Linguistic Varieties And

Multilingual Nations

Ada Berfin Yıldız

Merve Şevval Kurt
Ayşe Sena Özen
 Today, more than half of the world's population is bilingual, and
many are multilingual. People enjoy learning a new language
because they need it for different purposes in their daily interactions.
Linguistic Varieties
 Vernacular Languages
 Standard Languages
 World Englishes
 Lingua Francas
 Pidgins and Creoles
Vernacular Languages

 Vernacular is mainly a literary term that’s hard to define and to

understand. It refers to the common language used widely by
ordinary people in a specific location. The word “vernacular” comes
from the “vernaculas”, which is a Latin word and means “native”.
 Example;
 Children who speak an informal language in their area with their
friends.
Standard Languages
 It is recognized as a prestigious variety or code by a community.
 In general, it is written.
 As an official or the national language, it has most useful and widely used area.
 Example;
 Standard Finnish is a good example of an artificially constructed standard language.
It is not based on anyone’s home dialect but is based on a mixture of dialects
fulfilled with artificial (human made) rules. Nobody speaks standard Finnish
normally, and it is meant to be just a means of public (written) communication.
 Questions for Discussion
 1. Why do you think that ‘vernacular languages’ have too many
definitions?

 2. Why is it always the situation that it is the language (or the variety
spoken in the capital-city) is the one that acquires more prestige?
World Englishes
 World Englishes
The term "World Englishes" refers to the English language as it is
variously used throughout the world. It's also known as international
English and global English.
 World Englishes can also be described as an effective stage in the
history of the English language.
 This phase has witnessed the transformation of English from the
native language of a handful of nations to a language used by far
more speakers in non-native environments.
 Singlish, a very informal, colloquial variety of
Singapore English, is a well-described
example.

 Singaporeans prefer to take less time and

words to express themselves.

 Much of its grammatical structure comes from

Chinese and a lot of its emphasis words
(“lah”, “leh”, “meh”) come from Chinese and
Malay languages. It is spoken super-fast!
LINGUA FRANCA
 The Lingua Franca of Love!
 LINGUA FRANCA
 A language serving as a regular means of communication between
different linguistic groups in a multilingual speech community.
 “language of wider communication”
 “A lingua franca is a language used for communication between
people whose first languages differ.”
Regional Lingua Franca Examples

 In East Africa (a very big region including Tanzania, Kenya, parts of

Somalia, the Comoros, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic
Republic of Congo and Mozambique), Swahili plays the role of
………………………………………
 Spoken by about 155 million people, Swahili is the proud owner of
sixteen noun classes ( i.e., sixteen different ways of rejecting a noun
based on where it is held in a sentence).

 – Hakuna matata means ‘no problem'.

 – A safari is a journey.
Dead Lingua Francas
 Sumerian
 Latin
 Sanskrit
 Fanakalo
 The spread of English as an International Lingua Franca

 “Not only ‘English’ has become international in the last half century,
but scholarship about English has also become international": the
ownership of an interest in English has become international. We are
no longer a language community which is associated with a national
community or even with a family of nations such as the
Commonwealth aspired to be. We are an international community.
 (Brumfit 1995:16)
 Why is English the International Lingua
Franca?
 Reasons for the international status of English:
 - Historical reasons
 - Internal political reasons
 - External economic reasons
 - Practical reasons
 - Intellectual reasons
 - Entertainment reasons
 - Personal advantage/prestige
 Arethe reasons still the same or have they
changed? Are there any new circumstances?
PIDGIN
 It is a language that has no native speakers.
 It grows up among people who do not share a common language but
who want to communicate with each other.
 Identifying Characteristic of a Pidgin
Language
 1. It is used in restricted domains and functions
 2. It has a simplified structure and limited vocabulary compared to
the source languages
 3. It generally has low prestige and attracts negative attitudes—
especially from outsiders
Features of Surface Grammatical Complexity

◦ Lack of surface grammatical complexity

◦ Lack of morphological complexity
◦ Semantic transparency
◦ Vocabulary reduction
 Why Pidgin Developed?

 Pidgins developed as a means of communication between people

who do not have a common language.
 CREOLE

 It is when a pidgin language is adopted by a community as its native

tongue and children learn it as first language.

 Some creoles are nativized pidgins.

The Difference btw Pidgins and Creoles
 Pidgins
 ◦ Is NOT a mother tongue
 ◦ Form of communication between two mutually unintelligible languages
 Creoles
 ◦ Is a mother tongue
 ◦ Larger vocabulary
 ◦ Greater linguistic range, capable of being spoken quicker
 References
 BAKER, W. I. L. L. (2009). The Cultures of English as a Lingua
Franca. TESOL Quarterly, 43(4), 567–592.
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2009.tb00187.x
 https://crazy-about-language-learning.com/lingua-francas
-vehicular-languages/