Contact and borrowing

Language contact sometimes occurs when there is increased social interaction between people from neighboring territories who have traditionally spoken different languages. But more frequently it is initiated by the spread of languages of power and prestige via conquest and colonization.

Traditionally, language contact has been a subfield of historical linguistics, concentrating on changes in languages due to influence from other languages, rather than internal change. When words, grammatical elements, or sounds from one language are incorporated into another language, we call this borrowing. It is different from code-switching, which is the alternation between two or more languages or language varieties, as the latter requires a mastery of two or more languages and the use of a wide range of rules of the languages being switched. The borrowing of a word does not presuppose knowledge of the language from which it is taken. Once borrowed, the borrowed element becomes part of the borrowing language. Therefore, speakers might not even be aware of the borrowed status of a word, especially when it is assimilated into the pronunciation system of their language. l

Language maintenance, shift and death

Language maintenance denotes the continuing use of a language in the face of competition from a regionally and socially more powerful language. Language shift is the opposite of this: it denotes the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication within a community. The term language death is used when that community is the last one in the world to use that language. The extinction of Cornish in England is an example of language death as well as shift (to English). And the demise of Norwegian as an immigrant language in the USA exemplifies shift without death, as Norwegian is of course still spoken in its original setting in Norway.

Excerpt from

Multilingual Practices University of Groningen