The Consequences of Language Chapter 13. What Happens When Languages Come Into Contact?”

It is difficult for most Americans to comprehend the extent and diversity of the world’s languages. Africa alone, by recent counts has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 distinct languages. This means that in some places one can find several distinct languages located within a few miles of each other. This means that multilingual communities are quite ordinary occurrences, even if they are not familiar to us.

Yet, when it comes to language study by American middle and high school students, we find 64.5% studying Spanish, followed by French with 22.2%. Japanese is the most popular Non European language studied, but this only amounts to 0.3% of the students.

One of the reasons for giving the number of languages as estimates is that we are not always sure whether to count a variety as a dialect as opposed to a language. This is not so much a problem of knowing about who speaks what, but one of definition, what do we mean by the terms language and dialect. Not all languages make the distinction between language and dialect. Bamana, the most widely spoken language of the Republic of Mali, is representative of such languages. Bamana has a productive suffix -kan that means something like ‘manner of speaking of’. Thus, Bamana-kan means ‘the manner of speaking of the Bamana (also known as the Bambara)’ which would translate into 'the language of the Bamana’. Likewise, Hausakan would translate as ‘the Hausa language.’ But one also finds the word Bamakokan meaning ‘the manner of speaking in Bamako (the capital of Mali)’. In this case, we would translate the word as ‘the dialect of Bamana spoken in Bamako’ and Abdulakan would translate as the ‘idiolect of Abdula’. The meaning of the Bamanakan suffix -kan is very close to the modern linguistic meaning of variety. By referring to Swedish, Midwestern English, Bamanakan, etc. as varieties permits us, to discuss them without committing to their status as a dialect or a language. The words used to characterize a phenomenon or situation is often crucial to the understanding it. This may sound a lot like political correctness, but it is much more. For example, the acceptance of the validity of the language-dialect distinction makes it far more difficult to conceive of it in any other way. The setting aside of this distinction, through the use of variety, makes it easier for us to explore alternatives, though it does not guarantee success.

This linguistic definition stands in opposition to popular English usage. For example, before the Norman invasion of 1066, English and Norwegian would be considered dialects of the same language, because they were mutually intelligible. Today, Swedish and Norwegian would still have to be considered dialects of the same language because they are mutually intelligible. The same would be true for Spanish and Italian, for Mende, Loko and Bandi in Sierra Leone. On the other side of the coin, Chinese, German, Igbo (spoken in Nigeria) would have to be seen as clusters of languages, because of the lack of mutual intelligibility between member varieties.

Clearly then, the linguistic definition clashes with popular usage. Normally, when a technical definition is offered to replace a popular one, it is done so because it does provide some insight not captured by the popular one. In this case, the linguistic definition has replaced the pejorative popular definition with a seemingly value free one which can be applied to any collection of language varieties to situation to identify languages and member dialects.

2.2. The pejorative English meaning of the words ‘language’ and ‘dialect’.

Like the word soul (see chapter 8), Modern English defines the language-dialect distinction in several different ways. In this section, we explore the pejorative meaning, the one that linguists objected to and for which they offered their alternative.

Statement 1, which agrees with the linguistic definition, maintains the naturalness of the concept of languages. Statements 2 and 3 assign a sense of inferiority to dialect, on a number of grounds, and imply that if given a choice, one would be better of speaking a language and not a dialect. We term these statements ideological because they privilege certain groups (mainly Westerners) as intellectually superior over others. Linguists consider these assertions wrong. No varieties, whether written or spoken, are grammatically or communicatively superior to other varieties, all varieties possess the same capacities to express meaning. Furthermore, linguists consider the matter of whether a language has an accompanying system of writing to be irrelevant. Part of their reasoning is based on the existence of language universals, which points to the commonality of human language.

While statements 2 and 3 privilege language over dialect, statement 4 is also ideological in that it allows this privilege to assert that there are places in the world where people do not speak real languages. The linguistic definition avoids this perspective, while still offering a plausible characterization of the language-dialect difference.

2.3 The Problem with the linguistic definition.

Yet, while the linguistic definition has overcome the bias of the popular definition, it fails on formal grounds. This happens when it encounters a variety that is mutually intelligible with two other dialects that are themselves that are not mutually intelligible. For example, standard German and standard Dutch are not mutually intelligible, but between Amsterdam to Berlin, one finds a serious of dialects that share mutual intelligibility with adjacent dialects all along the way. This means that the linguistic definition would assign the German-Dutch border dialects to both German and Dutch. But to do so violates another principle maintained by both the popular and linguistic definitions, that dialects can only be assigned to one language.

The problem of indeterminacy suggests that the boundaries drawn between languages are not natural phenomena but rather constructed by people.¹ Furthermore, mutual intelligibility may reflect the degree to which people in a given area interact more than the degree of difference of their varieties. My parents, for example, reported difficulty in understanding British comedy. Thus, while there may be areas of mutual intelligibility, these areas do reflect any natural phenomenon.

But as a social construction, the language-dialect distinction is worth pursuing. How can we best understanding its meaning? What is its ideological content?² How did it develop? What do differing claims about the status of a given variety mean in terms of power and privilege? The pursuit of the meaning of language and dialect needs to be found in the way the term is used in a particular language and not seek to discover a natural basis, which does not exist. To illustrate the artificiality (man-made) property of the language-dialect distinction we cite two episodes of African history, which I call ‘the restructuring of Shona’ and the ‘invention of Tsonga.’

The crystallization of Shona.

The information presented in this section draws extensively from the work of Chimhundu (1992). To begin with, the varieties belonging by what is now called Shona do appear to represent some sort of linguistic unity distinct from other neighboring varieties such as Ndebele, even though until 1931 there was no consensus as to what to call it or how it was internally constituted. Even more importantly, the area had never been a political entity in the sense that there was a state which embraced all and only Shona speakers. To be sure, at one time or another, there were states that embraced some of this area, but such states usually embraced non-Shona speaking areas as well. More typically, the area was composed of autonomous, self-governing communities without an over arching state apparatus. In other words, the current Shona-speaking area has never constituted a nation in the sense that we have been discussing the term.

This representation had two important consequences. First, when differences in vocabulary occurred, the commission relied most heavily on Zezuru and to a lesser extent on Karanga. Manyika and Ndau were drawn on occasionally, and Korekore and Kalanga were completely ignored). Chimhundu (1992) points out that this merely reflected the degrees to which each dialect was represented on the commission. Second, Kalanga was reclassified as a dialect of Ndebele (another Bantu language) to which it is adjacent, despite the fact that Doke recognized it as being mutually intelligible with other varieties of Shona. This was considered advisable because of its geographical isolation from the other Shona varieties, and more importantly because it did not have a representative on the Doke commission and to the fact that like Ndebele, it was under the aegis of the London Missionary Society.

Although in the 19^th century, most of the population of this region spoke one Bantu language or another, it could not be characterized as linguistically homogeneous. Politically the area was characterized by autonomous villages with a centralized authority, although for much of the 19th century, these communities fell under the political domination of groups to the north, west and south, it at no time constitute a self-contained state with its own identity. In fact, what singled this area as an entity at all according to Harries was its foreignness to any other known group in the area. The name Tsonga comes from Zulu, a South African language, and means ‘conquered peoples in costal areas north of the Zulu, a term that carried pejorative overtones.

In 1873, this area was assigned to the Swiss Missionary Society. As in the case of Shona, an important first step for the missionaries was to establish a written version of the local language in order to create religious texts. Given that there were several quite-different, Bantu-based varieties being spoken in the area, the task of producing a written language, which had been given to the Swiss missionary, Henri Berthoud, is portrayed by Harries as one of "compiling" (1989:87) a written language as opposed simply reducing the language to writing. Here, Henri Berthoud, relying on a variety of an existing lingua franca spoken in the area, particularity as it was used by his evangelical assistants whose first language was Sotho, published numerous religious texts and manuals during the 1880s in the language that came to be known as Thonga and is now recognized as a natural language in its own right.⁵

These two events, the crystallization of Shona and the invention of Thonga further underscore the point that the languages-dialects distinction is a social construction and not a natural phenomenon. They also underscore the incredible role of colonial power in designing and reconstructing social institutions in Africa.

This political characterization of language and dialect flatly ignores the linguistic criterion of mutual intelligibility, and although it does not consider dialects to be grammatically inferior to languages, it does acknowledge the privilege given to the (national) language. It also seems to fit general usage quite well. While we tend to think of Chinese as a single idiom accessible to all Chinese people, many of the so-called dialects of Chinese are not even close to being mutually intelligible. Igbo is spoken by over 3 million people in eastern Nigeria. Yet, here too, not all dialects of Igbo are mutually intelligible. Some people claim that not all dialects of English are mutually intelligible. When National Public Television presented a 15 part series on The Story of English many of the English "dialects" presented were subtitled because they were not clearly mutually intelligible to all viewers.

Even though the dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible, they are under one government, at least according to the Peoples Republic of China. The same could be said for Igbo, which was the language of Biafra when it attempted to secede from Nigeria during the Nigerian civil war though in reality the characterization of Igbo as a single language is a colonial formation. In addition, the rather arbitrary division between Dutch and German is explained by the presence of a political border. Those in the Netherlands speak Dutch, and those in Germany speak German.

2.5 Problems with the Political Definition.

While the political distinction has the advantage of overcoming the problems of mutual intelligibility and arbitrariness encountered by the linguistic distinction, yet this distinction too is flawed. We note that China has two governments (Mainland China and Taiwan), German has three (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and English has at least six (the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Finally, Arabic is the official language of over 15 countries. There are also a number of governments that recognize the legitimacy of more than one language within its borders: Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and a good number of African countries. But we also encounter languages without any governmental connection.

A Mende-speaking friend of mine in Sierra Leone asked me about my field research, which was to compare the historical development of the Southwestern Mande languages of Sierra Leone and Liberia. These languages include, in addition to Mende and Loko of Sierra Leone, Bandi, Lorma and Kpelle of Liberia and are about as closely related as the Romance languages, which include: French; Spanish; Italian among others. My friend informed me that he could understand the news broadcasts from Liberia that were in Bandi.

By the linguistic definition, Mende and Bandi would be dialects; by the political definition, they are anomalous for neither has a government. The official language of Sierra Leone and Liberia is English. Throughout the world, minority (and sometimes majority) languages exist without formal recognition, and would be considered dialects by the political distinction because they lack this governmental connection,

To explain the meaning of identity, simply ask someone, “who are you?” With the exception of “well, I’m... me.” most statements will link the individual with an institution, whether by profession, race (considered here to be a social category), ethnicity gender, nationality, religion, political party or language. Until recently, most of these groups were relatively fixed and that one stayed with the same identities through out life. Some scholars (Anthony Giddens) marks a new area, called the post-modern area, beginning shortly after WWII in which these previously permanent identities became more fluid and more salient. Of course, identities have always been multifaceted; one can be a friend, a colleague, a fellow Buddhist, and fellow American at the same time, meaning that it is often necessary to negotiate during a particular encounter. Glidden’s point about the post-modern era is that this is even more so.

Identity is established through the use of identity markers. These markers of identity vary in the degree to which they can be controlled and used. One can adopt any political point of view by saying so or dress according to the institutional role of his or her wishes, given, of course, that the dress is available for use. Prohibitions by specific institutions or cost often limit our identity markers in this area. At the other end, one has less control over physical features (skin color, nose, hair, height) so that it is more difficult to manipulate these markers of identity. Even a nose job or a breast implant has a permanence. Language use falls somewhere in between these two extremes. While it is relatively to acquire a new language, it is relatively difficult, some say impossible, to acquire a new language without traces of an accent. Nevertheless, language serves as an identity marker.

Ethnic Distribution in Senegal. Fiona McGloghlin ⁶ of the University of Kansas provides an insightful case study of the role language plays in identity construction. The three major ethnic groups in Senegal, West Africa are the Wolof, The Fula and the Sereer. Each of these groups has different characteristics.

	Ethnicity	Speak
Wolof Fula Sereer	43.7% 23.2 14.8%	80% < 23.2% < 14.8%

The term Wolof designates both a language and an ethnic group. As a language, Wolof is a rapidly growing lingua franca spoken by about 80% of all Senegalese, and is spreading down the coast of West Africa and is becoming a first language among some ethnic Fula and Sereer. As an ethnic group, the Wolof represent about 44% of the population. Like many lingua franca (e.g. Lingala and Swahili), the form of Urban Wolof, as it is called is somewhat more regular and admits to a lot of borrowing from French, the colonial and official language of Senegal. The term Urban Wolof distinguishes the lingua franca from the ethnic language known as Rural Wolof.

Pull-o Ful-e Pul-aar Pul-aar-'en Haal-pulaar-'en Tukuloor Fulfule

Peul person (-o is a human class singular marker) Peul people (-e is a human class plural marker) Peul-language (-aar is a suffix meaning language) People of the Pulaar language (-en is another human class plural marker) People who speak Pulaar (haal is a prefix meaning to speak.) Older name for Haalpulaar'en (French spelling Toucouleur) The language of the Fule (-e is another suffix meaning language.)

The Sereer were assumed by the French colonial administrators to represent a single ethnic group, even though they speak a number of varieties that are not only not mutually intelligible, but not even particularly closely related from a historical perspective. Today the Sereer represent about 15% of the Senegalese population, but not all Sereer speak their own language, as many have adopted Wolof, the lingua franca that is, as a first language.

The term Fula⁷ is a European invention to cover both the language and the people who speak it, and is used today in census taking. I use it here as a neutral term, to avoid privileging one usage over another. To understand the complexity of the composition of the group we begin with the following vocabulary.

But this is a distinction maintained by the Fule (and Wolof) but not the Haalpulaar’en. That is, the Fule continue to say that the Haalpulaar’en are different from them, even though they speak the same language. This situation tends to blur the distinction between language and ethnicity. McGloghlin reported one interviewee saying, “My parents are Fule, but because I speak Wolof, I guess I am Wolof. ...(later)... I am Pullo; I would like to learn Pulaar. The Haalpulaar’en’s use for the both groups reflects a desire to consider the two groups one. Tukuloor, but not the Fule, have a joking/teasing relationship (ndend'iraagu) with the Sereer.

Despite the lack of linguistic homogeneity, the Sereer consider themselves to be a single ethnic group, and some hold some negative attitudes towards Urban Wolof, they “do not feel threatened by the expansion of Urban Wolof. The Sereer do not associate ethnicity with language first because the Sereer language, because of its lack of mutual intelligibility, does not serve as a marker of identity and second, because many Sereer speak rural Wolof fluently and claim to be (deeper) (i.e., better) Wolof than many urban Wolof speakers. In contrast, the Fula, both groups, use language as an identity marker define them selves and object to the expanding (urban) Wolof. As a result, in current usage, they have abandoned the Fule - Haalpulaar’en distinction and redefined themselves using the term Haalpulaar’en to represent a common identity, which includes the Haalpulaar’en, Fule, Lawe and the Fule of Guinea in opposition to Wolof (either type). At the same time, Wolof is also being redefined, not as the language of an ethnic group, but a national language of Senegal, only loosely associated with an ethnic group of the same name.

This process of lingua francas that have derived from ethnic languages is a frequent event (e.g., Swahili and Indonesian) and reflects the interaction of language and identity.

2.6 A literary dimension to the distinction between language and dialect.

While the political definition could be amended to include more than one national language, its major flaw is to overlook the literary dimension of the language-dialect distinction. As noted above, linguists have not found the distinction between literate and non-literate languages at all useful for this distinction has no influence on the complexity of the structure or on the communicability of the language variety. However, this is not to say that the development of writing is without influence. Beginning with the work of Goody (1968, 1987) and followed by others including (Goody and Watt 1979) and Street (1984, 1993) the existence of a literary tradition has consequences for the society that adopts it.

The process of obtaining a writing system for a variety was more often imposed than selected. Varieties falling within a political domain would normally be assigned the literary dialect of the domain. However, were the variety too different structurally, it might be ignored and either assigned a different writing system or none at all. The degree to which a variety can be accommodated depends on the phonetic faithfulness of the system. This is the degree to which the writing system reflects actual pronunciation. This means that logographic writing systems can accommodate a more diverse group of varieties than can an alphabetic system, for they are not dependent on the sound of words for their spelling. Thus, Chinese, which has a logographic writing system, accommodates several varieties that are very far from mutual intelligibility. Some alphabetic systems are less faithful than others. English, with its alternative spellings for the same sound, is less faithful than French, which is less faithful than Spanish. Accordingly, English can more easily accommodate a wider range of varieties than can Spanish. And given the diverse nature of these English varieties, it is unlikely English writing will be revised (reformed) to a more phonetically faithful system, because of the possibility of alienating diverse varieties.

As can be seen, this definition is a rephrasing of point two in section one above. In this rephrasing, however, I have avoided the claim of intellectual superiority for dialects with writing systems without denying the benefits of writing.

This definition applies to all the situations the political definition does. In addition, allows several languages to exist within a given country and not be national nations. It also explains the unity of Chinese, but not because of the domain in which it is spoken, but because of the writing system used. Swedish, Danish and Norwegian also stand because of their unique writing system or systems as Norwegian has two, and Japanese for that matter has four.

As is a social construct and not a universal characterization, this definition only applies in situations where a literary tradition is operative. It cannot be applied to situations where such a tradition has not taken root. In addition, the definition makes no claims to the superiority of the written tradition, but only that when such a tradition exists, the language/dialect distinction will conform to the definition.

It should also be clear, that while the literary dialect is in many ways the most visible aspect of a language, the language also includes all the participating dialects. Thus, the variety of English that I speak is a dialect, but the variety that I write is a language. With this distinction we begin to see monolingualⁱ nations as consisting of a literate dialect (language) along with any number of spoken dialects. Furthermore, this definition resolves the paradoxes encountered by the other definitions.