Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a

superstratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia A ...

or a substratum. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification. In some cases a new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

, creole, or

mixed language A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language or fusion language, is a type of contact language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. ...

. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include the borrowing of

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

s, or other types of linguistic material. Multilingualism has been common throughout much of

human history Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Early modern human, Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They Early expansions of hominin ...

, and today most people in the world are multilingual. Multilingual speakers may engage in

code-switching In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. These alternations are generally intended to ...

, the use of multiple languages in a single conversation. Methods from sociolinguistics (the study of language use in society), from

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

and from formal linguistics are used in the study of language contact.

Borrowing

Borrowing of vocabulary items

The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words. Much is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this phenomenon is not new, and it is not very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation of words from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, French and other languages into English in the 16th and the 17th centuries was more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely recognisable. Armenian borrowed so many words from

Iranian languages The Iranian languages, also called the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian langu ...

, for example, that it was at first considered a divergent branch of the

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages) constitute the largest branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers ...

and was not recognised as an independent branch of the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

for many decades.

Borrowing of other language features

The influence can go deeper, extending to the exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such as morphology and

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

. Newar, for example, spoken in

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

, is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese but has had so many centuries of contact with neighbouring

that it has even developed noun

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

, a trait that is typical of the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. Newar has also absorbed grammatical features like verb tenses. Also, Romanian was influenced by the

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

that were spoken by neighbouring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

not only in vocabulary but also

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

. English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which the adjective follows the noun: court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior.

Direction of influence

Linguistic hegemony

A language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek, Latin, Portuguese, French, Spanish,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Persian,

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

, Russian, German and English have each seen periods of widespread importance and have had varying degrees of influence on the native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway. Especially during and since the 1990s, the internet, along with previous influences such as radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has expanded and changed the many ways in which languages can be influenced by each other and by technology.

Non-mutual influence

Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had a profound effect on the development of Japanese, but Chinese remains relatively free of Japanese influence other than some modern terms that were reborrowed after they were coined in Japan and based on Chinese forms and using Chinese characters. In

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and other native languages have been influenced by English, and loanwords from English are part of everyday vocabulary.

Mutual influence

In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange, but that may be confined to a particular geographic region. For example, in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, the local French has been influenced by German and vice versa. In

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, Scots has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect.

Outcomes of language contact

Language shift

The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common when one language has a higher social position ( prestige). This sometimes leads to language endangerment or

extinction Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

Stratal influence

When language shift occurs, the language that is replaced (known as the substratum) can leave a profound impression on the replacing language (known as the

) when people retain features of the substratum as they learn the new language and pass these features on to their children, which leads to the development of a new variety. For example, the Latin that came to replace local languages in present-day

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

during

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

times was influenced by

Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...

and Germanic. The distinct pronunciation of the

Hiberno-English Hiberno-English or Irish English (IrE), also formerly sometimes called Anglo-Irish, is the set of dialects of English native to the island of Ireland. In both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, English is the first language in e ...

dialect, spoken in

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, comes partially from the influence of the substratum of Irish. Outside the

family, Coptic, the last stage of ancient Egyptian, is a substratum of Egyptian Arabic.

Creation of new languages: creolization and mixed languages

Language contact can also lead to the development of new languages when people without a common language interact closely. Resulting from this contact a

may develop, which may eventually become a full-fledged

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fl ...

through the process of creolization (though some linguists assert that a creole need not emerge from a pidgin). Prime examples of this are Aukan and Saramaccan, spoken in

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

, which have vocabulary mainly from Portuguese, English and Dutch. A much rarer but still observed process, according to some linguists, is the formation of

s. Whereas creoles are formed by communities lacking a common language, mixed languages are formed by communities fluent in both languages. They tend to inherit much more of the complexity (grammatical, phonological, etc.) of their parent languages, whereas creoles begin as simple languages and then develop in complexity more independently. It is sometimes explained as bilingual communities that no longer identify with the cultures of either of the languages they speak, and seek to develop their own language as an expression of their own cultural uniqueness.

Dialectal and sub-cultural change

Some forms of language contact affect only a particular segment of a speech community. Consequently, change may be manifested only in particular dialects,

jargon Jargon, or technical language, is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside ...

s, or registers.

South African English South African English (SAfE, SAfEn, SAE, en-ZA) is the List of dialects of English, set of English language dialects native to South Africans. History British Empire, British settlers first arrived in the South African region in 1795, ...

, for example, has been significantly affected by

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

in terms of lexis and pronunciation, but the other dialects of English have remained almost totally unaffected by Afrikaans other than a few loanwords. In some cases, a language develops an acrolect that contains elements of a more prestigious language. For example, in

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

during a large part of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, upper-class speech was dramatically influenced by Norman to the point that it often resembled a dialect. The broader study of contact varieties within a society is called linguistic ecology.See, for example, Mufwene, Salikoko S. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Sign languages

Contact between sign languages

Language contact can take place between two or more sign languages, and the expected contact phenomena occur: lexical borrowing, foreign "accent", interference, code switching, pidgins, creoles, and mixed systems.

Contact between sign languages and oral languages

Language contact is extremely common in most deaf communities, which are almost always located within a dominant oral language culture. However, between a sign language and an oral language, even if lexical borrowing and code switching also occur, the interface between the oral and signed modes produces unique phenomena:

fingerspelling Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letter (alphabet), letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often ...

, fingerspelling/sign combination, initialisation, CODA talk, TDD conversation, mouthing and contact signing.

References

Notes

General references

* Hickey, Raymond (ed.), ''The Handbook of Language Contact'' (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell 2010) * Sarah Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, ''Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics'' (University of California Press 1988). * Sarah Thomason, ''Language Contact - An Introduction'' (Edinburgh University Press 2001). *Uriel Weinreich, ''Languages in Contact'' (Mouton 1963). *Donald Winford, ''An Introduction to Contact Linguistics'' (Blackwell 2002) . * Ghil'ad Zuckermann
''Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew''
(Palgrave Macmillan 2003) . * {{DEFAULTSORT:Language Contact