Dialect continuum
A
dialect continuum is a range of
dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in
mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. Dialects separated by great geographical distances may not be mutually comprehensible. According to the
Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache paradigm, these dialects can be considered Abstandsprachen (i.e., as stand-alone languages). However, they can be seen as dialects of a single language, provided that a common
standard language, through which communication is possible, exists. Such a situation is called
diglossia.
In
sociolinguistics, a
language continuum is said to exist when two or more different
languages or
dialects merge one into the other(s) without a definable boundary.
The
Romance languages of
Portugal,
Spain,
France and
Italy are often cited as the canonical example of this, although in recent times the intermediate dialects have been moving toward
extinction mainly because of the French government's attitude towards these
peasant tongues. This is also true for some non-dominant intermediate languages, like
Occitan and
Franco-Provençal.
The many dialects making up
German,
Dutch,
Afrikaans,
Low German were another example. They formed a single dialect continuum, with three recognized
literary standards. Although Dutch and German are not mutually intelligible, there were transitional dialects that are, for example
Limburgish, spoken in parts of the
Netherlands and
Belgium, and the
Low Franconian dialects across the border in
Germany (although Limburgish is nowadays sometimes considered a language in its own right).
Another example was the area where the river
Rhine crosses the border from Germany to the Netherlands. On both sides of this border, the people living in the immediate surroundings spoke an identical language. They could understand each other without difficulty, and would even have had trouble telling just by the language whether a person from the region was from the Netherlands or from Germany. However, the Germans here called their language German, and the Dutch called their language Dutch, so in terms of sociolinguistics they were speaking different languages.
The
spoken variants of Chinese are highly divergent, forming a continuum comparable to that of the Romance languages. However, all the variants more or less share a common
written language, though there are vernacular variations in vocabulary and grammar, and also even in the characters.
The written language originally shared by all dialects was
Classical Chinese, which was in normal use up until the early 20th century. In pre-modern times, Northern
Baihua grew up alongside Classical Chinese as a standard vernacular dialect. The modern standard dialect,
Putonghua (often called Mandarin), is largely based on Baihua.
Within the dialects, gradations do exist between pure local vernacular and the more refined speech of the better educated that incorporates elements from the standard language or written language.
Of course, the development of the divergent Chinese languages was made much easier because the characters used for writing Chinese are not tied closely to pronunciation as alphabetic or syllabic scripts are. In other words, a
Cantonese speaker may write his language much the same as a
Mandarin speaker and yet pronounce the written text totally differently.
Arabic is a classic case of diglossia. The standard written language,
Modern Standard Arabic, is based on the
Classical Arabic of the
Qur'an, while the modern vernacular dialects (or languages) - which form a dialect continuum reaching from the
Maghreb in North Western
Africa through
Egypt,
Sudan, and the
Fertile Crescent to the
Arabian Peninsula - have diverged widely from that. Because Arabic is written in an
Abjad, the difference between the written standard and the vernaculars also becomes apparent in the written language and so children have to be taught in school to articulate Modern Standard Arabic to be able to write it.
The languages spoken in
Northern India form a dialect continuum. What is called '
Hindi' in India is actually Standardized Hindi, the
Sanskrit-ized version of the colloquial '
Hindustani' spoken in the
Delhi area during the time of the
Mughals. However, the term Hindi can be used to enclose all its dialects from east to west - from
Bihar to
Rajasthan. The
Indo-Aryan prakrits also gave rise to languages like
Gujarati,
Bengali,
Oriya,
Marathi and
Punjabi. Of these, Punjabi can probably be included in the northern Indian continuum. Gujarati is also in some ways close to the dialects of Hindi spoken in the southern Rajasthan region.
The languages of
Persia,
Afghanistan,
Pakistan and
Northern India also form a dialect continuum of
Indo-Aryan languages from
Persian in the west slowly emerging as
Baluchi then
Sindhi,
Punjabi and
Urdu (the rest three being Indo-Aryan languages, and the last one a variant of Hindi). Most of these languages developed due to extensive intermixing of the populations of the areas as the various Persian and Indian kingdoms exerted their influences in these areas. Other languages such as
Pushto and
Seraiki can also be included in this continuum.
A more or less similar interaction takes place between a
creole language which lacks prestige, and its more prestigious relative. The relationship between
Gullah and
African American Vernacular English on the one hand, and standard
American English on the other, is a good example of this. Some speakers can glide throughout the continuum depending on the subject and the context.
There are many other examples throughout the world.
*
Diasystem*
Sprachbund
