Diglossia

In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/) is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled 'L' or 'low' variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled 'H' or 'high') is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. In most cases, the H variety has no native speakers.DIGLOSSIA is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation.The use of English doesn’t express some asymmetrical power relationship between German and English, nor is it related to class or race or whatnot. Sure, there are poseurs, but it’s stupid to think Germans who can speak the language of cars in English because they race them or the language of music because they consume and/or play music are living out some desperate wannabe existence by using and knowing English terms for these things. It’s probably because with the English knowledge of these terms, one can find an even larger pool of interlocutors about a specific subject (or “lifestyle” object) online or even within Germany itself. These words become native to the speaker of that “lifestyle diglossia” in ways that those words are not “native” to the speakers of the language where these words ostensibly come from. In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/) is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled 'L' or 'low' variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled 'H' or 'high') is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. In most cases, the H variety has no native speakers. The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as in medieval Europe, where Latin remained in formal use even as colloquial speech diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present day dialect (e.g. Standard German alongside Low German; or Chinese, with Mandarin as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese used in everyday communication). Other examples include literary Katharevousa versus spoken Demotic Greek; literary Tamil versus spoken Tamil, and Indonesian, with its Baku and Gaul forms; and literary versus spoken Welsh. The Garifuna language is unusual in that it has gender-based diglossia, with men and women having different words for the same concepts. The Greek word διγλωσσία (diglōssia) normally refers to bilingualism in general, but was first used in the specialized meaning explained by Emmanuel Rhoides in the prologue of his Parerga in 1885. The term was immediately adapted into French as diglossie by the Greek linguist and demoticist Ioannis Psycharis, with credit to Rhoides. The Arabist William Marçais used the term in 1930 to describe the linguistic situation in Arabic-speaking countries. The sociolinguist Charles A. Ferguson introduced the English equivalent diglossia in 1959, using the word as the title of an article. The article has become such a classic that it has been cited over 4,000 times according to Google scholar. In his 1959 article, Charles A. Ferguson defines diglossia as follows: Here, diglossia is seen as a kind of bilingualism in a society in which one of the languages has high prestige (henceforth referred to as 'H'), and another of the languages has low prestige ('L'). In Ferguson's definition, the high and low variants are always closely related. Ferguson gives the example of standardized Arabic and says that, 'very often, educated Arabs will maintain they never use L at all, in spite of the fact that direct observation shows that they use it constantly in ordinary conversation' Joshua Fishman expanded the definition of diglossia to include the use of unrelated languages as high and low varieties. For example, in Alsace the Alsatian language (Elsässisch) serves as (L) and French as (H). Heinz 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. Similar is the case in the Lowlands, with Scots language as (L) and Scottish English as (H).