A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of
language varieties
In sociolinguistics, a variety, also called an isolect or lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety.Meecham, Ma ...
spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are
mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the
Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the
Turkic languages, the
Chinese languages or dialects, and subgroups of the
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
,
Germanic and
Slavic families in Europe.
Leonard Bloomfield used the name dialect area.
Charles F. Hockett used the term L-complex.
Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as
waves. In this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead,
dialectologists map variation of various language features across a dialect continuum, drawing lines called
isoglosses between areas that differ with respect to some feature.
A variety within a dialect continuum may be developed and codified as a
standard language, and then serve as an authority for part of the continuum, e.g. within a particular political unit or geographical area.
Since the early 20th century, the increasing dominance of
nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating the nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined.
Dialect geography
Dialectologists record variation across a dialect continuum using maps of various features collected in a
linguistic atlas, beginning with an atlas of
German dialects by
Georg Wenker (from 1888), based on a postal survey of schoolmasters. The influential ''
Atlas linguistique de la France
The ''Atlas linguistique de la France'' (ALF, Linguistic Atlas of France) is an influential dialect atlas of Romance varieties in France published in 13 volumes between 1902 and 1910 by Jules Gilliéron and Edmond Edmont.
Whereas Georg Wenker h ...
'' (1902–10) pioneered the use of a trained fieldworker. These atlases typically consist of ''display maps'', each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations.
Secondary studies may include ''interpretive maps'', showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an
isogloss, a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate.
In a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicates a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries. In other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found.
Relationship with standard varieties
Standard varieties may be developed and codified at one or more locations in a continuum until they have independent cultural status (autonomy), a process the
German linguist
Heinz Kloss called ''
ausbau
In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Kloss ...
''. Speakers of local varieties typically read and write a related standard variety, use it for official purposes, hear it on radio and television, and consider it the standard form of their speech, so that any standardizing changes in their speech are towards that variety. In such cases the local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety.
A standard variety together with its dependent varieties is commonly considered a "language", with the dependent varieties called "dialects" of the language, even if the standard is mutually intelligible with another standard from the same continuum. The
Scandinavian languages,
Danish,
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, are often cited as examples. Conversely, a language defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible, such as the
German dialects.
The choice of standard is often determined by a political boundary, which may cut across a dialect continuum.
As a result, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, and thus part of different "languages".
The various local dialects then tend to be leveled towards their respective standard varieties, disrupting the previous dialect continuum.
Examples include the boundaries between
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
and
German, between
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
,
Slovak and
Polish, and between
Belarusian and
Ukrainian.
The choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial.
Examples of controversies are regions such as the disputed territory of
Kashmir, in which local
Muslims usually regard their language as
, the national standard of
Pakistan, while
Hindus regard the same speech as
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
, an official standard of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. Even so, the
Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains
a list of 22 scheduled languages and Urdu is among them.
During the time of the former
Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties of
Eastern South Slavic, within a continuum with
Torlakian
Torlakian, or Torlak is a group of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic ar ...
to the north and
Bulgarian to the east. The standard was deliberately based on varieties from the west of the republic that were most different from standard
Bulgarian.
Now known as
Macedonian, it is the national standard of
North Macedonia, but viewed by Bulgarians as a dialect of Bulgarian.
Europe
Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the
Germanic,
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
and
Slavic branches of the
Indo-European language family, the continent's largest language branches.
The Romance area spanned much of the territory of the
Roman Empire but was split into western and eastern portions by the
Slav Migrations into the Balkans in the 7th and 8th centuries.
The Slavic area was in turn split by the
Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Germanic languages
North Germanic continuum
The
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
,
Danish and
Swedish dialects
Swedish dialects are the various forms of the Swedish language, particularly those that differ considerably from Standard Swedish.
Traditional dialects
The linguistic definition of a Swedish traditional dialect, in the literature merely called ' ...
comprise a classic example of a dialect continuum, encompassing Norway, Denmark, Sweden and coastal parts of Finland. The Continental North Germanic standard languages (
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
,
Danish and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
) are close enough and intelligible enough for some to consider them to be dialects of the same language, but the Insular ones (
Faroese and
Icelandic) are not immediately intelligible to the other North Germanic speakers.
Continental West Germanic continuum
Historically, the
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
,
Frisian and
German dialects formed a canonical dialect continuum, which has been gradually falling apart since the
Late Middle Ages due to the pressures of modern education, standard languages, migration and weakening knowledge of the dialects.
[ p. 54.]
The transition from German dialects to Dutch variants followed two basic routes:
* From
Central German to Southeastern Dutch (
Limburgish) in the so-called
Rhenish fan, an area corresponding largely to the modern
Niederrhein in which gradual but geographically compact changes took place.
* From Low Saxon to Northwestern Dutch (
Hollandic
Hollandic or Hollandish ( ) is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish ( East Flemish, ...
): This sub-continuum also included
West Frisian dialects up until the 17th century, but faced external pressure from
Standard Dutch
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. ''Afrikaans'' ...
and, after the collapse of the
Hanseatic League, from
Standard German which greatly influenced the vocabularies of these border dialects.
Though the internal dialect continua of both Dutch and German remain largely intact, the continuum which historically connected the Dutch, Frisian and German languages has largely disintegrated. Fragmentary areas of the Dutch-German border in which language change is more gradual than in other sections or a higher degree of
mutual intelligibility is present still exist, such as the
Aachen-
Kerkrade
Kerkrade ( Ripuarian: ; li, Kirkraoj; german: Kerkrade or ''Kirchrath'') is a town and a municipality in the southeast of Limburg; the southernmost province of the Netherlands. It forms part of the Parkstad Limburg agglomeration.
Kerkrade is the ...
area, but the historical chain in which dialects were only divided by minor isoglosses and negligible differences in vocabulary has seen a rapid and ever-increasing decline since the 1850s.
Standard Dutch
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. ''Afrikaans'' ...
was based on the dialects of the principal
Brabantic
Brabantian or Brabantish, also Brabantic or Brabantine ( nl, Brabants, Standard Dutch pronunciation: , ), is a dialect group of the Dutch language. It is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant, which corresponded mainly to the Dutch provi ...
and
Hollandic
Hollandic or Hollandish ( ) is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish ( East Flemish, ...
cities. The written form of
Standard German originated in the
East Central German
East Central German or East Middle German (german: Ostmitteldeutsch) is the eastern non- Franconian Central German language and is part of High German. Present-day Standard German as a High German variant, has actually developed from a compromi ...
used at the
chancery of the
kingdom of Saxony, while the spoken form emerged later, based on North German pronunciations of the written standard. Being based on widely separated dialects, the Dutch and German standards do not show a high degree of
mutual intelligibility when spoken and only partially so when written. One study concluded that, when concerning written language, Dutch speakers could translate 50.2% of the provided German words correctly, while the German subjects were able to translate 41.9% of the Dutch equivalents correctly. In terms of orthography, 22% of the vocabulary of Dutch and German is identical or near-identical.
Anglic continuum
The
Germanic dialects spoken on the island of Great Britain comprise areal varieties of English in England and of
Scots in Scotland. Those of large areas north and south of the border are often mutually intelligible. In contrast, the
Orcadian dialect of Scots is very different from the dialects of
English in southern England—but they are linked by a chain of intermediate varieties.
Romance languages
Western Romance continuum
The western continuum of
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
comprises, from West to East: in Portugal,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
; in Spain,
Galician,
Leonese or
Asturian, Castilian or
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Aragonese and
Catalan or
Valencian
Valencian () or Valencian language () is the official, historical and traditional name used in the Valencian Community (Spain), and unofficially in the El Carche comarca in Murcia (Spain), to refer to the Romance language also known as Catal ...
; in France,
Occitan,
Franco-Provençal
Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal, Patois or Arpitan) is a language within Gallo-Romance originally spoken in east-central France, western Switzerland and northwestern Italy.
Franco-Provençal has several distinct dialects and is separ ...
, standard
French and
Corsican which is closely related to Italian; in Italy,
Piedmontese
Piedmontese (; autonym: or , in it, piemontese) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, northwestern region of Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly reg ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
,
Lombard,
Emilian,
Romagnol, Gallo-Picene,
Venetian,
Friulian,
Ladin; and in Switzerland,
Lombard and
Romansh. This continuum is sometimes presented as another example, but the major languages in the group (i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian) have had separate
standards for longer than the languages in the Continental West Germanic group, and so are not commonly classified as
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
s of a common language.
Focusing instead on the local Romance lects that pre-existed the establishment of national or regional standard languages, all evidence and principles point to ''Romania continua'' as having been, and to varying extents in some areas still being, what
Charles Hockett
Charles Francis Hockett (January 17, 1916 – November 3, 2000) was an American linguist who developed many influential ideas in American structuralist linguistics. He represents the post- Bloomfieldian phase of structuralism often referred to as ...
called an L-complex, i.e. an unbroken chain of local differentiation such that, in principle and with appropriate caveats, intelligibility (due to sharing of features) attenuates with distance. This is perhaps most evident today in Italy, where, especially in rural and small-town contexts, local Romance is still often employed at home and work, and geolinguistic distinctions are such that while native speakers from any two nearby towns can understand each other with ease, they can also spot from linguistic features that the other is from elsewhere.
In recent centuries, the intermediate dialects between the major Romance languages have been moving toward
extinction, as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. That has been most notable in France, owing to the French government's
refusal to recognise minority languages, but it has occurred to some extent in all Western Romance speaking countries. Language change has also threatened the survival of stateless languages with existing literary standards, such as Occitan.
The Romance
languages of Italy are a less arguable example of a dialect continuum. For many decades since Italy's unification, the attitude of the French government towards the ethnolinguistic minorities was copied by the Italian government.
Eastern Romance continuum
The eastern Romance continuum is dominated by
Romanian. Outside Romania and Moldova, across the other south-east European countries, various Romanian language groups are to be found: pockets of various Romanian and Aromanian subgroups survive throughout
Bulgaria,
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
,
North Macedonia,
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...
,
Albania and
Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capit ...
(in
Istria).
Slavic languages
Conventionally, on the basis of extralinguistic features (such as writing systems or the former western frontier of the Soviet Union), the North Slavic continuum is split into East and West Slavic continua. From the perspective of linguistic features alone, only two Slavic (dialect) continua can be distinguished, namely, North and South.
North Slavic continuum
The North Slavic continuum covers the
East Slavic and
West Slavic languages. East Slavic includes
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Belarusian,
Rusyn and
Ukrainian; West Slavic languages of
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
,
Polish,
Slovak,
Silesian,
Kashubian, and
Upper and
Lower Sorbian
Lower may refer to:
*Lower (surname)
*Lower Township, New Jersey
*Lower Receiver (firearms)
*Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England
See also
*Nizhny
Nizhny (russian: Ни́жний; masculine), Nizhnyaya (; feminine), or Nizhneye (russian: Ни́� ...
.
Ukrainian dialects and to a lesser degree Belarusian have been influenced by neighbouring Polish, due to the historical ties with the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
South Slavic continuum
All South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum. It comprises, from West to East,
Slovenia,
Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capit ...
,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Montenegro,
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
,
North Macedonia, and
Bulgaria. Standard
Slovene,
Macedonian, and
Bulgarian are each based on a distinct dialect, but the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian
standard varieties of the
pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia a ...
are all based on the same dialect,
Shtokavian
Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It ...
.
Therefore,
Croats,
Serbs,
Bosniaks and
Montenegrins
Montenegrins ( cnr, Црногорци, Crnogorci, or ; lit. "Black Mountain People") are a South Slavic ethnic group that share a common Montenegrin culture, history, and language, identified with the country of Montenegro.
Genetics
Accordi ...
communicate fluently with each other in their respective
standardized varieties. In
Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capit ...
, native speakers of Shtokavian may struggle to understand distinct
Kajkavian
Kajkavian (Kajkavian noun: ''kajkavščina''; Shtokavian adjective: ''kajkavski'' , noun: ''kajkavica'' or ''kajkavština'' ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and no ...
or
Chakavian
Chakavian or Čakavian (, , , sh-Latn, čakavski proper name: or own name: ''čokovski, čakavski, čekavski'') is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmat ...
dialects, as might the speakers of the two with each other. Likewise in
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
, the
Torlakian
Torlakian, or Torlak is a group of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic ar ...
dialect differs significantly from Standard Serbian. Serbian is a Western South Slavic standard, but Torlakian is largely transitional with the Eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian). Collectively, the Torlakian dialects with Macedonian and Bulgarian share many grammatical features that set them apart from all other Slavic languages, such as the complete loss of its
grammatical case systems and adoption of features more commonly found among
analytic languages
In linguistic typology, an analytic language is a language that conveys relationships between words in sentences primarily by way of ''helper'' words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections (changing the f ...
.
The barrier between ''East South Slavic'' and ''West South Slavic'' is historical and natural, caused primarily by a one-time geographical distance between speakers. The two varieties started diverging early on (circa 11th century CE) and evolved separately ever since without major mutual influence, as evidenced by distinguishable
Old Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
, while the western dialect of common Old Slavic was still spoken across the modern Serbo-Croatian area in the 12th and early 13th centuries. An intermediate dialect linking western and eastern variations inevitably came into existence over time –
Torlakian
Torlakian, or Torlak is a group of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic ar ...
– spoken across a wide radius on which the tripoint of
Bulgaria,
North Macedonia and
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
is relatively pivotal.
Uralic languages
The other major language family in Europe besides Indo-European are the
Uralic languages. The
Sami languages, sometimes mistaken for a single language, are a dialect continuum, albeit with some disconnections like between
North,
Skolt and
Inari Sami. The
Baltic-Finnic languages spoken around the
Gulf of Finland form a dialect continuum. Thus, although
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
and
Estonian are separate languages, there is no definite linguistic border or isogloss that separates them. This is now more difficult to recognize because many of the intervening languages have declined or become extinct.
Goidelic continuum
The
Goidelic languages consist of
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Scottish and
Manx. Prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, the continuum existed throughout Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. Many intermediate dialects have become extinct or have died out leaving major gaps between languages such as in the islands of
Rathlin,
Arran or
Kintyre
Kintyre ( gd, Cinn Tìre, ) is a peninsula in western Scotland, in the southwest of Argyll and Bute. The peninsula stretches about , from the Mull of Kintyre in the south to East and West Loch Tarbert in the north. The region immediately nor ...
and also in the
Irish counties
The counties of Ireland ( Irish: ) are historic administrative divisions of the island into thirty-two units. They began as Norman structures, and as the powers exercised by the Cambro-Norman barons and the Old English nobility waned over time ...
or
Antrim,
Londonderry and
Down.
The current Goidelic speaking areas of Ireland are also separated by extinct dialects but remain mutually intelligible.
Middle East
Arabic
Arabic is a standard case of
diglossia. The standard written language,
Modern Standard Arabic, is based on the
Classical Arabic of the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
, while the
modern vernacular dialects (or languages) branched from ancient Arabic dialects, from North Western
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
through
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
,
Sudan, and the
Fertile Crescent to the
Arabian Peninsula and
Iraq. The dialects use different analogues from the Arabic language inventory and have been influenced by different substrate and superstrate languages. Adjacent dialects are mutually understandable to a large extent, but those from distant regions are more difficult to be understood.
The difference between the written standard and the vernaculars is apparent also in the written language, and children have to be taught Modern Standard Arabic in school to be able to read it.
Aramaic
All
modern Aramaic languages descend from a dialect continuum that historically existed before the Islamicization of the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, including distinct varieties spoken by both Jews and Christians, is a dialect continuum although greatly disrupted by population displacement during the twentieth century.
Kurdish
The
Kurdish language is considered as a dialect continuum of many varieties and the three main varieties are
Northern Kurdish
Kurmanji ( ku, کورمانجی, lit=Kurdish, translit=Kurmancî, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Sy ...
(Kurmanji),
Central Kurdish (Sorani), and
Southern Kurdish
Southern Kurdish ( ku, کوردی باشووری ,کوردی خوارگ, Kurdî Başûrî, Kurdî Xwarig) is one of the dialects of the Kurdish language, spoken predominantly in northeastern Iraq and western Iran. The Southern Kurdish-speaking r ...
(Xwarîn).
Persian
The
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken a ...
in its various varieties (
Tajiki
Tajik (Tajik: , , ), also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: , , ) or Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligibl ...
and
Dari), is representative of a dialect continuum. The divergence of Tajik was accelerated by the shift from the Perso-Arabic alphabet to a Cyrillic one under the Soviets. Western dialects of Persian show greater influence from Arabic and Oghuz Turkic languages, but Dari and Tajik tend to preserve many classical features in grammar and vocabulary. Also the
Tat language, a dialect of Persian, is spoken in Azerbaijan.
Turkic
Turkic languages are best described as a dialect continuum. Geographically this continuum starts at the
Balkans in the west with
Balkan Turkish, includes
Turkish in
Turkey and
Azerbaijani language in
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...
, extends into
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
with
Azeri and
Khalaj, into
Iraq with
Turkmen, across
Central Asia to include
Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, to southern Regions of
Tajikistan and into
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
. In the south, the continuum starts in northern Afghanistan, northward to
Chuvashia. In the east it extends to the Republic of
Tuva, the
Xinjiang autonomous region in Western China with the
Uyghur language and into
Mongolia with
Khoton. The entire territory is inhabited by Turkic speaking peoples. There are three varieties of Turkic geographically outside the continuum:
Chuvash,
Yakut and
Dolgan
Dolgans (; Dolgan: , , (Sakha); Yakut: ) are an ethnic group who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. They are descended from several groups, particularly Evenks, one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. They adopted a Turk ...
. They have been geographically separated from the other Turkic languages for an extensive period of time, and Chuvash language stands out as the most divergent from other Turkic languages.
There are also
Gagauz speakers in
Moldavia and
Urum speakers in
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
.
The Turkic continuum makes internal genetic classification of the languages problematic.
Chuvash, Khalaj and
Yakut are generally classified as significantly distinct, but the remaining
Turkic languages are quite similar, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility between not only geographically adjacent varieties but also among some varieties some distance apart. Structurally, the Turkic languages are very close to one another, and they share basic features such as
SOV word order,
vowel harmony and
agglutination.
Indo-Aryan languages
Many of the
Indo-Aryan languages of the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
form a dialect continuum. What is called "
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
" in India is frequently
Standard Hindi, the
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
ized register of the colloquial
Hindustani spoken in the
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...
area, the other register being
. However, the term Hindi is also used for the different dialects from
Bihar to
Rajasthan and, more widely, some of the Eastern and Northern dialects are sometimes grouped under Hindi. The Indo-Aryan
Prakrits also gave rise to languages like
Gujarati,
Assamese,
Maithili,
Bengali,
Odia,
Nepali,
Marathi,
Konkani and
Punjabi.
Chinese
Chinese consists of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not
mutually intelligible.
[ p. 72.]
The differences are similar to those within the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
, which are similarly descended from a language spread by imperial expansion over
substrate language
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
s 2000 years ago.
Unlike Europe, however, Chinese political unity was restored in the late 6th century and has persisted (with interludes of division) until the present day.
There are no equivalents of the local standard literary languages that developed in the numerous independent states of Europe.
Chinese dialectologists have divided the local varieties into a number of dialect groups, largely based on phonological developments in comparison with
Middle Chinese.
Most of these groups are found in the rugged terrain of the southeast, reflecting the greater variation in this area, particularly in
Fujian.
Each of these groups contains numerous mutually unintelligible varieties.
Moreover, in many cases the transitions between groups are smooth, as a result of centuries of interaction and multilingualism.
The boundaries between the northern
Mandarin area and the central groups,
Wu,
Gan and
Xiang, are particularly weak, due to the steady flow of northern features into these areas.
Transitional varieties between the Wu, Gan and Mandarin groups have been variously classified, with some scholars assigning them to a separate
Hui
The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the n ...
group.
The boundaries between Gan,
Hakka and
Min are similarly indistinct.
Pinghua
Pinghua (; Yale: ''Pìhng Wá''; sometimes disambiguated as /) is a pair of Sinitic languages spoken mainly in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with some speakers in Hunan province. Pinghua is a trade language in some areas of Gu ...
and
Yue form a dialect continuum (excluding urban enclaves of
Cantonese).
There are sharper boundaries resulting from more recent expansion between Hakka and Yue, and between
Southwestern Mandarin and Yue, but even here there has been considerable convergence in contact areas.
Cree and Ojibwa
Cree is a group of closely related
Algonquian languages that are distributed from
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
to
Labrador in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. They form the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum, with around 117,410 speakers. The languages can be roughly classified into nine groups, from west to east:
*
Plains Cree (y-dialect)
*
Woods Cree
Woods Cree is an indigenous language spoken in Northern Manitoba, Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta, Canada. It is part of the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum. The dialect continuum has around 116,000 speakers; the exact popu ...
or Woods/Rocky Cree (ð-dialect)
*
Swampy Cree
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms ''Néhinaw'', ''Maskiki Wi Iniwak'', ''Mushkekowuk,'' ''Maškékowak'' or ''Maskekon'' (and therefore also ''Muskegon'' and ''Muskegoes'') or by exonyms including ''West Main Cree,'' ''Lowlan ...
(n-dialect)
** Eastern Swampy Cree
** Western Swampy Cree
*
Moose Cree (l-dialect)
*
East Cree
East Cree, also known as (Eastern) James Bay Cree, and East Main Cree, is a group of Cree dialects spoken in Quebec, Canada on the east coast of lower Hudson Bay and James Bay, and inland southeastward from James Bay. Cree is one of the most spok ...
or James Bay Cree (y-dialect)
** Northern East Cree
** Southern East Cree
*
Atikamekw (r-dialect)
* Western Montagnais (l-dialect)
*
Innu-aimun or Eastern Montagnais (n-dialect)
*
Naskapi
The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical country St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our nclusiveland'), which is located in northern Quebec and Labrador, neighb ...
(y-dialect)
Various Cree languages are used as languages of instruction and taught as subjects: Plains Cree, Eastern Cree, Montagnais, etc. Mutual intelligibility between some dialects can be low. There is no accepted standard dialect.
Ojibwa (Chippewa) is a group of closely related
Algonquian languages in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, which is distributed from
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
to
Quebec, and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, distributed from
Montana to
Michigan, with
diaspora communities in
Kansas and
Oklahoma. With Cree, the
Ojibwe dialect continuum forms its own continuum, but the
Oji-Cree language
The Severn Ojibwa or the Oji-Cree language (ᐊᓂᐦᔑᓂᓃᒧᐏᐣ, ''Anishininiimowin''; Unpointed: ᐊᓂᔑᓂᓂᒧᐏᐣ) is the indigenous name for a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of Oji-Cree communities in norther ...
of this continuum joins the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum through
Swampy Cree
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms ''Néhinaw'', ''Maskiki Wi Iniwak'', ''Mushkekowuk,'' ''Maškékowak'' or ''Maskekon'' (and therefore also ''Muskegon'' and ''Muskegoes'') or by exonyms including ''West Main Cree,'' ''Lowlan ...
. The Ojibwe continuum has 70,606 speakers. Roughly from northwest to southeast, it has these dialects:
* Ojibwa-Ottawa
**
Algonquin
Algonquin or Algonquian—and the variation Algonki(a)n—may refer to:
Languages and peoples
*Algonquian languages, a large subfamily of Native American languages in a wide swath of eastern North America from Canada to Virginia
**Algonquin la ...
**
Oji-Cree (Northern Ojibwa) or Severn
** Ojibwa
***
Western Ojibwa or Saulteaux
***
Chippewa (Southwestern Ojibwa)
***
Northwestern Ojibwa
***
Central Ojibwa or Nipissing
***
Eastern Ojibwa or Mississauga
**
Ottawa (Southeastern Ojibwa)
*
Potawatomi
Unlike the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum, with distinct n/y/l/r/ð dialect characteristics and noticeable west-east k/č(ch) axis, the Ojibwe continuum is marked with
vowel syncope along the west-east axis and ∅/n along the north-south axis.
See also
*
Dialect levelling
*
Dialectometry
*
Diasystem
In the field of dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar is a linguistic analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties in a way that displays their structural differences.
The term ''diasystem'' was coined by linguis ...
*
Diglossia
*
Koine language
*
Language secessionism
*
Post-creole speech continuum
A post-creole continuum (or simply creole continuum) is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language (that is, a closely related language whose speakers assert or asserted d ...
*
Ring species
In biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which interbreeds with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly relate ...
, an analogous concept in ecology
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dialect Continuum
Dialects
Comparative linguistics
Dialectology
Language geography