In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often closely-related) languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form. As an aspect of study of the relationships between codes and social structure, diglossia is an important concept in the field of sociolinguistics.

Etymology

The French term diglossie was first coined (basically a transliteration of Greek ????????? (digl?ssia), 'bilingualism') by the Greek linguist and demoticist Ioannis Psycharis. The Arabist William Marçais used the term in 1930 to describe the linguistic situation in Arabic-speaking countries.

Language registers and types of diglossia

In Charles A. Ferguson's article "Diglossia" in the journal Word (1959), diglossia was described as a kind of bilingualism in a given society in which one of the languages is (H), i.e. has high prestige, and another of the languages is (L), i.e. has low prestige. In Ferguson's definition, (H) and (L) are always closely related. Joshua Fishman also talks about diglossia with unrelated languages as "extended diglossia" (Fishman 1967), for example Sanskrit as (H) and Kannada as (L) or Alsatian (Elsässisch) in Alsace as (L) and French as (H). Kloss calls the (H) variant exoglossia and the (L) variant endoglossia.

In some cases (especially with creole languages), the nature of the connection between (H) and (L) is not one of diglossia but a continuum; for example, Jamaican Creole as (L) and Standard English as (H) in Jamaica.

(H) is usually the written language whereas (L) is the spoken language. In formal situations, (H) is used; in informal situations, (L) is used. One of the earliest known examples is Latin, having diglossia Classical Latin (H) and Vulgar Latin (L). The latter is the tongue from which the Romance languages descended, and is almost completely unattested in text.

The (L) variants are not just simplifications or "corruptions" of the (H) variants. Many (L) languages have certain features that are more complex than the corresponding (H) languages: some Swiss German dialects have /e/, and while Standard German only has (Berlin 'Berlin', Bären 'bears') and (Beeren 'berries'). Jamaican Creole has fewer vowel phonemes than standard Englishes, but it has additional palatal and phonemes.

Especially in endoglossia the (L) form may also be called "basilect", the (H) form "acrolect", and an intermediate form "mesolect". Note however that there is no "mesolect" in German-speaking Switzerland and in Luxembourg. Whether Paraguay has a form of diglossia is controversial. Guaraní and Spanish are both official languages of Paraguay. Some scholars argue that there are Paraguayans who actually don't speak Guaraní. The Chinese language also offers an interesting case.

Ferguson's classic examples include Standard German/Swiss German, Standard Arabic/vernacular Arabic, Standard French/Kréyòl in Haiti, Katharevousa/Dhimotiki in Greece, and Bokmål/Nynorsk in Norway. However, Kréyòl is now recognised as a standard language in Haiti. Swiss German dialects are hardly languages with low prestige in Switzerland; and colloquial Arabic has more prestige in some respects than standard Arabic nowadays (see Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory). And after the end of the military regime in 1974, Dhimotiki was made into Greece's only standard language (1976). Nowadays, Katharevousa is (with few exceptions, e. g. by the Greek Orthodox Church) no longer used. Harold Schiffman writes about Swiss German: "it seems to be the case that Swiss German was once consensually agreed to be in a diglossic hierarchy with Standard German, but that this consensus is now breaking." There is also a lot of code-switching especially in the Arabic world; according to Andrew Freeman this is "different from Ferguson's description of diglossia which states that the two forms are in complementary distribution." To a certain extent, there is code switching and overlap in all diglossic societies, even German-speaking Switzerland. Furthermore, in Ferguson's definition, diglossia is not bilingualism; however this depends on the scholar's definition of language. For example, different kinds of Arabic are not mutually intelligible; even though many are, but this may also be due to exposure to different varieties rather than inherent linguistic properties.

Examples where the High/Low dichotomy is justified in terms of social prestige include Italian dialects as (L) and Standard Italian as (H) in Italy and German dialects and standard German in Germany. In Italy and Germany, those speakers who still speak dialects typically use dialect in informal situations, especially in the family. In German-speaking Switzerland, on the other hand, Swiss German dialects are to a certain extent even used in schools and to a larger extent in churches. Ramseier calls German-speaking Switzerland's diglossia a "medial diglossia", whereas Felicity Rash prefers "functional diglossia". Paradoxically, Swiss German offers both the best example for diglossia (all speakers are native speakers of Swiss German and thus diglossic) and the worst, because there is no clear-cut hierarchy.

English during the Norman invasion

Prior to the Norman invasion of 1066, Old English in its various dialects was spoken in England. For some centuries following the conquest, England had diglossia between a French-speaking ruling class and commoners who spoke English. As French gradually waned, English changed and took over until 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 "power" words (such as bailiff) are "academic".

Arabic

Diglossia is a term in Sociolinguistics for the use of two varieties of language for different purposes in the same community. The varieties are called H and L, the first being generally a standard variety used for ?high? purposes and the second often a ?low? spoken vernacular. In all the Arab World, classical Arabic is H and local colloquial Arabic is L. The most important hallmark of diglossia is specialization, H being appropriate in one set of situations, L in another: reading a newspaper aloud in H, but discussing its contents in L. Functions generally reserved for H include sermons, political speeches, university lectures, and news broadcasts, while those reserved for L include everyday conversations, instructions to servants, and folk literature.

Abdullah Thalji 2007-2008

The situation with the Literary Arabic (?????? al-fu?-??) vs spoken varieties of Arabic (??????? al-`?mmiyya or ??????? ad-d?rija) differs from country to country but in no Arab-speaking country "modern standard Arabic" (MSA) is used on a daily basis, although every Arab country's official language is "standard Arabic". All the entertainment material - movies, songs is usually in some form of a spoken dialect. Despite some governments efforts to improve the knowledge and promote usage of "modern standard Arabic" among the population, the standard Arabic is considered too stilted. It is often used only in religious contexts, and students feel it disconnected from their daily lives. Children grow up speaking a dialect and only start learning MSA at school. If they do not use standard Arabic on a daily basis, their knowledge declines.

There is no consensus on which version of Arabic should be taught to foreigners. Many scholars suggest both MSA and at least one dialect should be studied.

The debate continues about the future of the Arabic language, both among Arabic linguists in the Arab world and outside it. Some prefer the status quo (existing diglossia). The other suggestions are:

1. Promote Modern Standard Arabic 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 (the most complicated and seldom used and understood features) and introduce some commonly known colloquial words (known across many dialects or groups of dialects). This idea is similar to the efforts in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore where Standard 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, see Revival of the Hebrew language, especially in Israel.
2. Upgrade the individual dialects or merge dialects into possibly one spoken Arabic, thus formalising 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 (???? ????? lahja Mi?riyya - "Egyptian dialect") and other countries, e.g. Kateb Yacine wrote in Algerian Arabic (???? ??????? lahja Jaz?'iriyya - "Algerian dialect"). 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" (based on Levantine Arabic) is taught at Georgetown University. 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 essentially the "classical Arabic" - the language of Qur'?n (?????? ?al-qur??n) and is the literary standard in the Arab world.

Both ideas (the Hebrew (1) or the Greek (2) language reforms) have become feasible with the globalisation and the increase of the internet and mass-media usage among Arabs but there must be consensus between governments, scholars and the population and the efforts to follow. The Al-Jazeera television and others did a lot to promote standard Arabic among Arabs.

Catalan

With the exception of Andorra, Catalan as spoken outside of Catalonia may be diglossic in various grades, from highly to barely diglossic. Diglossia in Catalan is typically stronger in metropolitan areas than in moderately to sparsely populated areas.

This phenomenon affects Alghero (whose local Catalan dialect remains in severe danger of extinction despite the recent revival in its usage), some areas in the Balearic Islands, so-called "North Catalonia" and, in its Valencian modality, some areas in the Valencian Community as well.

Chinese

For over two thousand years, the Chinese used Classical Chinese (Literary Chinese) as a formal standard written language. The standard written language served as a bridge for communication throughout China (and other countries in the CJKV area) for millennia.

However, the colloquial spoken Chinese varieties 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 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 natively spoke Mandarin Chinese. However, Vernacular Chinese and its pronunciation in local dialects is still an acrolect in regions where Mandarin is not spoken natively, such as most of South China.

For instance in Hong Kong, Standard Cantonese is the primary language of spoken communication, although all formal written communication is done in Vernacular Chinese. Unique among the other Chinese dialects, Cantonese has its own written form, but it is only used 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 (though there are quasi-phonetic hints), 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:

Note: Mandarin romanized using Hanyu Pinyin. Cantonese romanized using Yale. Written Cantonese shown uses characters not in standard written Chinese.

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 allows the use of measure words to serve in the place of a genitive particle.

Cantonese pronunciation of standard written Chinese is generally understandable to Cantonese speakers educated in the standard written language. It is most often used in Cantonese newscasts, albeit with certain substitutions of colloquial Cantonese vocabulary so as to make it not sound as stilted. This form of spoken Cantonese is a higher register and can be considered the acrolect to the colloquial Cantonese basilect.

Classical Chinese

Before the modern adoption of 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:

Because Chinese's logographic writing system doesn't indicate exact pronunciation, the pronunciation of Classical Chinese in Old Chinese is generally not possible (though tentative reconstructions of the phonology of Old Chinese have been attempted). Instead, Classical Chinese is also generally pronounced according to the local dialect (such as the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations given above), much like how Cantonese speakers pronounce the modern Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese using Cantonese.

Unlike the situation with modern Chinese though, 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.

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. This was the reason for the Greek language question, which was a heated dispute on which language form was to be the official language of the state. This dispute was eventually settled, and today the single language used in all texts is an educated variant of Dimotiki, which was enriched by many expressions from Katharevousa. This variant is commonly called Modern Greek.

Maltese

Malta is officially a bi-lingual country: both Maltese and English are official languages. Maltese is, uniquely for Europe, a partially Semitic language left over from Arab domination of the islands which ended some 900 years ago and English as Malta was a colony until 1964.

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 (with names like the Times of Malta and Malta Independent) 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 (currently the right of centre Nationalists) does not do more to promote it, in the same way that English displaced Welsh in Wales.

Before 1934, Italian was the official language of Malta. 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, that spoke Maltese. Today, the influence of the Italian language is still very present in Malta. Not only is it used in the professional workplace, but it is also key to Malta's media, such as Television, Radio, and publications ^[1].

Portuguese

According to some contemporary Brazilian linguists (Bortoni, Kato, Mattos e Silva, Perini and most recently, with great impact, Bagno), Brazilian Portuguese may be a highly diglossic language. This theory claims that there is an L-variant (termed "Brazilian Vernacular"), which would be the mother tongue of all Brazilians, and an H-variant (standard Brazilian Portuguese) acquired through schooling. L-variant represents a simplified form of the language (in terms of grammar, but not of phonetics) that could have evolved from 16th century Portuguese, influenced by Amerindian (mostly Tupian) and African languages, while H-variant would be based on 19th century European Portuguese (and very similar to Standard European Portuguese, with only minor differences in spelling and grammar usage). 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.

Russian

Russian, the language spoken in Russia, was the low language from the Middle Ages till the Baroque period while Church Slavonic served for all official purposes.^[2]