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Languages are alive. They are born, often create conflicts as they grow,
thrive, struggle and, unfortunately, even die. Above all, languages develop as
they interact in the world around them, whether in the place of birth or in new
homes. This dynamic leads to the creation of local versions, some close to the
original, as in American English, and other much distinct, such as Moroccan
Arabic. Even today, it is possible to see this process in action and even view
the evolution as the most natural of phenomena.
Fundamentally, people learn how to express themselves in a language by
observing, listening and interacting with the language. By the time children
start formal schooling, they already have a strong sense of intonations and
their implications, sentence structure and the underlying meanings of countless
words, including positive and negative implications. Parents and close family
members shape the language of their children by encouraging through positive
reactions, e.g., smiles and immediate response, and correcting through negative
feedback, e.g., hard looks and formal correction. Even adults receive such
feedback from their children when they use the wrong technical term or massacre
the name of a singer or musical group. Thus, it is impossible to isolate
language from continuous feedback from the environment.
Therefore, when the speakers of a language choose to spend extensive
time in a country or area where another language is spoken, not to mention
raise their children in such a foreign environment, it is inevitable that their
native language undergoes gradual but constant changes. These modifications
may not be noticeable to the speaker but natives will immediately notice the
differences, sometimes even to the point of asking for clarifications on what
was said. These changes involve intonation, syntax and vocabulary.
Every language its own song, its audio ID, without any reference to
words. For example, most Westerners find it easy to identify Italian just by its song-like cadence. Some languages feature greater tone differential, such
as French and Spanish while other are known for their flatness, such as
Russian. English is somewhere in the middle. Living in foreign countries
provides constant exposure to another rhythm, modifying the native language.
Thus, Russian speakers in Israel tend to speak more sing-song over time as do
English speakers, reflecting the Hebrew rythyms of everyday life. LIkewise, Canadian French speakers use a slightly flatter than their
French counterparts. The words may be the same but somehow the foreign version
sounds different.
A slower process involves sentence structure. Each language has its own
ways of arranging sentence parts. English tends to be short and direct, i.e.,
subject, verb and object, while Russian is on the other extreme where word
order is quite fluid and adjectival phrases precede the noun they describe. The
continual exposure to foreign syntax eventually creates a hybrid version of the
first language that can be most easily identified in locally produced
newspapers. I have read Hebrew newspapers produced in the Los Angeles and
Russian magazines published in Israel. They sounded strangely alien even if the
vocabulary was essentially the same as the original language. I was told that
traditional Odessan Russian sounds very Ukrainian in terms of phrasing, not a
surprise given its geographical location. The local language casts a shadow on
the original language.
The easiest modification of local versions to identify is vocabulary. Insidiously
and unavoidably, local useful words enter the daily vocabulary of the speaker.
Almost no Russian in Israel, immigrant or 1st generation Israeli,
says “policlinica” to say medical center but uses instead the Hebrew kupat
holim. Israelis in the United States do business, not esekim.
French Canadian easily integrate French and English to create such wonderful
hybrids such as courriel, which is a combination of courrier and electronique,
i.e. email, and try to enjoy their week-end. The French may laugh
at them at every opportunity (and do so) but the average Metropolitan French
does not speak a completely pure French
as the English word often sounds much cooler, being from a foreign language. Thus,
it can be truly difficult for expats to visit “home” and avoid use of words
from their adopted language.
To clarify, this human linguistic evolution is lifelong and natural.
Just as the human body never stops changing. neither does language. People
react and learn, with the ultimate goal of trying to be fully understood by the
other party. There is nothing unnatural or even impure about the process. While
the differences in speech may sound lazy or even illegitimate, they are obviousment,
as my late father would say in jest, just the result of natural chemistry.
* Picture captions allow the blind to have fulll access to the Internet.
Pictures credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/openclipart-vectors-30363/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2028602">OpenClipart-Vectors</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2028602">Pixabay</a>
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