island. Same case what happened toMindanao, it has many native languages and dialects but due to internal migration which started during Spanish era until to this day from people ofVisayas andVisayan languages suddenly became the widely spoken languages in the island and some of the local languages are getting influenced and slowly losing its original form.
InLuzon, the provinces ofCamarines Norte,Camarines Sur, andPampanga have seen a shift toTagalog.[65] Similarly, younger generations inDavao City are increasingly shifting fromCebuano to Tagalog as their primary language.[66]
The localized version of Latin emerged from the interaction of indigenous people and the Roman state over a long stretch of time — including a long time after the Roman army withdrew from to the southern shore of the Danube in 271.
Since the rule ofCatherine II, the Russian government has been making continuous efforts atRussification of its numerous subjects.
Nowadays, there is a persistent drop in percentage of speakers of languages other than Russian.
After Singapore'sindependence in 1965, there was a general language shift in the country's interracial lingua franca fromMalay to English, which was chosen as the first language for the country. Among theChinese community in Singapore, there was a language shift from the various dialects of Chinese to English andMandarin Chinese. Until the 1980s,Singaporean Hokkien was the lingua franca ofChinese community in Singapore, which has since been replaced with English and Mandarin today. There has been a generallanguage attrition in the use of Chinese other than Mandarin Chinese, especially amongst the younger segments of the Singaporean population.
The progressive dominion exerted by theKingdom of Castile over Spain in as much as it gained political powerthroughout centuries, contributed to the expansion ofits language at the expenses of the rest. The accession of the CastilianHouse of Trastamara to theCrown of Aragon by the mid-15th century saw the gradual displacement of the royal languages of theCrown of Aragon,Aragonese andCatalan, despite the prolific Valencian literature in Catalan in this period. Nebrija'sGramatica castellana (1492), sponsored by the new Spanish monarchFerdinand II of Aragon, was meant to help expandCastilian, "the companion of the Empire". As the Crown of Castile expanded, its different governmental officials at different levels required their subjects to use or understand Castilian and sideline othervulgar languages, or vernaculars. It often meant the use of interpreters in lawsuits, which could tilt the outcome of the case, e.g. theBasque witch trials, and the increased use of Castilian in assemblies and decision-making bodies, and documents, despite not being the commonly understood language in a number of areas, like most of theBasque districts (Navarre,Álava, etc.), Catalonia, Galicia, Asturias, parts of Aragon, etc.
As Aragonese retreated to the sub-Pyrenean valleys,Arabic vanished by the early 17th century, when forced cultural assimilation of theMoriscos was coupled with expulsion (completed in 1614). The arrival of the Bourbons (1700) intensified the centralization of governmental structures and the imposition of Castilian as the only language for official purposes, replacing in 1716 Catalan as the language of Justice Administration in the relevant territories (Nueva Planta Decrees). UnlikeCatalan,Basque was never a language written on official documents, but was equally affected. It lost ground to Castilian in all its buffer geographic areas, as well as main institutions as a communication language, after a number of decrees and orders established Castilian as "the national language of the Empire" duringCharles III's reign; printing in languages other than Spanish was forbidden (1766), and Castilian was the only language taught in school (1768).
ThePeninsular War was followed by the centralization of Spain (Constitutions of 1812, 1837, 1845, 1856, etc.), with only the Basque districts keeping aseparate status until 1876. Compulsory education in 1856 made the use of Castilian (Spanish) mandatory, as well as discouraging and forbidding the use of other languages in some social and institutional settings.Franco and his nationalist dictatorship imposed Spanish as the only valid language for any formal social interaction (1937). By the early 21st century, Spanish was the overwhelmingly dominant language in Spain, with Basque, Catalan, andGalician surviving and developing in their respective regions with different levels of recognition since 1980. Other minorized languages (Asturian, Aragonese) have also seen some recognition in the early 21st century. Catalan, sharing with Basque a strong link between language and identity (especially in Catalonia), enjoys a fairly sound status, however many Catalan speakers think that their language is still in danger, and this perception has brought about a number of campaigns to promote the use of Catalan, for instanceMantinc el català.[67][68] Basque competence has risen during the last decades, but daily use has not risen accordingly. The Endangered Languages Project has classified Asturian as being at risk and Aragonese as endangered.
Taiwanese aborigines used onlyAustronesian languages before other ethnic groups conquered Taiwan. After widespread migration ofHan peoples from the 17th to the 19th century, manyTaiwanese Plains Aborigines becameSinicized, and shifted their language use to otherSinitic tongues, (mainlyTaiwanese Hokkien).[69] Additionally, someHakka people (a Han Chinese ethnic subgroup) also shifted fromHakka Chinese to Hokkien (also called Hoklo). This happened especially inYongjing, Changhua,Xiluo, Yunlin, etc. They are calledHoklo-Hakka (Phak-fa-sṳ:Hok-ló-hak,Peh-oē-jī:Hô-ló-kheh, Hanzi:福佬客).[70][71][72]
When Taiwan wasunder Japanese rule, Japanese became the official language, with the Japanese government promoting Japanese language education. It also led to the creation ofYilan Creole Japanese, a mixture of Japanese,Atayal language, and Hokkien[73] inYilan County. InWorld War II, under theJapanification Movement,Chinese was banned in newspapers and school lectures, and the usage of Japanese at home was encouraged, so many urban people turned to using Japanese. In 1941, 57% of Taiwanese could speak Japanese.[70][74][75]
After theROC government established rule over Taiwan in 1945, it forbade the use ofJapanese in newspapers and schools,[76] and promoted theGuoyu movement (Chinese:國語運動) to popularizeStandard Mandarin, often through coercive means.[77] In the primaryeducation system, people using local languages would be fined or forced to wear adialect card. In the mass media, local languages were also discouraged or banned, and some books on theromanization of local languages (e.g. Bibles, lyrics books,Peh-ōe-jī) were banned. In 1975, The Radio and Television Act (Chinese:廣播電視法) was adopted, restricting the usage of local languages on the radio or TV.[78] In 1985, after the draft of the Language and Script Law (Chinese:語文法) was released by the Ministry of Education, it received considerable opposition because it banned the use of Taiwanese unofficial languages in the public domain.[77][79] In response, some Hakka groups demonstrated tosave their language.[80] After 1987 whenmartial law was lifted, the Guoyu movement ceased.[70][74][77]
The shift towards monolingual Mandarin was more pronounced among Hakka-speaking communities, attributed to Hakka's low social prestige. Before the KMT took over the island from Japan, the Hakka were expected to learn both Hokkien and Japanese. However, the lack of a significant Japanese-speaking base for gaining and then retaining Japanese fluency meant that most Hakka learned only Hokkien. When theKMT fled to Taiwan from mainland China, most mainlanders settled mainly in northern Taiwan, close to Hakka-speaking areas, thus spurring a linguistic shift from Hokkien to Mandarin within the Taipei area. As the bulk of economic activity centered around patronage networks revolving around Mandarin-speaking KMT membership, most of the Hakka became Mandarin monolinguals, due to a shift in social mobility formerly centered around Hokkien. Elsewhere, although the Hokkien speech-community shrank within the population, most Hokkien-speaking households have retained fluency in Hokkien, helped by the liberalization of Taiwanese politics and the end of martial law.[specify]
Nevertheless,Taiwanese Mandarin has become the most common language in Taiwan today, and the most common home language of Taiwanese youth.[81] In the population census of 2010, Mandarin is the most common home language in theTaipei metropolitan area,Taoyuan,Matsu,aboriginal areas, some Hakka-majority areas, as well as some urban areas ofTaichung andKaohsiung.[81] Conversely, the ability of Taiwanese to speak ethnic languages is strikingly on the decline.[70]
Studies have suggested anelite cultural dominance-driven linguistic replacement model to explain the adoption ofTurkish byAnatolian indigenous inhabitants.[82][k][83]
During the presidency ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk, policy of turkification was heavily promoting thus leading to languages ofMuhacirs disappearing.
The island of Great Britain, located on the western fringes of Northwestern Europe, has experienced a series of successive language changes and developments in the course of several invasions.Celtic languages predominated before thearrival of the Romans in 43 CE imposed aLatinate superstructure.Anglo-Saxon dialects thenswamped much of the Romano-British speech from the 5th century, only to be challenged from the 9th century bythe influx ofOld Norse dialects in much of England and in parts of Scotland. Following theNorman invasion of the 11th century,Norman-French became the prestige tongue, withMiddle English re-asserting theGermanic linguistic heritage gradually in the course of the later Middle Ages.
Gaelic has long suffered from its lack of use in educational and administrative contexts, and was long suppressed by Scottish and then British authorities.[84] The shift from Gaelic toScots andScottish English has been ongoing since about 1200 CE; Gaelic has gone from being the dominant language in almost all areas of present-day Scotland to anendangered language spoken by only about 1% of the population.[85]
With the advent ofScottish devolution, however, Scottish Gaelic has begun to receive greater attention, and it achieved a degree of official recognition when theScottish Parliament enacted theGaelic Language (Scotland) Act on 21 April 2005.Gaelic-medium education in Scotland now enrolls more than 2000 students a year. Nevertheless, the number of Gaelicnative speakers continues to decline, and Scottish Gaelic is[when?] aminority language in most of the traditionalGàidhealtachd, including all census areas outside of theOuter Hebrides.
Predictions envisage the replacement ofCockney English (traditionally spoken by working-classLondoners) byMulticultural London English (MLE) or "Jafaican" by about 2040 asCockneys move out ofLondon. Researchers theorise that the new language emerged as new migrants spoke their own forms of English such asNigerian andPakistani English, and that it contains elements from"learners' varieties" as migrants learn English as a second language.[86][87]
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Although English has been the majority language in the United States since independence in 1776,hundreds of aboriginal languages were spoken beforewestern European settlement.French was once the main language in Louisiana, Missouri, and areas along the border withQuebec, but the speaking has dwindled after new waves of migration and the rise of English as alingua franca.Californio Spanish became a minority language during theCalifornia Gold Rush; it has largely been overtaken by English andMexican Spanish, surviving mainly as aprestige dialect in Northern and Central California.German was once the main language in large areas of theGreat Plains andPennsylvania, but it was suppressed byanti-German sentiment during theFirst World War. But contemporary English is widely used in the United States, and so many years of development have created the growth of English in the region.[88]
Since thefall of Saigon at the end of theVietnam War in 1975,French has declined heavily in Vietnam from being a government language and primary language of education inSouth Vietnam[citation needed] to being a minority language limited to the elite classes and elderly population. Today,French is spoken fluently by less than 1% of the Vietnamese population. The language shift from French toVietnamese occurred earlier in the north due toViet Minh and later communist policies enforcing Vietnamese as the language of politics and education.[89] However, since the late 1990s, there has been a minor revival of French in Vietnam.[90]
American linguistJoshua Fishman has proposed a method ofreversing language shift which involves assessing the degree to which a particular language is disrupted in order to determine the most appropriate method of revitalising.[91]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)At the time when Inha was shooting this series [1908–1909], Finnish speakers already made up more than 50 percent of the population of once predominately Swedish-speaking Helsinki. [...] Today about 6 percent of Helsinki speaks Swedish as its first language [...]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)These data further solidify our case for a paternal G/J substratum in Anatolian populations, and for continuity between the Paleolithic/Neolithic and the current populations of Anatolia.