Eurolinguistics
Encyclopedia
Eurolinguistics is a comparatively young branch of linguistics
which deals with questions on the languages of Europe. However, Europe is not defined in a unanimous way. There are three different definitions of Europe.
pursues a pan- or trans-European perspective. This goal is also pursued by Mario Wandruszka. In reality, however, Wandruszka like many others (including encyclopedias) only takes into account the big European languages: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish. In addition, German is only understood as German of Germany, French as French of France etc. The realization of national varieties has only begun to play a role in Eurolinguistics. In recent years, typological questions have mainly been dealt with by the Eurolinguistischer Arbeitskreis Mannheim (ELAMA; led by Per Sture Ureland) and the EUROTYP projects. Important sources of linguistic data for Eurolinguistic studies are the Atlas Linguarum Europae (for vocabulary studies) and the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005, for grammar studies). The internet platform EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) (edited by Joachim Grzega
) offers a bibliography of Eurolinguistic publications as well as a wiki, a discussion forum, an academic internet journal in order to address also aspects of "linguistic and cultural history", "sociology of languages", "language politics
" and "intercultural communication". In 2006, Joachim Grzega published a basic reader on common features of European languages.
Also joint with the ELAMA, the EuroLSJ project by Erhard Steller tries to collect essential results of Eurolinguistics and make them usable for everyday life in Europe by transforming them into a representative standard language (LSJ European / Europé LSJ) which wants to serve as an optimized "acquisition and memory helper" (Giuseppe G. Castorina) for a quicker and easier access to all languages of Europe.
The writing system used in Europe is based on the phonographic-alphabetic principle. It originates in North Semitic
(2000-1700 BC), was introduced by the Greeks and from there also brought to the Romans (6th century BC). There are five alphabets in regular use in the areas generally considered Europe. The Latin alphabet
was developed into several scripts. In the early years of Europe, the Carolingian minuscule
s were the most important variety of the Latin script. From this two branches developed, the Gothic
/Fracture/German tradition, which Germans used well into the 20th century, and the Italian/Italic/Antiqua/Latin tradition, still used. For some nations the integration into Europe meant giving up older scripts, e.g. the Germanic gave up the runes (Futhark
) (3rd—17th century), the Irish the Ogham
script (4th—7th century). The Cyrillic alphabet
is the second most widespread alphabet in Europe, and was developed in the 9th century under the influence of the Greek
, Latin
and Glagolitic
alphabets. Both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are used for multiple languages in multiple states, both inside and outside Europe. As well as these two, there are three alphabets used primarily for a single language, although they are occasionally applied to minority languages in the states from which they originate. The oldest of these alphabets is the Greek alphabet
, which could be considered the progenitor of all the surviving alphabets of Europe, with the earliest recorded inscriptions appearing in the 9th century BC. The other two are both found in the Caucasus
, both originating in the 5th century. The Georgian alphabet
is used primarily to write Georgian, though it is also used to write the other Kartvelian languages, Svan
, Mingrelian and Laz
, all of which are found largely within the borders of Georgia
. The Armenian alphabet
is used to write the Armenian language
, which has two dialects, and has been used to write Turkish
in the past.
The sound systems of languages may differ considerably between languages. European languages can thus rather be characterized negatively, e.g. by the absence of click sounds
. One could also think of specific prosodic
features, such as tonal accents. But there are also tonal languages in Europe: Serbian
and Croatian
(e.g. lètī ‘he flies, is flying’ with long rising accent vs. lêta ‘years’ with long falling accent) and Slovene (e.g. sûda ‘of the vessel’ with long falling accent vs. súda ‘of the court’ with long rising accent). In Slovene, the use of the musical accent is declining though (cf. Rehder 1998: 234) --but there are hardly any contexts where intelligibility is endangered. In Sweden Swedish
(but not in Finland Swedish) there also is a pitch accent in some words, which can be meaningful, e.g. ´anden ‘the duck’ vs. ˇanden ‘the ghost, spirit’.
As a general introductory remark we can distinguish between three structural types of languages:
European languages are seldom pure representatives of one type. For (a) Modern English is a good example (and in many way the code oral of French verbs); for (c) Old English and Modern High German are good examples (and in many ways the code écrit of French verb forms); classical representatives of type (b) are Finnish and Hungarian. If a language is not isolating, this does not necessarily mean that it has no word-order rules. Latin
, Basque
, Finnish
and the Slavic languages
have a relatively free word order
, whereas many languages show more restricted rules. German
and Dutch
, e.g., show verb-second word-order in main clauses and verb-final order in subordinate clause
s. English has subject
-verb
word-order, which is also preferred by the Romanic languages. Irish
and Scottish Gaelic have a basic verb-initial word order.
We can also distinguish between analytic constructions (with free grammatical morpheme
s, i.e. grammatical elements as separate words) and synthetic constructions (with bound grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements attached to or included in a word), e.g. the house of the man vs. the man's house.
Apart from the points already mentioned, the categories of aspect
(not always easy to separate from the tense system) and gender are noteworthy. Under the category of aspect linguists basically understand the distinction between perfective actions (activity finished, has led to a result; single event) and imperfective actions (activity not yet finished, w/out information on termination; long duration, repetitive). The Slavic languages have a fine and rigid aspect system; in English there’s the distinction between progressive and non-progressive (simple) and a distinction between present perfect and past; in the Romanic languages the imperfect serves to denote background actions.
The most current gender
systems in Europe are twofold (masculine vs. feminine, e.g. in the Romanic languages, or uter vs. neuter, e.g. in the Scandinavian languages); but there are also languages that are threefold (e.g. Slavic, German, Dutch) or lack grammatical gender at all (e.g. English, Hungarian, Finnish). The problem of gender also concerns the system of personal pronoun
s. We normally distinguish between 3 persons singular and 3 persons plural, but there are also some languages that have specific words for the dual (e.g. Slovene). In the 3rd person singular we often have a distinction according to grammatical gender; in English, though, the choice is determined by natural gender; in Hungarian and Finnish we have no differentiation at all, in the Scandinavian languages on the other hand we have a differentiation that incorporate both grammatical and natural gender. In some languages the grammatical gender is also relevant in the 3rd pl. (e.g. the Romance languages).
Whereas traditionally we group languages according to historical language families (e.g. Indo-European languages
, Uralic languages
), a more modern way is to look at grammatical features from a synchronic point of view. A certain number of common structural features would then characterize a sprachbund
. For Europe, the most prominent sprachbund that we can determine is referred to as SAE (= Standard Average European
) or Charlemagne sprachbund. Haspelmath (2001) illustrates that German, Dutch, French
, Occitan and Northern Italian
are the most central members of this sprachbund. Important features are (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006):
Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as linguae francae
(cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only “necessity loans”, but also “luxury loans” and pseudo-loans. Many loans from these three languages (esp. Neo-Latin with its Greek elements) can be considered internationalisms
, although occasionally the meanings vary from one language to another, which might even lead to misunderstandings. Examples:
Three minor source languages for European borrowings are Arabic
(esp. in mathematics and science, foreign plants and fruits), Italian (esp. in arts, esp. from the 15th to the 17th c.), German (esp. in arts, education, mining, trading from the 12th to the 20th c. with alternating importance).
As far as the structuring or “wording” of the world is concerned changes occur relatively fast due to progresses in knowledge, sociopolitical changes etc. Lexical items that seem more conservative are proverbs and metaphor
ical idioms. Many European proverbs and idioms go back to Antiquity and the Bible, some originate in national stories and were spread over other languages via Latin. A typical European proverb to express that there is no profit without working can be paraphrased as “Roasted pigeons/larks/sparrows/geese/chickens/birds don’t fly into one’s mouth”, e.g. Cz. Pečeni ptáci nelítají do huby (birds!) = Dan. Stegte duer flyve ingen i munden (pigeon!) = ndl. De gebraden duiven vliegen je niet in de mond (pigeons!) = E. He thinks that larks will fall into his mouth roasted = Finn. Ei paistetut varpuset suuhun lennä (sparrows!) = Fr. Les alouettes ne vous tombent pas toutes rôties dans le bec (larks!) = G. Gebratene Tauben fliegen einem nicht ins Maul (pigeon!) = Hungar. Senkinek nem repül a szájába a sült galamb (pigeon!) = Lith. Keptas karvelis neatlėks pats i burną (pigeon!) = Latv. Cepts zvirbulis no jumta mutē nekrīt (sparrow!) = (Nynorsk
) Norw. Det kjem ikkje steikte fuglar fljugande i munnen (bird!) = Pol. Pieczone gołąbki nie przydą same do gąbki (pigeons!) = Slovak Nech nik nečaká, že mu pečené holuby budú padať do úst (pigeons!) = Slovene Pečeni golobje ne lete nobenemu v usta [pigeons!] = Swed. Stekta sparvar flyger inte in i munnen (sparrows!).
In Geert Hofstede
’s terms Europe can, to a large extend, be considered an individualistic civilization (i.e. a rather direct and analytic style is preferred, important points are mentioned before an explanation or illustration in an argument, decisions are based on compromise or the majority’s vote); in contrast, the Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Arabic and Hindu (Indian) civilizations are collectivistic (i.e. a rather indirect and synthetic style is used, explanations and illustrations are mentioned before the essential point of an argument, decisions are reached through consent). We can further make Edward Hall
’s distinction between “low context” communication (i.e. direct style, person-oriented, self-projection, loquacity) and “high context” communication (i.e. indirect style, status-oriented, reservation, silence). Most European nations use “low context” communication.
What are some specific features of European communication strategies?
Europe’s history is characterized by three linguae francae
:
Linguae francae that were less widespread, but still played a comparatively important role in European history are:
The first type of dictionaries
are glossaries
, i.e. more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian) Abrogans is among the first. A new wave of lexicography
can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press
, with the growing interest for standardizing languages).
In the Middle Ages the two most important definitory elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas. Thus language—at least the supranational language—played an elementary role. This changed with the spread of the national languages in official contexts and the rise of a national feeling. Among other things, this led to projects of standardizing national language and gave birth to a number of language academies (e.g. 1582 Accademia della Crusca
in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, 1635 Académie française
, 1713 Real Academia de la Lengua
in Madrid). “Language” was then (and still is today) more connected with “nation” than with “civilization” (particularly in France). “Language” was also used to create a feeling of “religious/ethnic identity” (e.g. different Bible
translations by Catholics and Protestants of the same language).
Among the first standardization discussions and processes are the ones for Italian (“questione della lingua”: Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian > Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (standard is based on Parisian), English (standard is based on the London
dialect) and (High) German (based on: chancellery
of Meißen/Saxony + Middle German + chancellery of Prague
/Bohemia [“Common German”]). But also a number of other nations began to look for and develop a standard variety in the 16th century.
Despite the importance of English as an international lingua franca also in Europe, Europe can be associated with its linguistic diversity, which also includes the special protection of minority languages, e.g. by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
founded in the 1990s. This underlines that the popular view of “one nation = one language” (cf. Wirrer 2003) is mostly false.
A minority language can be defined as a language used by a group that defines itself as an ethnic minority group, whereby the language of this group is typologically different and not a dialect of the standard language. For several years now, Jan Wirrer has been working on the status of minority languages in Europe (cf., e.g., Wirrer 2000 and 2003). In Europe—e.g. thanks to the European Charter of Regional and Minority Language—some languages are in quite a strong position, in the sense that they are given special status, such as Basque, Irish, Welsh/Cymraeg, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romance/Romansh and Romani, native language of the Roma/Gypsies in Eastern Europe), whereas others are in a rather weak position (e.g. Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Turkish, Saami/Lappish, Sorbian/Wendish and Yiddish, the once common language of Ashkenazi Jews
in Eastern Europe). Especially allochthonous minority languages are not given official status in the EU.
Some minor languages don’t even have a standard yet, i.e. they have not even reached the level of an ausbausprache yet, which could be changed, e.g., if these languages were given official status. (cf. also next section).
France is the origin of two laws, or decrees, concerning language: the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1239), which says that every document in France should be written in French (i.e. not in Latin nor Occitan) and the French Loi Toubon, which aims at eliminating Anglicisms from official documents. But a characteristic feature of Europe is linguistic diversity and tolerance, which is not only shown by the European Charta of Regional and Minority Languages. An illustrative proof of the promotion of linguistic diversity in the Middle Ages is the translation school in Toledo, Spain
, founded in the 12th century (in medieval Toledo the Christian, the Jewish and the Arab civilizations lived together remarkably peacefully).
This tolerant linguistic attitude is also the reason why the EU’s general rule is that every official national language is also an official EU language. However, Letzebuergish/Luxemburgish is not an official EU language, because there are also other (stronger) official languages with “EU status” in that country. Several concepts for an EU language policy are being debated:
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
which deals with questions on the languages of Europe. However, Europe is not defined in a unanimous way. There are three different definitions of Europe.
- political (languages of the European UnionEuropean UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
) (this definition is often used by authors dealing with language policy, e.g. Ahrens 2003, Kraus 2004) - geographical (from the Atlantic to the UralUral MountainsThe Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
) (this seems the most current definition of EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, e.g. in Haarmann 1975 and 1993, Görlach 2002, Heine/Kuteva 2006) - anthropological (languages of the nations characterized by a Greek and a Latin heritage (including the rules of law), the (West) Roman variant of ChristianChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
religion (and its developments during the ReformationProtestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
and Counter-ReformationCounter-ReformationThe Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
), the use of the Latin alphabetLatin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, the separation of spiritual and secular power, societal pluralism and individualism, a common history of the arts (in their broadest sense) as well as a common history of education and formation like the establishment of the universitiesUniversityA university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
) (this is the definition that is used, for instance, by HuntingtonSamuel P. HuntingtonSamuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...
[1996: 45ff.] and SchmidtHelmut SchmidtHelmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
[2000: 207ff.]; Haarmann uses this definition to define the western part of Europe in its geographical sense)
State of the art
The term Eurolinguistics was first used by Norbert Reiter in 1991 (German equivalent: Eurolinguistik), but Eurolinguistic works had already been published before that date (e.g. Lewy 1964, Décsy 1973). Apart from a series of works dealing with only a part of the European languages, the work of Harald HaarmannHarald Haarmann
Harald Haarmann is a German linguist and cultural scientist who lives and works in Finland. Haarmann studied general linguistics, various philological disciplines and prehistory at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra and Bangor. He obtained his PhD in Bonn and his habilitation in Trier...
pursues a pan- or trans-European perspective. This goal is also pursued by Mario Wandruszka. In reality, however, Wandruszka like many others (including encyclopedias) only takes into account the big European languages: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish. In addition, German is only understood as German of Germany, French as French of France etc. The realization of national varieties has only begun to play a role in Eurolinguistics. In recent years, typological questions have mainly been dealt with by the Eurolinguistischer Arbeitskreis Mannheim (ELAMA; led by Per Sture Ureland) and the EUROTYP projects. Important sources of linguistic data for Eurolinguistic studies are the Atlas Linguarum Europae (for vocabulary studies) and the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005, for grammar studies). The internet platform EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) (edited by Joachim Grzega
Joachim Grzega
Joachim Grzega studied English and French in Eichstätt, Salt Lake City, Paris-Sorbonne University and Graz. He has taught since 1998 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Grzega obtain his doctorate in 2000 in the subjects of the Roman, English and German linguistics. His habilitation...
) offers a bibliography of Eurolinguistic publications as well as a wiki, a discussion forum, an academic internet journal in order to address also aspects of "linguistic and cultural history", "sociology of languages", "language politics
Language politics
Language politics is a term used to describe political consequences of linguistic differences between people, or on occasion the political consequences of the way a language is spoken and what words are used. It means language can express some authority. Examples include:*Recognition of a...
" and "intercultural communication". In 2006, Joachim Grzega published a basic reader on common features of European languages.
Also joint with the ELAMA, the EuroLSJ project by Erhard Steller tries to collect essential results of Eurolinguistics and make them usable for everyday life in Europe by transforming them into a representative standard language (LSJ European / Europé LSJ) which wants to serve as an optimized "acquisition and memory helper" (Giuseppe G. Castorina) for a quicker and easier access to all languages of Europe.
Research results: Common features of European languages
The following findings are based on the cultural-anthropological definition of Europe.History of the writing system
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1991, Grzega 2006)The writing system used in Europe is based on the phonographic-alphabetic principle. It originates in North Semitic
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
(2000-1700 BC), was introduced by the Greeks and from there also brought to the Romans (6th century BC). There are five alphabets in regular use in the areas generally considered Europe. The Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
was developed into several scripts. In the early years of Europe, the Carolingian minuscule
Carolingian minuscule
Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It was used in Charlemagne's empire between approximately 800 and 1200...
s were the most important variety of the Latin script. From this two branches developed, the Gothic
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
/Fracture/German tradition, which Germans used well into the 20th century, and the Italian/Italic/Antiqua/Latin tradition, still used. For some nations the integration into Europe meant giving up older scripts, e.g. the Germanic gave up the runes (Futhark
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
) (3rd—17th century), the Irish the Ogham
Ogham
Ogham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
script (4th—7th century). The Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
is the second most widespread alphabet in Europe, and was developed in the 9th century under the influence of the Greek
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
and Glagolitic
Glagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
alphabets. Both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are used for multiple languages in multiple states, both inside and outside Europe. As well as these two, there are three alphabets used primarily for a single language, although they are occasionally applied to minority languages in the states from which they originate. The oldest of these alphabets is the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, which could be considered the progenitor of all the surviving alphabets of Europe, with the earliest recorded inscriptions appearing in the 9th century BC. The other two are both found in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, both originating in the 5th century. The Georgian alphabet
Georgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
is used primarily to write Georgian, though it is also used to write the other Kartvelian languages, Svan
Svan language
The Svan language is a Kartvelian language spoken in the Western Georgian region of Svaneti primarily by the Georgians of Svan origin...
, Mingrelian and Laz
Laz language
The Laz language is a South Caucasian language spoken by the Laz people on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea...
, all of which are found largely within the borders of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
. The Armenian alphabet
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
is used to write the Armenian language
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, which has two dialects, and has been used to write Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
in the past.
Sound features
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1973, Asher 1994, Price 1998, Grzega 2006)The sound systems of languages may differ considerably between languages. European languages can thus rather be characterized negatively, e.g. by the absence of click sounds
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
. One could also think of specific prosodic
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
features, such as tonal accents. But there are also tonal languages in Europe: Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
and Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
(e.g. lètī ‘he flies, is flying’ with long rising accent vs. lêta ‘years’ with long falling accent) and Slovene (e.g. sûda ‘of the vessel’ with long falling accent vs. súda ‘of the court’ with long rising accent). In Slovene, the use of the musical accent is declining though (cf. Rehder 1998: 234) --but there are hardly any contexts where intelligibility is endangered. In Sweden Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
(but not in Finland Swedish) there also is a pitch accent in some words, which can be meaningful, e.g. ´anden ‘the duck’ vs. ˇanden ‘the ghost, spirit’.
Typical grammatical features
(Sources and further information for this section: Asher 1994, Price 1998, Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006)As a general introductory remark we can distinguish between three structural types of languages:
- isolatingIsolating languageAn isolating language is a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio — in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme...
(i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through analytic means and relatively strict word-order rules, e.g. the strict S-V order rule in English), - agglutinating (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixAffixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es, with one affix expressing exactly one function) and - inflecting (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixes, with one affix expressing several functions).
European languages are seldom pure representatives of one type. For (a) Modern English is a good example (and in many way the code oral of French verbs); for (c) Old English and Modern High German are good examples (and in many ways the code écrit of French verb forms); classical representatives of type (b) are Finnish and Hungarian. If a language is not isolating, this does not necessarily mean that it has no word-order rules. Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and the Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
have a relatively free word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
, whereas many languages show more restricted rules. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, e.g., show verb-second word-order in main clauses and verb-final order in subordinate clause
Clause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...
s. English has subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
-verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
word-order, which is also preferred by the Romanic languages. Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
and Scottish Gaelic have a basic verb-initial word order.
We can also distinguish between analytic constructions (with free grammatical morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s, i.e. grammatical elements as separate words) and synthetic constructions (with bound grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements attached to or included in a word), e.g. the house of the man vs. the man's house.
Apart from the points already mentioned, the categories of aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
(not always easy to separate from the tense system) and gender are noteworthy. Under the category of aspect linguists basically understand the distinction between perfective actions (activity finished, has led to a result; single event) and imperfective actions (activity not yet finished, w/out information on termination; long duration, repetitive). The Slavic languages have a fine and rigid aspect system; in English there’s the distinction between progressive and non-progressive (simple) and a distinction between present perfect and past; in the Romanic languages the imperfect serves to denote background actions.
The most current gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
systems in Europe are twofold (masculine vs. feminine, e.g. in the Romanic languages, or uter vs. neuter, e.g. in the Scandinavian languages); but there are also languages that are threefold (e.g. Slavic, German, Dutch) or lack grammatical gender at all (e.g. English, Hungarian, Finnish). The problem of gender also concerns the system of personal pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s. We normally distinguish between 3 persons singular and 3 persons plural, but there are also some languages that have specific words for the dual (e.g. Slovene). In the 3rd person singular we often have a distinction according to grammatical gender; in English, though, the choice is determined by natural gender; in Hungarian and Finnish we have no differentiation at all, in the Scandinavian languages on the other hand we have a differentiation that incorporate both grammatical and natural gender. In some languages the grammatical gender is also relevant in the 3rd pl. (e.g. the Romance languages).
Whereas traditionally we group languages according to historical language families (e.g. Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, Uralic languages
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
), a more modern way is to look at grammatical features from a synchronic point of view. A certain number of common structural features would then characterize a sprachbund
Sprachbund
A Sprachbund – also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads – is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related...
. For Europe, the most prominent sprachbund that we can determine is referred to as SAE (= Standard Average European
Standard Average European
Standard Average European is a concept introduced by Benjamin Whorf to group the modern, Indo-European languages of Europe in the sense of a Sprachbund.The more central members of the SAE Sprachbund are Romance and West Germanic, i.e...
) or Charlemagne sprachbund. Haspelmath (2001) illustrates that German, Dutch, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Occitan and Northern Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
are the most central members of this sprachbund. Important features are (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006):
- the distinction between an indefinite and a definite articleArticle (grammar)An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
- the formation of relative clauseRelative clauseA relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
s, which are positioned after the (pro)noun concerned and are introduced by a variable relative pronounRelative pronounA relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some... - a past tensePast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
construction with “to have” - a passive voicePassive voicePassive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
construction that shows the object of the action in the syntactic position of the subject and that uses the past participle in connection with an auxiliary - a specific suffixSuffixIn linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
for the comparativeComparativeIn grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than,...
Typical vocabulary features
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Paczolay 1997, Panzer 2000, Görlach 2002)Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as linguae francae
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
(cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only “necessity loans”, but also “luxury loans” and pseudo-loans. Many loans from these three languages (esp. Neo-Latin with its Greek elements) can be considered internationalisms
Internationalism (linguistics)
In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source"...
, although occasionally the meanings vary from one language to another, which might even lead to misunderstandings. Examples:
- Lat. forma: e.g. Fr. forme, It. Sp. Cat. Cz. Slovak. Serbian. Slovene Maltese Hung. Pol. Croat. Latv. Lith. forma, Dan. Swed. E. Du. vorm (shape) and form (aerobic endurance), Romansh furma, G. Form, Ir. foirm
- Fr. restaurant, e.g. E. Du. Norw. Cat. Romansh restaurant, G. Restaurant, Swed. restaurang, Pg. restaurante, Sp. restaurante, It. ristorante, Cz. restaurace, Slovak reštaurácia, Slovene restavracija, Latv. restorâns, Lith. restoranas, Estn. restoran, Pol. restauracja, Serbian restoran, Maltese ristorant/restorant
- E. manager, e.g. Du. Norw. Swed. Icel. Fr. Sp. Cat. It. Finn. Romansh manager, G. Manager, Pol. menadżer, Serb. menadžer,Croat. menedžer, Lith. menedžeris, Hung. menedzser, Maltese maniġer
Three minor source languages for European borrowings are Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
(esp. in mathematics and science, foreign plants and fruits), Italian (esp. in arts, esp. from the 15th to the 17th c.), German (esp. in arts, education, mining, trading from the 12th to the 20th c. with alternating importance).
As far as the structuring or “wording” of the world is concerned changes occur relatively fast due to progresses in knowledge, sociopolitical changes etc. Lexical items that seem more conservative are proverbs and metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical idioms. Many European proverbs and idioms go back to Antiquity and the Bible, some originate in national stories and were spread over other languages via Latin. A typical European proverb to express that there is no profit without working can be paraphrased as “Roasted pigeons/larks/sparrows/geese/chickens/birds don’t fly into one’s mouth”, e.g. Cz. Pečeni ptáci nelítají do huby (birds!) = Dan. Stegte duer flyve ingen i munden (pigeon!) = ndl. De gebraden duiven vliegen je niet in de mond (pigeons!) = E. He thinks that larks will fall into his mouth roasted = Finn. Ei paistetut varpuset suuhun lennä (sparrows!) = Fr. Les alouettes ne vous tombent pas toutes rôties dans le bec (larks!) = G. Gebratene Tauben fliegen einem nicht ins Maul (pigeon!) = Hungar. Senkinek nem repül a szájába a sült galamb (pigeon!) = Lith. Keptas karvelis neatlėks pats i burną (pigeon!) = Latv. Cepts zvirbulis no jumta mutē nekrīt (sparrow!) = (Nynorsk
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
) Norw. Det kjem ikkje steikte fuglar fljugande i munnen (bird!) = Pol. Pieczone gołąbki nie przydą same do gąbki (pigeons!) = Slovak Nech nik nečaká, že mu pečené holuby budú padať do úst (pigeons!) = Slovene Pečeni golobje ne lete nobenemu v usta [pigeons!] = Swed. Stekta sparvar flyger inte in i munnen (sparrows!).
Typical communicative strategies
(Sources and further information for this section: Axtell 1993, Collett 1993, Morrison et al. 1994, Hickey/Stewart 2005, Grzega 2006)In Geert Hofstede
Geert Hofstede
Geert Hofstede, born as Gerard Hendrik Hofstede is an influential Dutch social psychologist and anthropologist. He is a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations. He has played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating...
’s terms Europe can, to a large extend, be considered an individualistic civilization (i.e. a rather direct and analytic style is preferred, important points are mentioned before an explanation or illustration in an argument, decisions are based on compromise or the majority’s vote); in contrast, the Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Arabic and Hindu (Indian) civilizations are collectivistic (i.e. a rather indirect and synthetic style is used, explanations and illustrations are mentioned before the essential point of an argument, decisions are reached through consent). We can further make Edward Hall
Edward Hall
Edward Hall , English chronicler and lawyer, was born about the end of the 15th century, being a son of John Hall of Northall, Shropshire....
’s distinction between “low context” communication (i.e. direct style, person-oriented, self-projection, loquacity) and “high context” communication (i.e. indirect style, status-oriented, reservation, silence). Most European nations use “low context” communication.
What are some specific features of European communication strategies?
- One of them is the mostly reciprocal use of address terms (this is different in Slavic and Asian civilizations, for totally different reasons). Status seems to play a less important role than in the Sinic and Japanese civilizations. Communication between the sexes is absolutely normal in Europe, whereas it is traditionally very rare in the Arabic civilization. As to pronouns, we can point out the pronominal dualism in the vast majority of European languages: Romance, such as French, or Spanish (which also exists in Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala [vos vs. usted]), German, Slavic languages [e.g. Russ. ty vs. vy]; it has also been said that the American dialect form y'all is/was occasionally used as a formal address pronoun—cf. y'allY'allY'all is a contraction of the words "you" and "all". It is used as a plural second-person pronoun. Commonly believed to have originated in the Southern United States, it is primarily associated with Southern American English, African-American Vernacular English, and some dialects of the Western...
). There are also tendencies in the nominal series of address terms, which distinguish Europe from other civilizations. In private, Europeans nowadays agree on addressing each other by the first name comparatively fast; in business communication, one should first use the correct title, even if a change toward less formal addressing may occur quite rapidly again. Titles are definitely more important in the Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese civilizations; the Slavic civilization can be characterized particularly by the frequency of nicknames in all kinds of private and informal conversation. This is especially valid of Slavic Orthodox countries, such as Russia. Nicknames are sometimes also used in informal and social situations among close friends and associates in the Americas (North and South/Latin), but to a somewhat lesser extent. - Concerning salutation terms in Europe (cf. especially Spillner 2001) we find that many of them include wishes for a good time of the day, for health (or the question whether somebody is in good health), for success or for luck. The common Arabic and Asiatic wish for peace, though, is rare in European civilization; the exception being the ecclesiastical Latin Pax tecum/vobiscum. It is also noteworthy that many European salutation phrases are frequently (at least in informal situations) very much reduced on a phonetic level, which is not so much the case in Arabic, Hindu (Indian), Sinic (Chinese) and Japanese civilizations.
- Frequent small talk topics are traveling, soccer (and other international sports disciplines), hobbies, the entertainment industry and the weather. In contrast, sexuality, death, religion, politics, money or class, personal issues and swearing are generally tabooed. Any racial, ethnic, sexist and cultural biased comments are shunned and morally opposed in Europe (and all developed countries) more than anywhere else. In Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese civilization people are frequently asked about their family (in Arabic civilization, however, this excludes the wife...even the word "wife" is compared to the "F" word in English-speaking countries). Due to their status-oriented nature, people from the Far East civilizations often ask for “administrative form” information, especially in Japan.
- Among Europeans (includes the Americas and Australia) and sometimes east Asians (esp. in Japan), the phrases for “thank you” are expected and welcomed in quite a number of situations (it's said the most in Great Britain and North America), whereas South Asian and Middle Eastern people use the phrase in a more economical way and often contend themselves with simple looks of thanks; on the other hand, other non-western civilizations (i.e. Polynesians of the south Pacific and Native American tribes) have rather extended formulae of thanks.
- With requests (cf. especially Trosborg 1995 and Cenoz/Valencia 1996), the bare imperative is normally avoided in favor of devices such as questions, modal auxiliaries, subjunctive, conditional, special adverbs. The exchange of verbal stems, which is found in Japanese and Sinic languages, is not a part of (Indo-)European languages.
- When somebody has to say no, this is normally accompanied by some form of apology or explanation. In the civilizations of the Far East and many Native American tribes in North America, the formal equivalents for “no” are unaccepted and/or basically tabooed in general.
- Apologies are necessary with face-threatening acts or after somebody has intruded somebody else’s private sphere—which is bigger and thus more easily violated in North America and Asia than in Europe and bigger in Europe (esp. the British Isles for etiquette reasons) than in Latin America and the Arab nations, and the concept of privacy and apology is universal, but varies from northern/western, eastern/Slavic and southern/Mediterranean countries. (Cf. especially Trosborg 1995).
- If the national descriptions by Axtell (1998) and Morris et al. (1979) are compared, then the following conclusions can be drawn with regard to compliments: in Europe one can safely make compliments on somebody’s clothes and appearance, meals and restaurants, voluntary offerings, a room’s equipment.
Linguae Francae — past and present
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)Europe’s history is characterized by three linguae francae
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
:
- (Medieval and Neo-) LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
(from the beginning till 1867, with HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
as the last country to give up Latin as an official language apart from the VaticanVatican CityVatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
), with a gradual decline as lingua franca since the late Middle AgesMiddle AgesThe Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, when the vernacularVernacularA vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
languages gained more and more importance (first language academy in Italy in 1582/83), in the 17th c. even at universities). - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(from the times of Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV, ca. 1648 (i.e. after the Thirty Years' WarThirty Years' WarThe Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
, which had hardly affected FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, thus free to prosper), till the end of World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, ca. 1918) - EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
Linguae francae that were less widespread, but still played a comparatively important role in European history are:
- Provençal (= Occitan) (12th—14th century, due to the TroubadourTroubadourA troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
poetry) - Middle Low GermanMiddle Low GermanMiddle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
(14th—16th century, during the heyday of the Hanseatic LeagueHanseatic LeagueThe Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...
, particularly in NorthernNorthern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
and Northeastern Europe.) - RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
(19th-20th century, in Eastern Europe as a result of domination by the Russian EmpireRussian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
and Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
)
First dictionaries and grammars
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)The first type of dictionaries
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
are glossaries
Glossary
A glossary, also known as an idioticon, vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms...
, i.e. more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian) Abrogans is among the first. A new wave of lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
, with the growing interest for standardizing languages).
Language and identity, standardization processes
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)In the Middle Ages the two most important definitory elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas. Thus language—at least the supranational language—played an elementary role. This changed with the spread of the national languages in official contexts and the rise of a national feeling. Among other things, this led to projects of standardizing national language and gave birth to a number of language academies (e.g. 1582 Accademia della Crusca
Accademia della Crusca
The Accademia della Crusca is an Italian society for scholars and Italian linguists and philologists established in Florence. After the Accademia Cosentina, it is the oldest Italian academy still in existence...
in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, 1635 Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
, 1713 Real Academia de la Lengua
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
in Madrid). “Language” was then (and still is today) more connected with “nation” than with “civilization” (particularly in France). “Language” was also used to create a feeling of “religious/ethnic identity” (e.g. different Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
translations by Catholics and Protestants of the same language).
Among the first standardization discussions and processes are the ones for Italian (“questione della lingua”: Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian > Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (standard is based on Parisian), English (standard is based on the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
dialect) and (High) German (based on: chancellery
Chancellery
Chancellery is the office of the chancellor, sometimes also referred to as the chancery. Both of those words have other meanings as well.Chancellery can specifically refer to:...
of Meißen/Saxony + Middle German + chancellery of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
/Bohemia [“Common German”]). But also a number of other nations began to look for and develop a standard variety in the 16th century.
Treatment of linguistic minorities
(Sources and further information for this section: Stephens 1976, Price 1998, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)Despite the importance of English as an international lingua franca also in Europe, Europe can be associated with its linguistic diversity, which also includes the special protection of minority languages, e.g. by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe...
founded in the 1990s. This underlines that the popular view of “one nation = one language” (cf. Wirrer 2003) is mostly false.
A minority language can be defined as a language used by a group that defines itself as an ethnic minority group, whereby the language of this group is typologically different and not a dialect of the standard language. For several years now, Jan Wirrer has been working on the status of minority languages in Europe (cf., e.g., Wirrer 2000 and 2003). In Europe—e.g. thanks to the European Charter of Regional and Minority Language—some languages are in quite a strong position, in the sense that they are given special status, such as Basque, Irish, Welsh/Cymraeg, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romance/Romansh and Romani, native language of the Roma/Gypsies in Eastern Europe), whereas others are in a rather weak position (e.g. Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Turkish, Saami/Lappish, Sorbian/Wendish and Yiddish, the once common language of Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
in Eastern Europe). Especially allochthonous minority languages are not given official status in the EU.
Some minor languages don’t even have a standard yet, i.e. they have not even reached the level of an ausbausprache yet, which could be changed, e.g., if these languages were given official status. (cf. also next section).
Issues in language politics
(Sources and further information for this section: Siguan 2002, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)France is the origin of two laws, or decrees, concerning language: the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1239), which says that every document in France should be written in French (i.e. not in Latin nor Occitan) and the French Loi Toubon, which aims at eliminating Anglicisms from official documents. But a characteristic feature of Europe is linguistic diversity and tolerance, which is not only shown by the European Charta of Regional and Minority Languages. An illustrative proof of the promotion of linguistic diversity in the Middle Ages is the translation school in Toledo, Spain
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
, founded in the 12th century (in medieval Toledo the Christian, the Jewish and the Arab civilizations lived together remarkably peacefully).
This tolerant linguistic attitude is also the reason why the EU’s general rule is that every official national language is also an official EU language. However, Letzebuergish/Luxemburgish is not an official EU language, because there are also other (stronger) official languages with “EU status” in that country. Several concepts for an EU language policy are being debated:
- one official language (e.g. English, InterlinguaInterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, or EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
). - several official languages (e.g. English, French, German, Spanish + another topic-dependent language).
- all national languages as official languages, but with a number of relais languages for translations (e.g. English or Esperanto as relais languages).
- New immigrants in European countries are expected to learn the host nation's language, but are still speaking and reading their native languages (i.e. Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili and Tahitian) in Europe's increasingly multi-ethnic/multicultural profile.
Select bibliography
- Rüdiger Ahrens (ed.): Europäische Sprachenpolitik / European Language Policy, Heidelberg: Winter 2003.
- R. E. Asher et al. (eds.): The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Oxford: Pergamon 1994.
- Roger Axtell: Do's and Taboos Around the World, White Plains: Benjamin 1993.
- Jasone Cenoz / Jose F. Valencia: 'Cross-Cultural Communication and Interlanguage Pragmatics: American vs. European Requests', in: Journal of Pragmatics vol. 20 (1996): p. 41-54.
- Peter Collett: Foreign Bodies: A Guide to European Mannerisms, London: Simon & Schuster 1991.
- Gyula Décsy: Die linguistische Struktur Europas: Vergangenheit – Gegenwart – Zukunft, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1973.
- Manfred Görlach (ed.), English in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002.
- Joachim GrzegaJoachim GrzegaJoachim Grzega studied English and French in Eichstätt, Salt Lake City, Paris-Sorbonne University and Graz. He has taught since 1998 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Grzega obtain his doctorate in 2000 in the subjects of the Roman, English and German linguistics. His habilitation...
: EuroLinguistischer Parcours: Kernwissen zur europäischen Sprachkultur, Frankfurt: IKO 2006, ISBN 3-88939-796-4 (most of the information presented here is a summary of this book—the book was positively reviewed by Norbert Reiter here and by Uwe Hinrichs here) - Harald Haarmann: Soziologie und Politik der Sprachen Europas, München: dtv 1975.
- Harald Haarmann: Universalgeschichte der Schrift, 2nd ed., Frankfurt (Main)/New York: Campus 1991.
- Harald Haarmann: Die Sprachenwelt Europas: Geschichte und Zukunft der Sprachnationen zwischen Atlantik und Ural, Frankfurt (Main): Campus 1993.
- Martin Haspelmath: "The European Linguistic Area: Standard Average European", in: Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals, vol. 1, p. 1492–1510, Berlin: de Gruyter 2001.
- Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.): The World Atlas of Language Structures, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005.
- Bernd Heine / Tania Kuteva: The Changing Languages of Europe, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006.
- Leo Hickey / Miranda Stewart (eds.): Politeness in Europe, Clevedon etc.: Multilingual Matters 2005.
- Samuel HuntingtonSamuel P. HuntingtonSamuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...
: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster 1996. - Peter A. Kraus: Europäische Öffentlichkeit und Sprachpolitik: Integration durch Anerkennung, Frankfurt (Main)/New York: Campus.
- Ernst Lewy: Der Bau der europäischen Sprachen, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1964.
- Desmond Morris et al. (1979): Gestures: Their Origins and Distributions, New York: Stein & Day.
- Terri Morrison et al.: Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries, Holbrook: Adams Media 1994.
- Gyula Paczolay: European Proverbs in 55 Languages with Equivalents in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese, Veszprém: Veszprém Press 1997.
- Baldur Panzer: "Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede im Wortschatz europäischer Sprachen", in: Werner Besch et al. (eds.), Sprachgeschichte, vol. 2, p. 1123–1136, Frankfurt (Main): Lang 2000.
- Siegfried Piotrowski / Helmar Frank (eds.): Europas Sprachlosigkeit: Vom blinden Fleck der European Studies und seiner eurologischen Behebung, München: KoPäd 2002.
- Glanville Price: Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe, Oxford: Blackwell 1998.
- Peter Rehder: 'Das Slovenische', in: Rehder, Peter (ed.), Einführung in die slavischen Sprachen, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1998.
- Helmut SchmidtHelmut SchmidtHelmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
: Die Selbstbehauptung Europas: Perspektiven für das 21. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart/München: Deutsche Verlangs-Anstalt 2000. - Miquel Siguan: Europe and the Languages, 2002, English internet version of the book L'Europa de les llengües, Barcelona: edicions 62.
- Bernd Spillner: Die perfekte Anrede: Schriftlich und mündlich, formell und informell, national und international, Landsberg (Lech): Moderne Industrie.
- M. Stephens: Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe, Llandysul 1976.
- Anna Trosborg: Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints and Apologies, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter 1995.
- Jan Wirrer (ed.): Minderheitensprachen in Europa, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag 2000.
- Jan Wirrer: 'Staat—Nation—Sprache, eine Gleichung, die—fast—aufgeht: Minderheiten- und Regionalsprachen in Europa", in: Metzing, Dieter (ed.), Sprachen in Europa: Sprachpolitik, Sprachkontakt, Sprachkultur, Sprachentwicklung, Sprachtypologie, p. 21-52, Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2003.
External links
- ELAMA
- EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) (including an academic journal, a discussion forum, a wiki for projects, a collection of internet links as well as a bibliography of Eurolinguistic studies)
- EuroLSJ (official web site of the EuroLSJ project)