Daka (Dakka, Dekka, rarely Deng or Tikk) is one of two languages spoken by the Chamba people in Nigeria , the other being Chamba Leko .
108-406: Daka is a dialect cluster . The Chamba dialect is called Chamba Daka (or Samba, Tsamba, Tchamba, Sama, Jama Daka ; also Nakanyare) and constitutes 90% of speakers. Chamba Daka is also called Sámá Mūm . Other dialects are Dirim (Dirin, Dirrim), Lamja, Dengsa, and Tola . Dirim and Lamja–Dengsa–Tola have separate ISO coding, but Ethnologue notes that they are 'close to Samba Daka and may be
216-453: A dialect of a language defined in this way. In these terms, Danish and Norwegian , though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages. In the framework of Heinz Kloss , these are described as languages by ausbau (development) rather than by abstand (separation). In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates
324-508: A dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data. In many societies, however,
432-513: A "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing". The designation "dialect"
540-639: A Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language. Today, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from
648-465: A Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case, and is classified as its own language. Within this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a language as an autonomous variety in addition to all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960. A heteronomous variety may be considered
756-660: A bill to parliament to statutorily recognise English as an official language. As of May 2020, the bill had not progressed. During the 2023 New Zealand general election , New Zealand First leader Winston Peters promised to make English an official language of New Zealand. The official language of Nigeria is English, which was chosen to facilitate the cultural and linguistic unity of the country. British colonial rule ended in 1960. Urdu and English both are official languages in Pakistan. Pakistan has more than 60 other languages. Filipino and English both are official languages of
864-456: A central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a language . Another occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority . According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of
972-554: A co-official language, but the proposal was rejected by nearly three-quarters of the voters. The official language of Malaysia is the Malay language ( Bahasa Melayu ), also known as Bahasa Malaysia or just Bahasa for short. Bahasa Melayu is being protected under Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia. Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands (a constituent country within
1080-485: A dialect' or 'may not be sufficiently distinct from Samba Daka to be a separate language', and actually lists Dirim as a dialect under Daka. Blench (2011) lists Dirim as coordinate with other Daka varieties: Nnakenyare, Mapeo, Jangani, Lamja, Dirim, suggesting that if Lamja and Dirim are considered separate languages, as in Ethnologue , then Samba Daka itself needs to be broken up into three additional languages. Blench lists
1188-528: A dialect, as it is the dominant language in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. Dialect used this way implies a political connotation, often being used to refer to non-standardized "low-prestige" languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language) of limited geographic distribution, languages lacking institutional support, or even those considered to be "unsuitable for writing". Occasionally, in
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#17330853707491296-522: A distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war , Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic. In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco,
1404-542: A few countries like Italy , such as dialetto , patois in France , much of East Central Europe, and the Philippines , may carry a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of an autochthonous non-national language to the country's official language(s). Dialects in this sense do not derive from a dominant language, are therefore not one of its varieties , but they evolved in
1512-531: A form of the Aramaic language (the so-called Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic) as the vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. Aramaic script was widely employed from Egypt in the southwest to Bactria and Sogdiana in the northeast. Texts were dictated in the native dialects and written down in Aramaic, and then read out again in
1620-402: A given language can be classified as "a dialect", including any standardized varieties . In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In
1728-415: A language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages. A standard dialect , also known as a "standardized language", is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of
1836-459: A matter of dispute. Macedonian , which is largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian ( Torlakian ), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, while in North Macedonia , it is regarded as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before
1944-473: A minority. South Africa has twelve official languages that are mostly indigenous. Due to limited funding, however, the government rarely produces documents in most languages. Accusations of mismanagement and corruption have been leveled against the Pan South African Language Board , established to promote multilingualism, develop the 11 official languages, and protect language rights in
2052-421: A national level. On the other extreme, Bolivia officially recognizes 37 languages, the most of any country in the world. Second to Bolivia is India with 22 official languages . South Africa is the country with the third lead with 12 official languages that all have equal status; Bolivia gives primacy to Spanish , and India gives primacy to English and Hindi . The selection of an official language (or
2160-745: A number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages ( French , Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect , Franco-Provençal ); the Rhaeto-Romance languages ( Friulian and Ladin ); the Ibero-Romance languages ( Sardinia 's Algherese ); the Germanic Cimbrian , Southern Bavarian , Walser German and the Mòcheno language ; the Albanian Arbëresh language ;
2268-478: A particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term "dialect" refers specifically to varieties with low social status . In this secondary sense of "dialect", language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages : The status of "language"
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#17330853707492376-452: A particular group of the language's speakers. The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible , especially if geographically close to one another in a dialect continuum . The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect associated with
2484-425: A particular social class is called a sociolect ; one associated with a particular ethnic group is an ethnolect ; and a geographical or regional dialect is a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). Any variety of a given language can be classified as a "dialect", including standardized ones . A second usage, which refers to colloquial settings, typically diglossic , in
2592-438: A separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties' criteria for a separate language. Despite this, these "dialects" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered
2700-432: A separate and parallel way. While they may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter, "dialects" under this second definition are separate languages from the standard or national language. Under this definition, the standard or national language would not itself be considered
2808-649: A separate language, because Literary Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Qur'an . Although, especially since the 1960s, the Darijas are occupying an increasing use and influence in the cultural life of these countries. Examples of cultural elements where Darijas' use became dominant include: theatre, film, music, television, advertisement, social media, folk-tale books and companies' names. Official language An official language
2916-449: A separate, though closely related, language. Dialect cluster A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. It can also refer to a language subordinate in status to a dominant language, and is sometimes used to mean a vernacular language. The more common usage of the term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of
3024-430: A sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties. Others have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of
3132-399: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives, and the term "dialect" is sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. The term
3240-441: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives. The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. Conversely, some dialectologists have reserved
3348-582: A socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited. By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of some language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the same language or dialects of different languages. The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be. Thus there
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3456-481: A somewhat special status but are not official languages. For instance, at least 5% of the broadcasting time of privately owned TV channels must be translated into Russian (a similar privilege is granted to Arabic), warnings must be translated to several languages, and signs are mostly trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic and English), and the government supports Yiddish and Ladino culture (alongside Hebrew culture and Arabic culture). The Official Language Law recognizes Latvian as
3564-636: A speaker of purely Eastern Lombard , a language in Northern Italy 's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect , would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian -speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan , or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile,
3672-408: A third usage, dialect refers to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. Features that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon ( vocabulary ) and grammar ( morphology , syntax ) as well as in pronunciation ( phonology , including prosody ). In instances where
3780-468: Is a language having certain rights to be used in defined situations. These rights can be created in written form or by historic usage. 178 countries recognize an official language, 101 of them recognizing more than one. The government of Italy made Italian official only in 1999, and some nations (such as the United States , Mexico , and Australia ) have never declared de jure official languages at
3888-503: Is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. John Lyons writes that "Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect." In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary . There are three geographical zones in which Arabic
3996-504: Is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect . A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect . A geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). According to this definition, any variety of
4104-532: Is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan . The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century , and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called tre corone ("three crowns"): Dante Alighieri , Petrarch , and Giovanni Boccaccio . Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as
4212-486: Is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages , most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them ( Albanian , Catalan , German , Greek , Slovene , Croatian , French , Franco-Provençal , Friulian , Ladin , Occitan and Sardinian ) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to
4320-604: Is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese , whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility. National boundaries sometimes make
4428-766: Is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German ". There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is " variety "; " lect " is another. A more general term is " languoid ", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not. The colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy (see dialetto ), France (see patois ) and
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4536-454: Is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility : two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains
4644-405: Is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended. The extent to which
4752-506: Is said to be autonomous. In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch , and hence is categorized as a dialect of Dutch instead. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German,
4860-624: Is spoken (Jastrow 2002). Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant , Egypt , North Africa , Iraq , and some parts of Iran . The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including
4968-488: Is supported by the Académie Française institution. A nonstandard dialect also has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support. The distinction between the "standard" dialect and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In
5076-399: Is the most common official or co-official language, with recognized status in 51 countries. Arabic , French , and Spanish are official or co-official languages in several countries. An official language that is also an indigenous language is called endoglossic , one that is not indigenous is exoglossic . An instance is Nigeria which has three endoglossic official languages. By this,
5184-788: Is the sole official language in Bulgaria . Following the Constitution Act, 1982 the (federal) Government of Canada gives equal status to English and French as official languages. The Province of New Brunswick is also officially bilingual, as is Yukon . Nunavut has four official languages: English, French, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun . The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages: Chipewyan/Dené , Cree , English , French , Gwich’in , Inuinnaqtun , Inuktitut , Inuvialuktun , North Slavey , South Slavey , and Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib). All provinces, however, offer some necessary services in both English and French. The Province of Quebec with
5292-587: The Basic Law of Hong Kong and the Official Languages Ordinance , both Chinese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong with equal status. The variety of Chinese is not stipulated; however, Cantonese , being the language most commonly used by the majority of Hongkongers , forms the de facto standard. Similarly, Traditional Chinese characters are most commonly used in Hong Kong and form
5400-575: The Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects. Though mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance,
5508-508: The Constitution of Afghanistan , the Afghan government gives equal status to Pashto and Dari as official languages. English is the de facto national language of Australia, while Australia has no de jure official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population , and has been entrenched as the de facto national language since European settlement , being
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#17330853707495616-556: The Darijas translated as literally meaning Dialect in Arabic (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam ), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be
5724-578: The Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek ; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect ; and the various Slovene languages , including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect . The language indigenous to Sardinia , while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into
5832-586: The Middle Ages . However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy . During the Risorgimento , Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian. Proponents of Italian nationalism , like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni , stressed
5940-602: The Official Language Act (Quebec) and Charter of the French Language defines French, the language of the majority of the population, as the official language of the provincial government. Ethiopia has five official languages (Amharic alone until 2020) Amharic , Oromo , Somali , Tigrinya , and Afar , but Amharic is the de facto sole official language which is used by the government for issuing driving licenses, business licenses, passport, and foreign diplomacy with
6048-422: The Philippines , carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties , but instead they evolved in
6156-481: The Philippines , Belgium , Switzerland , and the European Union are examples of official multilingualism. This has been described as controversial and, in some other areas where it has been proposed, the idea has been rejected. It has also been described as necessary for the recognition of different groups or as an advantage for the country in presenting itself to outsiders. Following Chapter 1, Article 16 of
6264-420: The conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of
6372-490: The de facto standard for written Chinese, however, there is an increasing presence of Simplified Chinese characters particularly in areas related to tourism. In government use, documents written using Traditional Chinese characters are authoritative over ones written with Simplified Chinese characters. The Constitution of India ( part 17 ) designates the official language of the Government of India as Hindi written in
6480-649: The volgare of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the lingua franca among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among
6588-476: The Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian , which even, for a time, had its own ISO code. An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance . For a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between
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#17330853707496696-550: The Devanagari script. Although the original intentions of the constitution were to phase out English as an official language, provisions were provided so that "Parliament may by law provide for the use ... of ... the English language". The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists has 22 languages, which have been referred to as scheduled languages and given recognition, status and official encouragement. In addition,
6804-617: The Government of India has awarded the distinction of classical language to Tamil , Sanskrit , Kannada , Telugu , Malayalam and Odia . The official language of Indonesia is the Indonesian language ( Bahasa Indonesia ). Bahasa Indonesia is regulated in Chapter XV, 1945 Constitution of Indonesia. On 19 July 2018, the Knesset passed a basic law under the title Israel as the Nation-State of
6912-475: The Hakka Basic Act to make Hakka an official language of Taiwan . According to the constitution of Timor-Leste , Tetum and Portuguese are the official languages of the country, and every official document must be published in both languages; Indonesian and English hold "working language" status in the country. The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian . The de facto official language of
7020-559: The Jewish People , which defines Hebrew as "the State's language" and Arabic as a language with "a special status in the State" (article 4). The law further says that it should not be interpreted as compromising the status of the Arabic language in practice before the enactment of the basic law, namely, it preserves the status quo and changes the status of Hebrew and Arabic only nominally. Before
7128-642: The Kingdom of the Netherlands). In the province of Friesland , Frisian is the official second language. While Dutch is therefore the official language of the Caribbean Netherlands (the islands Bonaire , Saba and Sint Eustatius ), it is not any of the three islands' main spoken language: Papiamento is the most often spoken language on Bonaire, while English is on both Saba and Sint Eustatius. These languages can be used in official documents (but do not have
7236-712: The Philippines. Polish is the official language of Poland . Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation and in all federal subjects , however many minority languages have official status in the areas where they are indigenous. One type of federal subject in Russia, republics , are allowed to adopt additional official languages alongside Russian in their constitutions. Republics are often based around particular native ethnic groups and are often areas where ethnic Russians and native Russian-language speakers are
7344-576: The Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects . Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis. In Lebanon , a part of the Christian population considers "Lebanese" to be in some sense
7452-498: The Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area. Spoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing. When talking about the German language, the term German dialects
7560-559: The United Kingdom is English . In Wales , the Welsh language , spoken by approximately 20% of the population, has de jure official status, alongside English. English is the de facto national language of the United States. While there is no official language at the federal level, 32 of the 50 U.S. states and all five inhabited U.S. territories have designated English as one, or
7668-683: The West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language. One criterion, which
7776-522: The addition that Court documents are in Amharic, and the constitution is written in Amharic, making Amharic a higher official language in the country. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the national languages of the republic, giving their speakers the right to communicate with, and receive official documents from, government authorities in either of the two languages in any part of
7884-571: The country aims to protect the indigenous languages although at the same time recognising the English language as its lingua franca. In spatial terms, indigenous (endoglossic) languages are mostly employed in the function of official languages in Eurasia , while mainly non-indigenous (exoglossic) rest of the world. Around 500 BC, when Darius the Great annexed Mesopotamia to the Persian Empire , he chose
7992-492: The country – making those languages de facto official . Speakers of Sámi languages have those same rights in their native area ( Sámi homeland ). German is the official language of Germany . However, its minority languages include Sorbian ( Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian ), Romani , Danish and North Frisian , which are officially recognised. Migrant languages like Turkish, Russian and Spanish are widespread but are not officially recognised languages. According to
8100-447: The country. In practice, government is conducted in English. The four national languages of Switzerland are German , French , Italian and Romansh . At the federal level German, French and Italian are official languages, the official languages of individual cantons depend on the languages spoken in them. Mandarin is the most common language used in government. After World War II the mainland Chinese-run government made Mandarin
8208-449: The default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language. The Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects
8316-577: The dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment. The situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are
8424-440: The distinction between "language" and "dialect" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate "language" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate "people", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a "dialect" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy. The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published
8532-493: The early twentieth century. The following languages are official ( de jure or de facto ) in three or more sovereign states. In some cases, a language may be defined as different languages in different countries. Examples are Hindi and Urdu, Malay and Indonesian, Serbian and Croatian, Persian and Tajik. Some countries—like Australia , the United Kingdom and the United States —have no official language recognized as such at
8640-593: The educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people. Aside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages , the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group , spanning throughout much of Northern Italy 's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese , Emilian-Romagnol , Ligurian , Lombard , Venetian , Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy , etc.). Finally, other languages from
8748-710: The enactment of the aforementioned basic law, the status of official language in Israel was determined by the 82nd paragraph of the " Palestine Order in Council " issued on 14 August 1922 , for the British Mandate of Palestine , as amended in 1939: This law, like most other laws of the British Mandate, was adopted in the State of Israel, subject to certain amendments published by the provisional legislative branch on 19 May 1948. The amendment states that: In most public schools ,
8856-455: The expression, A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot ( "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט" : " A language is a dialect with an army and navy ") in YIVO Bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without
8964-401: The first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian, with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents. The most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group . This wide category includes: Modern Italian
9072-404: The following five languages: Bengali , Chinese , English , Korean and Spanish . The same languages are also on ballot papers in certain parts of the state (namely, New York City ). Opponents of an official language policy in the United States argue that it would hamper "the government's ability to reach out, communicate, and warn people in the event of a natural or man-made disaster such as
9180-537: The following varieties as Samba Daka dialects. Greenberg placed Samba Daka within his Adamawa proposal, as group G3, but Bennett (1983) demonstrated to general satisfaction that it is a Benue–Congo language , though its placement within Benue–Congo is disputed. Blench (2011) considers it to be Bantoid. Boyd (ms), however, considers Daka an isolate branch within Niger–Congo (Blench 2008). Blench (2011) lists Taram as
9288-471: The following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the "correct" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage ; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which
9396-413: The importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity . With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as "dialects" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education. In the early 20th century,
9504-544: The intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education , Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian. While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as " regional Italian ", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with
9612-568: The intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects, though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the Language Survey Reference Guide of SIL International , publishers of the Ethnologue and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes . They define a dialect cluster as
9720-436: The lack thereof) is often contentious. An alternative to having a single official language is "official multilingualism ", where a government recognizes multiple official languages. Under this system, all government services are available in all official languages. Each citizen may choose their preferred language when conducting business. Most countries are multilingual and many are officially multilingual. Taiwan , Canada ,
9828-489: The main teaching language is Hebrew, English is taught as a second language, and most students learn a third language, usually Arabic but not necessarily. Other public schools have Arabic as their main teaching language, and they teach Hebrew as a second language and English as a third one. There are also bilingual schools which aim to teach both Hebrew and Arabic equally. Some languages other than Hebrew and Arabic, such as English, Russian, Amharic , Yiddish and Ladino enjoy
9936-405: The modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language . The Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects. Italy is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word "dialect" ( dialetto )
10044-445: The national level. Other nations have declared non-indigenous official languages. Many of the world's constitutions mention one or more official or national languages . Some countries use the official language designation to empower indigenous groups by giving them access to the government in their native languages. In countries that do not formally designate an official language, a de facto national language usually evolves. English
10152-463: The native language at the places they were received. The First Emperor of Qin standardized the written language of China after unifying the country in 221 BC. Classical Chinese would remain the standard written language for the next 2000 years. Standardization of the spoken language received less political attention, and Mandarin developed on an ad hoc basis from the dialects of the various imperial capitals until being officially standardized in
10260-530: The official language, and it was used in the schools and government. Under the Development of National Languages Act, political participation can be conducted in any national language, which is defined as a "natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan", which also includes Formosan languages , the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien and Hakka . According to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, amendments were made to
10368-519: The only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians . Article 21 of Azerbaijani Constitution designates the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan as Azerbaijani Language . After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the then Head of the State Sheikh Mujibur Rahman adopted the policy of 'one state one language'. The de facto national language , Bengali , is
10476-767: The only, official language, while courts have found that residents in the 50 states do not have a right to government services in their preferred language. Public debate in the last few decades has focused on whether Spanish should be recognized by the government, or whether all business should be done in English. California allows people to take their driving test in the following 32 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese , Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Persian , Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog/Filipino, Thai, Tongan, Turkish, and Vietnamese. New York state provides voter-registration forms in
10584-454: The others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster . In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International , who produce Ethnologue ,
10692-731: The salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term accent may be used instead of dialect . Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be classified as creoles . When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons . Differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects or cant, and include slangs and argots . The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect . Languages are classified as dialects based on linguistic distance . The dialects of
10800-486: The same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German , which
10908-467: The same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction between dialect and language is therefore subjective and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in
11016-651: The same status as Frisian). Low Saxon and Limburgish , languages acknowledged by the European Charter , are spoken in specific regions of the Netherlands. New Zealand has three official languages. English is the de facto official language, accepted as such in all situations. The Māori language and New Zealand Sign Language both have restricted de jure official status under the Māori Language Act 1987 and New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. In 2018, New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell introduced
11124-807: The same town or region. The classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants ( Serbian and Croatian ). Both are based on the Shtokavian dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia ( Torlakian ) and Croatia ( Kajkavian and Chakavian ), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains
11232-511: The sole official language of Bangladesh according to the third article of the Constitution of Bangladesh . The government of Bangladesh introduced the Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 to ensure the mandatory use of Bengali in all government affairs. Belarusian and Russian have official status in the Republic of Belarus . Belgium has three official languages: Dutch , French and German . Bulgarian
11340-472: The sole official language of Latvia, while Latgalian is protected as "a historic variant of Latvian" and Livonian is recognized as "the language of the indigenous (autochthonous) population". Latvia also provides national minority education programmes in Russian , Polish , Hebrew , Ukrainian , Estonian , Lithuanian , and Belarusian . In 2012 there was a constitutional referendum on elevating Russian as
11448-575: The term "dialect" for forms that they believed (sometimes wrongly) to be purer forms of the older languages, as in how early dialectologists of English did not consider the Brummie of Birmingham or the Scouse of Liverpool to be real dialects, as they had arisen fairly recently in time and partly as a result of influences from Irish migrants. There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of
11556-621: The two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized. For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German , are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in
11664-502: The vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean ), but have been officially recognized as minority languages ( minoranze linguistiche storiche ), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian dialetti , since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan , Sicilian and Venetian , have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since
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