Language contact

Language contact, including: language contact, is a technical term from linguistics and refers to the coming together of two or more individual languages ​​or language varieties either at the collective level ( speaker community ) or at the individual level ( individual language users).

In consideration of language contact on the individual side, the occurring phenomena from a psycholinguistic point of view are described. Language contact can be seen here as a state in which " two or more languages ​​from one and the same individual are used interchangeably " ( Weinreich, 1953). From the perspective of the community of speakers, however, the phenomenon is observed under socio- linguistic aspects. Contact between languages ​​consists, then, " when they are needed in the same group " ( Riehl, 2004). In both cases, the concept of bilingualism plays a central role, and in practice, the two levels is closely related, so that in individual cases often can not be clearly decided the extent to which psychological and sociological factors are responsible for contact phenomena.

Since people are always on the move, is to assume that language contact takes place at all times and in all geographic areas. The prototypical case of language contact is that which arises in geographical proximity between the two language communities. However, migration, trade, tourism and foreign language classes are conditions that promote language contact and point to the complexity of this area.

Are of interest in the study of language contact Follow mainly two phenomena: linguistic interference, ie the influences of a language to another, and linguistic integrations, so the results of the influences in the host language. Particularly striking is the level of vocabulary, on the borrowings ( foreign words, loan words, loan translations, etc.) represent a primary study area. Interference and integration phenomena however, there is at all levels of language, including such areas as grammar or pragmatics.

Different languages ​​and varieties have different prestige. (So ​​dialects are, for example, less considered " high level languages ​​", and as a foreign language has at the moment - especially with regard to the choice of subjects at school -. English a higher prestige than about Russian) When has a higher prestige in a language contact situation one of the languages ​​involved as the other, this can be on an individual level lead to language change, which means that the original language, usually the native language, is abandoned in favor of the second. The language change occurs especially when one of the language groups is politically or economically dominant. The dominant language is then usually used by the speakers of the non-dominant language group as a management or business language and later penetrates more and more into the everyday parlance. This can, for example, among ethnic minorities lead to a gradual abandonment of their own languages.

The consequences of language contact at the level of the speech community are about

• The formation of a Federal Language as present as in the case of the Balkan language German;
• The emergence of a so-called Adstrats, substrate or superstrate. An example of this is the English in its current form, which was strongly influenced by a Romance language, French;
• The emergence of a pidgin language that can evolve within a few generations to a Creole language.

It examines language contact phenomena of the contact linguistics, an adjacent field of contrastive linguistics.