Mixed language

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A mixed language is a language that arises when speakers of different languages are in contact and there is a high degree of bilingualism among them. (Occasionally, more than two languages may be involved.) A mixed language differs from a pidgin in that its speakers are fluent, even native, speakers of the languages involved in the mixture, whereas a pidgin develops when groups of people with no knowledge of each other's languages come into contact and have need of a basic communication system, e.g. for trade, but do not have enough contact to learn each other's language or to develop a lingua franca. A mixed language differs from a creole in that a mixed language has not evolved from a pidgin, while a creole has. Also, while creoles tend to have drastically reduced inflections, mixed languages sometimes retain the inflectional complexities of both parent languages. It differs from code-switching in that it is set in its grammar and vocabulary, rather than the choice being left to the mood of the speaker. Speakers of mixed languages often do not know the input languages, something that precludes the possibility of linguistic improvisation.

A mixed language may be said to evolve from persistent code-switching and indeed language names like "Spanglish" are often given to persistent code-switiching long before it is clear that a genuine mixed language has evolved. Other apparent mixed languages, such as Franglais and Yinglish, are really nothing more than names given to varieties of a language (like French and English respectively) characterized by large numbers of loanwords from another language (like English and Yiddish respectively). Usually a mixed language appears to be a marker of a new cultural/ethnic group (metis, immigrant or similar).

The best examples of genuine mixed languages are probably:

  • Michif, a mixture of French and Cree, where the nouns and adjectives tend to be French (including agreement), and the polysynthetic verbs are entirely Cree. There are two simultaneous gender systems, French masculine/feminine as well as Cree animate/inanimate, and the Cree obviative (fourth person)
  • Mednyj Aleut, a mixture of Russian and Aleut, which retains Aleut verbs but has replaced most of the inflectional endings with their Russian equivalents.
  • Cappadocian Greek, which has mostly Greek root words, but used with many Turkish grammatical endings, Turkish vowel harmony, and no gender.
  • Mbugu or Ma’a: an inherited Cushitic vocabulary with a borrowed Bantu inflectional system

Other possible examples include:

In addition to Spanglish and Yinglish mentioned above, there are many varieties of English that are distinguished from "standard" varieties by being in contact with other languages. These may not be genuine mixed languages, but rather cases of persistent code-switching or heavy use of loanwords. They include:

Similar names are given to "broken" English found in foreign countries, for example:

These are simply non-native uses of English and cannot be considered mixed languages.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Bakker, Peter (1997). A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Metis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509712-2.
  • Bakker, P., and M. Mous, eds. (1994). Mixed languages: 15 case studies in language intertwining. Amsterdam: IFOTT. ISBN 0-12-345678-9.
  • Matras, Yaron and Peter Bakker, eds. (2003). The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-017776-5.
  • Mous, Maarten. 2003. The making of a mixed language: The case of Ma'a/Mbugu. Creole language library (No. 26). Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.
  • Sebba, Mark (1997). Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-63024-6.
  • Thomason, Sarah and Terrence Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.
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